Ever since his early 20s, his nightmare was set in a dark underworld of desperation, depression and ultimately attempts to escape.

"Every day was a day of suffering," Luke said.

"I would wake up in the morning and think, 'It really sucks I didn't die in my sleep'."

His life now in California Gully with wife Josie, two-year-old Adison and eight-month-old Aria is almost like another planet for Luke.

He had a crippling addiction to methamphetamine and heroin - an addiction that led back to his experience as a 14-year-old boy tormented by school bullies, and ended as a suicidal man in his 20s unable to see any way out of his dark world.

Attending school on NSW's central coast, Luke turned to marijuana to escape the torment of his classmates.

"I was abused and picked on, harrassed and beaten up. Even girls would make fun of me, telling me I'm never going to get a girlfriend because I'm ugly," he said.

"I started smoking marijuana because it calmed me down, it relaxed me. I felt a sense of peace."

Marijuana was an easy escape, 

At 18, a friend introduced him to meth.

Addiction took hold quicker than he could ever imagine. It started as giving him new life, a new experience, a new way to escape, but it quickly took his life away.

It became his new normal.

It was no longer a social activity - an escape from his painful childhood - but was instead all-consuming.

"Once you become an addict, you just use drugs for medicinal purposes. You get used to that feeling and it becomes completely normal," Luke said.

Before he even opened his eyes in the morning, he would have a bong. Then another five before getting out of bed.

Then it was off to another user's house straight away, where they would smoke meth all day.

"Your life is controlled by your body and its needs," Luke said.

"I'd wake up anywhere and have no idea how I got there."

Like many addicts, he became a part of the underground industry, acting as a courier with more meth as his payment.

"You know people, you become like and like, in groups. They're like trees, you know the branches - the big guys - you know the leaves, the little guys," Luke said.

"You know 20 different people you could buy from."

When he reached the age of 25, he sought an escape.

Suicidal thoughts followed him everywhere.

"I saw no change on the horizon. Your life is controlled by your body and its needs, your brain no longer has a say at all," Luke said.

"I was convinced I'd never get a job. I was convinced every person hated me. I thought everyone was just cruel.

"I was sitting around every day, and people were dying, they were overdosing.

"I thought that one batch would come through and that'd be it for me too. I was on an ugly slope."

He said it was impossible to see the light at the end of the tunnel. There was no hope.

One day, as he watched another friend disappear from his life, Luke found enough strength to admit himself into a detox clinic.

He found himself at a Christian rehab clinic "in the bush".

"It was away from society. I didn't see the ugliness of the world anymore," Luke said.

After three months, he started to regain control of his body. It still craved meth, but some of the beauty of the world had started to return.

"I started seeing hope," Luke said.

"I was enjoying the simple things, like the leaves of a tree or a stream, or even rabbits hopping past.

"My mum visited and looked at me - she said all of my scabs had gone, my hair had grown back, my teeth were better.

"I wasn't that psychopathic lunatic anymore. I was that calm and gentle person again.

"It was like waking up from a 10 year nightmare. I had wasted 15 years of my life on drugs."

Six years later - on Thursday morning last week - Luke sits in the lounge room with his two little girls and partner Josie.

They laugh together, watching cartoons.

He feels himself closing in on the end of his recovery from his addiction.

The initial 12 months in rehab was only the first step of his journey back into the every day world.

"Since 2009, 2010, everything just went full steam ahead," Luke said.

"I had that much determination, I felt like superman.

"I started going to cafes with my parents for lunch, I'd go fishing and camping too."

He would look at himself in the mirror and tell himself, "I'm a better person now".

Luke re-established friendships, he lost that dread of people. They were no longer his enemy.

"Instead of feeling hatred in my heart, I wanted to know people. I wanted a connection with people, I wanted friends," he said.

"I have patience now, whereas I never had any before."

Three years after he stopped using, he wanted to start a family. He wanted to find someone to spend his life with.

Luke met Josie online. The pair talked for months.

"One day, I realised I was addicted to this woman on the other end of my computer," he said.

He drove 600 kilometres to meet her in Jindabyne, near Mount Kosciuszko.

"I never went home. I went to drive home and said, 'I don't want to go'. Josie didn't want me to go either," Luke said.

"We just got along so well. It was perfect."

Within three months they were expecting their first child. After 12 months, they moved to Bendigo to be close to where Josie grew up.

The last step - and in many ways the most difficult - has been finding work. Luke sees it as the last piece of the puzzle.

Luke said he has applied for 25 to 30 jobs per week for four years. He has received six interviews and no job.

"People held my past against me, I realised I had been stereotyped," he said.

"No one really wanted to give me a chance, my life is in limbo at the moment.

"All I want to do is provide my family with a better life."

A serious back injury sustained years ago continues to hamper his quest for work. A week before he was due to finish a security course, it flared up again and he missed an important step to gaining the qualification.

While Luke looks desperately to the future, he continues to look to his past for strength.

"You have to have hope. That dream is what keeps your wheels turning," he said.

"I know I'm going to get it, this is what I'm reaching for when I was in the gutter. I've moved on, but society isn't letting me."

Despite setback after setback, Luke said he will never lose that hope again.

"Now, every morning, I have my little kids smiling at me saying 'daddy, daddy, daddy'. I just feed off of their energy," he said.

"You just have to keep on getting up in the morning, you just have to confront all of those hardships."

Josie is now pregnant with their third child. The pair plan to get married.

Luke said he wants his story to show how no matter how hopeless life seems, how much the world is against you, and how hard it is to get out of bed every day, all you need is a dream.

He visits rehab clinics regularly to lend support to those facing what he faced just six years ago.

"Life is 10 millions times better now than it was," he said.

"I can't believe I did it.

"I can't believe I'm getting the things I wanted in life.

"You don't have to let the drugs destroy you.

"You can live life."

Related: A Marong mother speaks of the pain as her daughter battles ice addiction