A family haunted by meth
Leighton’s addiction meant his wife didn’t recognise him and his daughters were ashamed to go to school – but now his family is hoping his rehab can drive a change to how this drug is treated and show it’s a scourge throughout all levels of society. They talk to Sam Kilmister.
Dazed, blindfolded and bound to a pole, Leighton Cornelius feels every grain of dirt beneath his shivering feet. His vision is hazy. He cannot tell from looking up at the sky if it is dawn or dusk. He can hear the gentle sound of waves at a lake nearby.
In a history of drug abuse that spans a lifetime, this fateful moment five years ago was one occasion he feared death.
Earlier that night, Cornelius, 38, had been thrown in the boot of a car following a late-night altercation near Golden Takeaways in central Palmerston North.
He had mistaken one of the kidnappers for an associate of his – an easy mistake when they drive the same car.
Cornelius asked: ‘‘Allan, is that you?’’
But Allan was the guy the others were hunting. If Cornelius knew Allan, then he must also know where he was hiding, the attackers concluded, and they shoved him in the boot.
Cornelius was eventually dumped at Duddings Lake, a remote recreational facility about 40 kilometres northeast of Palmerston North.
His face turns white as he recounts the torment, but his voice doesn’t falter. His eyes go blank.
The quantity of drugs he was forced to ingest sent him into a psychotic episode, and he ran all the way back to Palmerston North. An old workmate kept him safe until his wife arrived.
‘‘I thought there was no coming back. My insides were just fried. My brain was fried. I didn’t know who I was.’’
The incident led Cornelius to think about going sober. But it would be a rocky road.
C ornelius was eight when he experimented with cannabis, sneaking from his older sisters’ stash at home.
It was a rough upbringing, and Cornelius suffered beatings from his old man. When he was 13, his family moved from Whanganui to the East Coast without telling him.
He was instead dropped at the boarding hostel at Palmerston North Boys’ High School and forced to fend for himself.
‘‘I got belligerent and the only way for me to survive was to sell drugs. So I used to sell drugs at school very early.’’ Selling weed led to harder drugs, while feelings of abandonment festered in the background.
‘‘It made me feel like they had forgotten about me, sent me away, left me behind.’’
When he started using meth, there were times he would disappear on two-week benders. He would float between associates’ houses, many of whom were gang members. Cornelius loved taking drugs. ‘‘A lot of the time, me going back out and using was because I felt like being high. I wanted to be in my happy place.’’
Cornelius enjoyed the sensation so much he would be high for weeks at a time.
Those episodes would send him into psychosis, a druginduced condition that affects how the brain processes information. He would lose touch with reality – see, hear or believe things that weren’t real. He would also become violent.
‘‘I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. The drug hit me hard.’’ Leighton Cornelius, above
This has been the case throughout his 15-year marriage to Trina, with whom he has two children. There were times he would try to jump on the windscreen or kick open the window of the car as Trina tried to drive away and escape with their daughter.
‘‘I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. The drug hit me hard.’’
Trina has never touched meth, but has stuck by her husband’s side throughout his addiction. She has revived him, sat with him in mental health wards following psychotic episodes and suicide attempts, and driven him to rehab.
‘‘It’s a living hell,’’ Trina says. ‘‘You never know what is coming. It was like I was married to a different person. You don’t even know who that person is any more.’’
Cornelius has been in recovery for four years, and clean for 13 months.
His daughter, then aged under 10, caught him relapsing in his bedroom. She opened the door to find her father hunched beside the window smoking a pipe.
‘‘I was like: ‘What are you doing? You look like a loser,’’’ she says. ‘‘Sometimes I didn’t even think of him as my dad. It’s embarrassing.’’
His daughter attends Narcotics Anonymous meetings and has met several other children of addicts.
She is tired of hollow promises and says she feels ashamed going to school knowing her father is an addict.
Cornelius knows it’s time to make things right. He works a 12-step program, which involves admitting he is unable to control his addiction, and attends meetings every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
After 14 years together, Trina laid down an ultimatum for her husband. Cornelius recalls: ‘‘I was told, if I don’t get clean, I’m not going to have my family, I’m not going to have a home to come to, I’m not going to have a roof over my head, I’m not going to have my children.’’
The day he finally said ‘‘no more’’ was when his 22-year-old daughter told him she was pregnant.
‘‘That was the breaking point. She wanted a grandfather that was there and present. I couldn’t ask for anything more today than just to have her in my life. It is the best motivator. Your kids are your motivation in being clean.
‘‘They have seen me high pretty much their entire lives. They hated it.’’
His granddaughter was born in June. Cornelius stuck to his word, but it hasn’t been easy since his latest release from rehab.
A few weeks ago, Trina saw him get in the car. She followed him and found him with a pipe, but the crisis was averted.
Meth was his coping mechanism for more than 20 years. It’s the first tool his brain turns to when dealing with stress.
‘‘It is a powerful drug. It’s played a big toll on my body. I am learning new tools to teach me how to keep clean, and it makes a difference – regular meetings, being around new associates, staying away from certain people’s places.’’
Cornelius finds power in talking to others. Getting sober is not a road travelled alone. Addicts need support, especially when they feel the urge to use again.
‘‘I thoroughly enjoy being clean. It gives me the opportunity to help struggling people and not be a hypocrite. It is being able to tell my story and say: ‘I’ve been there, I know what it’s like’.’’
Cornelius doesn’t remember his worst days of meth addiction, but Trina has vivid memories of him asking her for money to buy groceries or petrol – and then spending it on meth. ‘‘It’s all lies, manipulation and alibis,’’ she says. As a mother, the hardest part was shielding her kids from the ugly reality. ‘‘Talking to someone in psychosis, you can’t reason with them. You can’t discuss anything with them. I am pretty headstrong, and I can look after myself, but there were times I didn’t even know who my husband was, and I did fear him.
‘‘I didn’t know what he could do next. The drug could make him change completely and do something he didn’t want to do.’’
There were times she fled the house. She would hide her car, so he couldn’t find her. She was told people were going to turn up at the house if he didn’t repay debts.
She learned how to change deadlocks and put up security systems.
‘‘I could not make him get clean. I could have walked him into rehab, but it wouldn’t have worked unless he wanted to walk himself there.’’
Trina talked to a clinician, Andrew Hopgood, who referred her to a Facebook page called New Zealand ‘P’ Pull.
She says it saved her life. She connected with other women in similar positions and is now on the organisation’s committee, which is based at the Wesley Community Action centre in Porirua, and is campaigning for the Government to allow intervention and prevention programmes with
younger generations.
‘‘These drugs are going to be passed around as our children grow up, and we want them to be educated . It’s not worth experimenting, and it will take your family out.’’
She knows this because she has revived her husband following two suicide attempts.
On one occasion, Cornelius locked himself in the sleep out and tried to kill himself after Trina told him he was no longer welcome in the family home.
She smashed the windows and performed CPR until paramedics arrived. ‘‘It’s hard,’’ she says. ‘‘I didn’t see that one coming.’’
It’s time society takes New Zealand’s drug epidemic seriously, Trina says. ‘‘It happens to every demographic – not just the poor or the rich – it’s everybody.’’ There are limited rehab centres, meaning it can be hard to find somewhere to get clean, and Cornelius was lucky to find a three-bed detox centre in Palmerston North run by the Salvation Army.
You’ve got to hope to get a bed, Trina says. ‘‘But where do you go after that detox? You just go back home to using.’’
When Cornelius came out of rehab, there was no post-detox care. He was told to see his AOD (alcohol and other drug) counsellor, but often had to wait weeks. When he missed a recent appointment, he was never contacted to schedule another.
‘‘You’re just a case to them,’’ Cornelius says. ‘‘They have no way of knowing whether you’re clean, whether their referral to send you to rehab was successful.’’
There needs to be more support at home, he says.
‘‘Even if it’s the rehab checking in on you for a certain amount of time. But there’s nothing. There should be a rehabilitation centre in every major centre.’’
Trina is calling on the Government to create change at the grassroots level. ‘‘[We need] programmes that are going to stop our children from becoming the next meth dealer, the next meth cook, the next grave.’’
She believes recovered addicts should be employed to talk to children at schools. ‘‘If we’re not educating, and we’re just enabling, and society allows methamphetamine to be so easy to get, we’re going to keep burying people.’’
Trina says she hates meth and has seen too many die. ‘‘I don’t want any of my next generation, my tamariki, my mokopuna, being taken out.’’
Cornelius has a simple message for those wanting to experiment with meth: Don’t.
‘‘There is no good at the end of the tunnel when it comes to meth. Reach out for help.’’