EDITORIAL: Crystal meth is divisive and destructive
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SAMANTHA stood in front of Magistrate Timothy Bourke in Bendigo last week, almost in tears.
The magistrate had raised the very real possibility of sending the 21-year-old to jail after she was charged with trafficking the drug ice in Bendigo.
"When people traffic drugs, they traffic misery," the magistrate told her.
"You're the one who breached your family's trust, they are the ones who care about you.
"It's not just you who suffers. It's your family, friends and the community as a broader picture that is impacted by your actions."
Police caught her with a snap-lock bag of the drug in a house in northern Bendigo in February, which she admitted she sold to fund her own habit.
Her mother Helen and father Greg stood by her side in court.
Her parents have stood by their daughter since July 2013, when Samantha first started her ice use as an 18-year-old.
Speaking with the Bendigo Advertiser, Helen said her daughter was like any other growing up in Bendigo.
"She was just your typical teenager," she said.
Samantha worked part-time at a Bendigo business while finishing high school. The business dealt in one of her passions and she practically ran the place, her mother said.
Yet when it closed its doors in 2013, she appeared to lose all meaning in her life.
"I didn't find out she had started using ice straight away, not until a few months after she started," Helen said.
"One of her friends introduced her to it, they just said to her, 'Let's go off and try something'.
"When I found out, she would just say it was a social thing, that she doesn't really need it at all. She kept saying, 'It's OK mum'.
"What a bad decision."
Samantha would start to lie about where she was going and who she was seeing. She didn't try marijuana, but went straight into ice.
Within months, the cycle had started.
When I found out, she would just say it was a social thing, that she doesn't really need it at all. She kept saying, 'It's OK mum'.
- Helen, mother of ice addict
She would leave the house for days at a time and come home "in a mess".
After two days of sleeping at home, Samantha would disappear again.
With access to a car and her licence, she was useful for other ice users, few of whom had their own regular transport.
Locking her keys in a safe did little to deter her as others would come and pick her up in the middle of the night.
Samantha even lost her licence speeding, but that didn't keep her in the house.
She went from 50kg to 40kg, losing almost all appetite.
The only chance her parents had was when she came home after days away, practically begging them for help.
"We wouldn't see her for a few days, then she would come home in a sobbing mess, saying things like, 'I can't do this anymore'," Helen said.
They would quickly ring rehabilitation centres, knowing there wasn't much time before she would became hostile and unpredictable, yelling at her parents, before retiring to bed for days.
"But when you ring these rehab places, there are always waiting lists," Helen said.
"There are only certain times when she would ask for help. But you would ask for help, and it's just not there.
"No one would take her in unless she was physically hurting herself, or hurting someone. But she was physically hurting, you can tell she's hurting when she goes through psychotic episodes."
Samantha was eventually admitted to a rehabilitation clinic in Geelong.
But for Helen, the clinic highlighted another problem facing those dealing with an ice addict.
After eight days, Samantha had met another Bendigo girl in rehab and the two became friends. They left the clinic together.
"She met a girl in there - who lived just down the road - who purely went there because it was good for her record. She didn't want to get off it," Helen said.
"I hadn't heard from her for a couple of days, so I rang the clinic and they just told me, 'Oh sorry, she's gone'."
I was learning how to control how to deal with my daughter.
Because Samantha was 18, the clinic could not tell her parents where she had gone.
"There's no way she was thinking like an adult, she wasn't thinking clearly at all. She was definitely not in the state of mind of an adult," Helen said.
The parents sought advice from a drug support service in Sydney, receiving advice over the phone.
Meanwhile, Samantha was coming home with marks on her face and body, hair a mess, and suffering paranoia.
One night she sped up the driveway and collapsed behind the wheel, covered in bruises, after another ice user had beaten her while driving.
The names kept changing. Some friends had gone to jail, other names replaced them.
When the Stepping Stones to Success family drug support program visited Bendigo, Helen saw an opportunity to seek help.
"They had to postpone it because there was so little interest. I mean, come on, no interest in Bendigo? Why weren't people seeking help?" she said.
"When it did come, only two families from Bendigo were there. The others were from places like Yarrawonga and Kerang.
"It was fantastic though.
"I learnt little things, like if you start to get into a yelling match, you need to try and stay calm. I was learning how to control how to deal with my daughter."
For two years, Helen saw few other people as she stayed by the side of her daughter.
Family and friends told her to give up. Samantha was causing her too much pain.
Their story came to a head in February this year when police conducted a raid on a northern Bendigo house.
Samantha was in a front room with a snap-lock bag of ice. Others in the house were also charged with possession.
She had started to sell, no longer able to afford her habit through her meagre income.
Samantha appeared in the Bendigo Magistrates' Court last week, charged with trafficking a drug of dependence.
WHEN the family's defence council heard Magistrate Timothy Bourke say Samantha should be sent to jail, he desperately asked her mother to provide testimony.
She had already provided a lifetime of support to her daughter, and the testimony proved to be her most important help yet.
The magistrate asked Helen to explain why he should not send her daughter to jail.
"I think she understands the pain her drug use is causing to her family," she said.
"Sometimes she'll just come up and hug me, and say sorry for what she's done."
Helen explained the yelling matches, the anxiety and the depression, but also the remorse Samantha felt for the pain she had caused her family and others.
The defence council told the court prison would only make the family's situation worse.
"A better message to send out is that people who have drug problems should seek treatment, rather than send them to prison," he said.
"If you imprison her, she will come out with renewed contacts and struggle to address the other issues by herself.
"She is wanting to accept the assistance of her parents."
Mr Bourke spoke directly to Samantha as he explained his ruling.
Taking into account her guilty plea and her age as a young offender, he spared her a jail sentence.
People who have the support of their family are a much better chance at living a normal life.
- Magistrate Timothy Bourke
Instead, she was placed on an 18 month community corrections order to deal with drug and mental health abuse, along with 300 hours of community service over the next 12 months.
"People who have the support of their family are a much better chance at living a normal life," Mr Bourke said.
"You now know the misery it wreaks on lives."
He wished the family luck for the future and congratulated Helen on her commitment.
Samantha has now been 55 days without ice. Her mother also took in one of her friends, and the two are tackling their addiction together.
Helen said the most important thing was to stay away from anyone involved in that lifestyle.
"They do a little motorbike riding together, and I give them chores that they have to, like hanging out the washing every day," she said.
"I keep reminding her how long it's been too, saying, 'You know, it's been three weeks now, that's fantastic!'"
While there are still long months ahead in the rehabilitation, Helen said she had confidence.
"She just wants to get a job, go back to work," she said.
"You just hope it lasts."
*names changed at the request of the family
Helen's handwritten thoughts as she watches her young daughter consumed by an ice addiction:
SAVING MY DAUGHTER'S LIFE (IN A MOTHER'S VIEW)
Where do I begin?
Changes in attitude, nasty, non-caring, verbally abuse.
Why? The big question.
There is no real reason.
This stuff takes hold and changes are happening before your very eyes. The person you once knew is so different, nothing else matters - time, relationships, work, friends, family, pets.
The love is still there, it's just not as important anymore.
There's something else that's needed more, and until this is taken, it's a waiting game. Waiting for the normal again.
Is it ever going to be?
I'm lucky I suppose, she's living at home. Or am I?
I got to see first hand the effects, the changes, the ups and downs. I'm very proud of my own efforts to be here whenever I was needed.
Although I saw the worst as well, I don't care as long as I was available. I heard all the reasons why this had to be done, in her eyes this was all the mattered.
To begin to understand you have to put yourself in their mind. Very, very hard to do because all you can see is the problems this is causing.
The friends they once had have moved on because not everyone can see the good in any of this.
This once vibrant young person, full of life and energy, is slowly falling apart.
Don't get me wrong, this is my view.
They don't believe there's a problem, they are having fun, but a false one that is only achieved by doing it more.
In a while, this is going to take over their life, which it certainly did.
Many thought I should have moved her on out of my life, wasting my time, money, effort, love, hurting me and the way my life should be.
It's all very easy to say. But I couldn't see what else to do. I'm here if I'm needed.
I listened to all the stories, I wiped away the tears, I said some pretty nasty things to try and get through, and then I'd hold her hand or watch her sleep for days at a time, feeding her because I knew if I didn't, she could fade away.
Or should I say I was fading away.
To give that drink she much needed because if I was not here, that would not happen.
Sleep was so important it sometimes went on for days.
I too became lost in my own world.
I didn't want to go here or there or to family gatherings. I was trying to hide what was really going on.
Denial is a very real thing.
I suppose what was more important was to be there if she needed me. Sometimes I went for days without seeing or hearing from her.
In return, I wouldn't sleep for worry of where she was. Is she alright, is she even alive?
Then all of a sudden, the joy of the arrival home is all you want to see.
Then the sad truth once again is thrown in your face, the truth in their eyes. The sores that have appeared, the hair not done, the bugs under the skin, the worry of someone watching them or coming to harm them.
All this time you are here, to protect them from harm, to look for the bugs or hug them as reassurance.
It will be OK if you are home and safe.