UPDATE: This piece has been reprinted on the Community website for 56 Dean Street, Europe's busiest sexual health clinic, as part of their Wellbeing programme.
Three years ago, an old tutor of mine wrote a piece about his alcoholism - aptly titled The Copulating Pisshead Of Brunswick - in which he reminisced upon the circumstances that led to the image of him naked in a sink with face burrowed in tomorrow's regret, along with his desire to quit the drink.
"I can go without a drink indefinitely but one sniff of the barmaid's apron and I need to drink myself into a stupor. Alcohol has no single definition. The Hollywood version is all about drinkers getting up and pouring a sneaky dram of whisky into their coffee or downing a beer before breakfast. The reality is far from this."
And it is. And it isn't. And it's everything but.
I remember in the week after I first used ice, I felt the pangs of temptation crawl into my brain like an earwig with a mouth that somehow knew how to whisper in my own voice. I remember telling my doctor about the images of the future I was having; of being alone a year from now, a shameful addict down a streetway in St. Kilda. I remember saying that those visions felt utterly real to me, like I were Alice peering down the Looking Glass and if I leaned too far forward I might fall in.
But that was eighteen months ago, and this is a Sunday of February in 2017.
In two weeks I have raised over seven thousand dollars to go to rehab, via the apparently novel approach of crowdfunding. I was public about my substance issues before, but the plea for help and the donations that followed have had me answering a lot of questions.
More than that, however, I've fielded many a side-eye. Sometimes it feels like concern, and other times it feels like suspicion - how addicted are you, and why should anyone give you money? Yet I don't pretend to be anything more or less than an addict.
The Hollywood version of crystal meth abuse consists of three parts: Homelessness, violence and poverty. Those are the motifs broadcast on our screens, of men unable to get out of bed without a pipe, and of angry dogs barking behind chain link fences. Only not unlike the myth of the inherently savage pup, it isn't nature, but nurture, and society grips those folk in cycles of poverty and homelessness by telling them we'll fix them while providing barely any care, then being horrified when they lapse.
That was never my addiction. I never needed a pipe to get out of bed, and I never robbed or stole or aggressed. As an addict, the easiest way to close the gap between you and a nurse in an emergency ward is to clarify, "Just so you know, I'm not feeling aggressive, just suicidal."
My vice continued the same way that it began: in a sleazy apartment and the arms of a stranger after a boozy night out, in trepidation of the consequences, but knowing the thrill of the oncoming storm to be irresistible without the windows down and the chill rain on my face. Then when the deed was done, I'd spend every day thereafter in shame, ignoring the earwig-with-a-mouth whispering sweet nothings, waiting for it to die and fade.
Yet I'd inevitably return to disinhibition and would - sometimes always, other times rarely - lapse. Lapsing is a fantastic way to ensure overdoing it, or to straight-up overdose. It continued this way for eighteen months. Rinse, remorse, repeat.
While this might sound nothing like the popularised addict, it's no less of an addiction. I've met people who used once a week for three months and people who used every day for two years, and they've all recalled the same feelings: gut-churning desire. The propensity towards lapsing when intoxicated. Devastating shame. The earwig-with-a-mouth.
This is the addict that barely any see. This is the addict hidden in a sleazy apartment, using "for pleasure", functional but not frightful. This is the addict ignored by A Current Affair, replaced with sinister gore-porn and hysteria.
Yet it can be no less grim. Some people can use regularly in the long-term and feel no backlash from the brain - but others can use once a week for no time at all and collapse into psychiatric care. Combine any amount of crystal meth with pre-existing mental health conditions - my depression and anxiety, for example - and any use can go from dabble to disastrous in months, not years.
I have fought and raged against the machine, only to fail time and time again. I felt my mental state falter and my will to live abate and my options run out. I saw the ground fall out from beneath me, and I suddenly knew that any more rinse, remorse, repeat, would lead to greater ills than I ever wanted.
And I remember a year after my first time, wandering through a backstreet in St. Kilda wired and flying high, all dirty faced with moon pupils looking for the next sleazy apartment, becoming suddenly aware that I had become the vision of myself I had seen a year earlier. I was Alice, and I had fallen through the looking glass.
So I asked for help to purge the bugs from my brain, and by the grace of beautiful creatures, I got it. I remember my mistakes and their horrible aftermaths. I am nostalgic and desiring and afraid. But soon I will go to rehab, and when I get out I will know that in speaking my piece I will have helped expand the tunnel vision of the Hollywood meth addict and allowed my voice to do good.
And, like the copulating pisshead of Brunswick, I will get up and just get on with making it all better.
