Road back from addiction tough but awesome

By LOUISA CLEAVE

James Keane entered a drug treatment programme for methamphetamine abuse at the urging of his family.

They had scraped together the $10,800 for rehab at the South Island clinic after seeking professional help, when they found out the 25-year-old was addicted to pure methamphetamine, or P.

He had been using the drug every day and stealing from the company where he held a good marketing job to support his $3000-a-week habit.

Mr Keane said he discovered P, or pure methamphetamine, three years ago and never stood a chance because of his personality and addictive nature.

"I picked up on it more and more where my friends didn't. They could leave it where I couldn't."

He "crashed and burned" two years ago and tried self-imposed rehab by taking himself out of Auckland to live up North.

"I got back to nature, back to the beach and surfing."

Mr Keane returned to Auckland and started work in April 2002. He moved up through the company and, through a workmate, started using drugs again. Weekend use turned to daily use but he thought he had it under control.

He could eat and sleep. He was the first person at work every day and the last to leave, although it was not productive as "I had to double check everything I did".

In August he was sacked. He had stolen around $30,000 and is now facing police charges.

He was paranoid and ended up sitting at home behind pulled curtains with other P users.

He lost everything he owned, and still has debts piled up from the days when car payments and power bills came second to buying drugs.

But last week he returned to Auckland to make a fresh start after five-and-a-half weeks of treatment.

Mr Keane said he spent the first week defending the drug and thinking everyone else had a problem.

A volunteer he describes as a "famous New Zealander" who once had a heroin addiction, made the breakthrough.

"He threw me against the wall and said "'James', all your life your thinking has been wrong. You've just got to shut up and listen.

"'Take the cotton wool out of your ears and put it in your mouth and let someone else have a go with your life for a second'. So I did and that broke me. I started listening."

Mr Keane went through counselling and the clinic prepared an individual treatment plan as part of the 12-step programme, based on spirituality and abstinence.

"It's about getting rid of drugs and building yourself to be a healthy person. Understanding what things in your life have really affected you."

Mr Keane put on 12kg to return to his normal body weight and had to relearn how to sleep and eat properly.

The treatment facility put him "in a good place mentally, physically and spiritually" but on return to Auckland he was overcome with fear.

"I walked into the domestic airport and my world went from being a happy and serene place to being a small bubble I was enclosed in. I got paranoid again. I thought people were looking at me and judging me again."

A meeting at the Hanmer's Auckland out-patient clinic that night brought relief and he will continue to attend the meetings for another two years as part of the treatment.

He will also attend regular Narcotics Anonymous meetings, "a huge part of your programme", and will have a NA sponsor for support.

Mr Keane said ideally the sponsor would be a former P user but no one at the meetings has been clean for long enough to allow them to be a sponsor.

He expects that to change.

"NA is going to be overtaken by P users simply because usage is 10,000 times worse than what you guys think it is. It's everywhere."

Mr Keane is staying with family and any time he feels the urge to take drugs will ring someone from NA.

"Now I wake up in the mornings and I have energy. I have a clear head.

"I can think about what happened yesterday, and it's awesome."

* For help about P, contact 0800 2HANMER (0800 242-6637) or 0800 DARENZ (0800 327-369).

Herald Feature: The P epidemic

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