Doctors, judges among users, says former cook and dealer
Ra Ingram, 41, relied on meth’s highly addictive qualities to build her empire through all levels of society in Auckland.
‘‘I’ve sold to doctors, I’ve sold to police officers, I’ve sold to judges, trainee nurses doing long hours, taxi drivers, film crew – high-profile people.’’
They would purchase a bag once every four or five months. Then it became every couple of months. Then once a month.
After 12 months, they would approach her every day.
‘‘The time in between using gets shorter and shorter. That may take a couple of years. But there’s no such thing as manageable using. Your life becomes unmanageable.’’
There’s no set group of users, Ingram says. It plagues families, children, friends, loved ones and employees.
Ingram says her wha¯ nau could not escape her addiction – she would prioritise drugs over food and, when her son was two, he ingested her stash. It was the worst 72 hours of her life, but didn’t stop her from using.
‘‘My addiction made me that self-centred that he didn’t matter, and that’s the raw truth of it. Your children are secondary to getting high.
‘‘Even though he was in the state he was, when he was high, I couldn’t take him to the hospital [because] of the risk of losing him. But I didn’t deserve to have him.‘‘I couldn’t believe how f ...... selfish I was. I wouldn’t feed my kids. I’d spend all the money on getting high.’’
The path to cooking was a natural transition for Ingram.
After a rough, abusive upbringing, she was kicked out
of home at 13 and turned to meth as a coping mechanism. When she was 17, she discovered how to cook it with a 45-year-old friend who paid $17,000 to learn. She sold everything to establish their lab 30km north of Auckland in Silverdale.
They did five-ounce cooks at a time and kept their circle tight. Meanwhile, Ingram had children and a raging addiction to morphine and methamphetamine.
Each day she risked her life in the laboratory, using dangerous, explosive chemicals and creating plenty of toxic waste – the production of one pound of methamphetamine produces five pounds of waste.
‘‘I put my usage and my addiction before my family, and
it was a s ..... existence for my children.’’
Eventually she took herself to get clean at the Salvation Army Bridge Centre in Wellington in April 2019.
After 27 years of drug abuse, she thought about the victims.
‘‘The people I sold drugs to that I knew couldn’t afford it, my son getting high, the psychosis of people I knew couldn’t handle the drug. But I sold it to them anyway. All of that stuff kept me awake at night.’’
Staying clean hasn’t been easy and she has relapsed twice. The first incident occurred in the months following rehab.
Post-care support for recovering addicts fresh out of rehab needs improving, she says.
There are plenty of rehab
centres, and they are used, however there is little support once addicts are released.
Many, such as Ingram, return to their home where drugs are rife and the same influences remain.
‘‘The biggest time a recovering addict needs support is in the six months after rehab,’’ she says. ‘‘They need a safe environment to be able to put into place the tools they have learned.’’
She left her husband during the coronavirus lockdown last year because he was still using.
‘‘I came home from rehab and the only thing that had changed was me. I had a taste of recovery and I wanted it. I realised if I had stayed there, I would be straight back to where I was.’’