Meth addict journalist's worst moment: 'I threatened to kill my parents'

"I had no money, nowhere to live and nobody was talking to me."

In an exclusive interview with NZ Herald Focus, Luke Williams, an Australian journalist who became an addict while researching addiction to crystal meth, talks about the moment he hit rock bottom.

Speaking to presenter Tristram Clayton, Williams describes his worst moment - the moment he threatened to kill his parents.

Williams says he reached out to his parents when he was convinced that the people whose house he moved into were plotting to kill him.

"I thought they wanted to turn my ex-boyfriend into a woman so they could have sex with him/her."

Williams said his parents were sick of the stories and they got into an argument in which he said "terrible things" and revealed their secrets to each other.

"It got way out of control."

He then left them 25 phone messages "threatened to kill them".

Williams started using drugs when he was 17 and even completed a stint in rehab before deciding to move in with two friends who had an ice addiction to research a book.

In his book The Ice Age: a journey into crystal-meth addiction, he reveals how he struggled to differentiate between reality and the drug-induced dream-like delusions after he began regularly using the drug.

Williams describes his psychosis as "the Vortex".

"You can do whatever you want in that world," he said. "It's like a self-generating movie where you have one foot in reality and one foot in a fantasy."

Williams decided to write the book after seeing his friends become addicted to drugs.

"They became homeless and were not able to distinguish between a truth and lie."

He ran into trouble a week after moving in with his friends when he "forgot" he was there to do a story.

"After a week or two I forgot I was there to do a story and thought I was on a mystical journey."

Williams revealed that after a while he couldn't continue to fund his use and that's when he came off it for a few days which was enough to be able to think clearly enough to reach out to his parents.

His parents then flew him to rural Queensland and helped him out of his drug addiction.