Island helps seize moment to beat habit

The Salvation Army's church on Rotoroa Island, which is slated for closure.

Lying injured on the ground with a broken rib, Michael looked at his attacker and offered to help him to get off drugs.

"The light goes on" at such moments, Michael says. An addict himself for 25 years, he now gives motivational speeches once a fortnight to addicts at the Salvation Army's Rotoroa Island rehabilitation centre in the Hauraki Gulf.

He says you have to grab the moment when addicts are ready to give up, because the "light" quickly goes off again once they get back into their drug-taking habits.
In this case, a few weeks ago, a six-week wait before his mate could get into rehabilitation proved fatal to his chances.

"I rang up the doctor and she said we can get him in in six weeks. That's too long. The window is not there now.

"You get this thing: 'I want to go.' It might be there for 48 hours. You've got to be in time. Even if they just get in there for a couple of days to have a look, that's in the brain - the light goes on."

Michael believes Rotoroa Island is the perfect place for addicts to kick the habit and hopes the Salvation Army will rethink its decision to close the centre next month after 95 years.

"Rotoroa Island is just what you need because you are there and you can't leave. It's just beautiful," he says.

"I think they need an island for the alcoholics because out here there is alcohol on every corner."

He says the last time he was on the island, the patients came down to the wharf for the visitors and performed the most powerful haka he had ever seen.

"They clean up and you get all this almighty power. You get a big pink cloud - it's like you are stoned again, it just feels so good," he says.

"Then later rock bottom kicks in again. That's the hard part. You've got to get through that, then you have to level out. That's why you've got to get into your head and into your heart."

Asked how he got into drugs, Michael says: "Girls." He was 18, he had gone to Sydney, and "there was heroin all round".

"People went, 'Have this, shoot this, snort this'. Then someone came along with it on tinfoil, which didn't seem so bad. But it's just lethal, and after a while I started mainlining it - you get the full effect then."

To support his habit, he started "wheeling and dealing".

"It's about bank cards - everyone was doing that. You might come across prospects and you sell to them. There's always someone wants to buy something, specially in that underworld," he says.

"If you're an addict, you have to do crime on a daily basis. Once you get a bit of help, that's one guy who's not a criminal. But not really a criminal, he's only doing it to stay normal. That's what the jails are full of - drug addicts."

Michael was jailed for extortion when he was 30, which gave him a taste of being drug-free. "But as soon as I got out of prison I had some alcohol and that lowered my defences and I went and got heroin. Now I don't ever drink alcohol because I know it lowers my defences."

His first wife is "a wreck" with drug and alcohol addictions. Another wife was killed. The mother of his two daughters ran off with another man, leaving Michael with the children. His current girlfriend is in jail.

"We are just coming up with two daughters so we've got to clean up and look after them," he says. "I've been off drugs, total, now for 18 months and 17 days. You count the days."