By GEORGIA WESTGARTH
STRANGERS were Bianca’s best friends while she was on ‘ice’.
The Cockatoo 26-year-old’s work resume reads like it was literally put on ice for seven years while the drug ran her life.
Bianca Hawkins started taking ecstasy at 15 years old. By the time she was 19 she had graduated to the harder stuff – crystal methamphetamine, or ice.
“I started on ecstasy at school, Ferntree Gully High, at parties,” Bianca said.
“Self-confidence plays a big part in getting on drugs, because they (addicts) don’t know who they are.
“Drugs don’t discriminate – anyone can do drugs and fit into a minority.”
From an outsider’s point of view, Bianca had set up her life pretty well before ice made her homeless.
She had a loving family and the same opportunities as any other Aussie high school graduate.
At the age of 20, Bianca was paying a mortgage on a house in Pakenham.
“It was a big achievement for that age,” she said.
But her addiction soon overshadowed everything else in her life.
Bianca was a dealer and a user and used certain tactics to keep the cycle turning over, tactics that didn’t involve stealing, but stuff she’d rather not discuss.
Debt soon accumulated, Bianca lost contact with her family and the drug became more like a medication than a bit of fun.
“I paid for my habit by selling ice, most people that are addicted to ice are also dealers – they can, basically, use for free,” Bianca said.
“Ice made me feel like my problems didn’t matter anymore, that nothing else matters, and I look back on them now and they weren’t even problems.
“Ice created them in my head.
“Everybody starts using thinking that their life is terrible and they use to get away from their problems, but while they use they create more problems for themselves – no one’s life gets better on ice.”
Bianca, who now lives with her parents, has had five goals in her 26 years.
One goal was to help people – that’s why she worked in disability care before ice froze that future.
For the next seven years from 19 years old to 15 months ago, Bianca had the same goal – to get off ice.
She failed three times.
“I’ve been clean for 15 months now,” Bianca said.
That leaves just one last goal – to help others get off drugs for good through her course in life coaching.
Bianca has decided to look at her drug habit in a positive light, despite the setbacks since going cold turkey.
“When I went clean I put on 20 kilograms in two and a half weeks which was a massive amount of weight gain. I’m about 164cm tall, I’ve never been overweight before,” she said.
Between the weight gain and the acne outbreaks Bianca was in hell.
“It was really hard to deal with, made me want to go back on ice, but I knew I had to hang it out,” she said.
At the height of her addiction Bianca said she didn’t eat much but once off the drug she couldn’t eat enough.
“All I was doing was eating and sleeping, my body was craving everything because it had been deprived for so long,” she said.
“Young kids don’t know the toll ice takes on the body, every part of the body is affected. The muscles, bones, internal organs, skin, your hair thins.
“My hair just started growing back, your hair falls out when you use. I destroyed all my internal organs.”
The detox got so hard that Bianca didn’t even want to leave the house.
“At first I didn’t want photos, but now I want them because in the end when I’ve smashed it, I’ve got something to look back on.”
Bianca said the repercussions on the body isn’t something a user thinks about.
“You think you’ll just get off it and it’ll be fine, the last thing you think is that your body will need to recover from it.
“I knew my mind would have to recover from the addiction but not my body.”
Bianca recalls sleeping in cars around the south-east suburbs for eight months as hitting rock bottom.
“You surround yourself with people that you don’t know, everyone’s a stranger but they are all you have,” she said.
“The strangers are the closest people to you at that time, they are the people you sell to and deal with.”
These are now the same people Bianca has had to disassociate with completely to avoid relapsing like she has in the past.
Having pushed away old friends due to ice, and then pushing away the new wave of friends because of ice, Bianca can now say she has a new group of friends … because of ice.
But they all have one thing in common – ice isn’t in their future.
These people are all a part of former drug dealer and addict Glenn Munso’s Youth YOU drug rehabilitation program and gym in Hallam.
Bianca said Glenn’s program works because decisions aren’t taken away from addicts like they are with other drug rehabilitation clinics.
“Youth YOU gives you the tools to make decisions for yourself, its empowering,” she said.
“I’ve been in rehab before and your choices get taken away from you, you’re locked away from the environment you are used to and when you are released back into that environment drugs are the first thing you want to do.
“With Glenn you have the choice, you either want to be there or you don’t.”
A proud Bianca, has a new found energy, far away from her former anxiety-riddled self.
“At the start ice gave me a feeling like no other, at the end it was an anti-anxiety medication.
“It did the opposite to what it did in the beginning – I just needed it to survive.”
And she offers the advice “you can’t hate yourself that bad to want to do ice – because that’s all it is, punishing yourself”.
Now Bianca is proud to say she just punishes herself every day in the gym.
