Annemarie Quill
Uncovers two shocking stories of lives shattered by the scourge of methamphetamine
Lisa’s story
She lost herself 18 months before in a glass pipe of crystal meth passed to her by an older man, “from a very respectable profession”.
“It became a huge problem. It hooked me quickly. I chased it every day. My entire life tumbled down in 18 months.”
Lisa* smoked up to a gram a day. She kept the cost down by selling meth to friends and selling her body, working as a prostitute from home while her daughter was at daycare. Men would come from 10am to 2pm.
“I didn’t think it was wrong. I just wanted more.” Her clothes hung off her skeletal size six frame. She was 49kg. Her body was shrunken but her mind raced. She rarely ate. Her hair was different colours — she would dye it herself at 2am. She didn’t sleep. She would text friends at odd hours. She was so paranoid she couldn’t even go out to put the rubbish on the road. She picked at her face. Once she tried to slice it open with a razor.
She would hallucinate, hear voices or see people that weren’t there.
Once she rang the police thinking there were prowlers in her yard. When the police knocked at her door, she — convinced it was the prowlers — nearly opened the door with a loaded firearm.
When her parents had taken her daughter for a break to the South Island, Lisa stole their savings. She spent it on methamphetamine.
Arriving back at Christmas, Lisa’s parents kicked her out of their Tauranga home, filed a protection order against her, and kept Lisa’s 2-year-old child, their granddaughter.
That night, as Lisa drove alone in the dark, with no money, homeless, carrying just her clothes, she had a moment of clarity, realising she had to get clean.
“I loved my daughter more than anything in the world. Without her, my entire life was destroyed. I told myself I would get off the meth and get her back.” But first she went round to see her friend. He was a P cook.
* Name changed to protect privacy.
Haydee Richards’ story
Haydee Richards spent her 40th birthday in jail. A cake baked by cellmates at Wiri prison in South Auckland wasn’t exactly the party she had planned at her waterfront home in Tauranga. She received two letters, one from each of her children, then 21 and 17.
“My daughter’s letter was pages long. She told me how I had affected her childhood, her life. The letter from my son was short. It didn’t say much. But it was covered in teardrops . . . it broke my heart.” Richards had discovered speed 12 years earlier in Tauranga when her daughter was just 11 and son 7. In just a few months she moved on to crystal meth and thought it was “awesome”.
Before that she had struggled managing everything, but now she felt as if she could cope.
“I was in control. I thought, I am on to it. Actually I thought I was amazing.” Her house was “immaculate”. She stayed up all night cleaning. Everything was “perfectly organised” for her children.
“Lunches, rosters, bring-a-plates . . . I had everything under control.”
At just 27, she morphed from a solo mum who had left school at 15 feeling like “she would never amount to much”, who would drink top-shelf spirits to boost confidence, who always “felt like she was missing out on life”, to a gregarious party girl.
“I stopped drinking, I lost weight. I felt so confident.” She didn’t think of herself as a drug user.
“It didn’t seem like a big deal, as I only did it weekends. Soon I would start Friday. Then I’d feel so bad on Monday I’d have a pick-me-up. Soon I was on it all week.” Her weight dropped to 39kg.
“I was super skinny. Clothes hung off me. I thought I was awesomely hot.” Earlier confidence began to crumble. Within a year she was taking meth intravenously.
“I would never take drugs in front of the kids but, when I became stressed, I’d go in the bedroom, shut the door, inject meth, come out and be able to cope.”
By then Richards was injecting so much meth — up to 3g a day, a street value of $3000 — that she began dealing in the drug to fund her habit.
“It becomes a fulltime job. I became totally self-absorbed. I would only hang out with people who did drugs. I would do deals. I didn’t care, the only thing that mattered was making sure I had enough. I had to inject more and more, just to feel okay. I never thought I had a problem. The only problem was running out.”
She injected so much that to get blood into a vein she had to swing her arm several times as through readying to throw the shotput. When those veins packed up, she would inject into her fingers, toes and neck. Jewellery hid the marks.
When her daughter left school and started work, Richards would borrow money from her and hit the pokies.
“Once she had a friend over . . . I was doing dinner and needed sour cream. I asked if I could borrow her friend’s card to get it, it would only be $5. I went to the cashpoint machine. I got out $20 thinking I will just have a quick go on the pokies . . . I went back to the house having spent her entire pay. With no sour cream. There was no dinner. They were in tears. I just went in my bedroom and got my needles out.”
Twelve years after she first took meth, police raided her house. Her son, then 17, was still living with her.
“He was disgusted with me, hurt.” Richards brushed aside the charges which hung over her for a year.
“I did more drugs than ever to forget about it. It was my first offence so I thought I would get ‘Home D’. I was in la-la land. My mum and kids came to support me in court. I injected before I went. I remember the judge talking to me, but I was high. I was even smiling at him. I heard him say ‘two years, three months prison’. My son walked out.”
Her daughter had to sell the family home.” “She had to go pack up everything . . . she found drug paraphernalia, needles.” There was no detox help in jail.
“I had awful cramping. I could hardly breathe . . . It hurt to walk.” Physically detoxed but with no counselling, Haydee took comfort in food. She put on 20kg.
“I ate the cake and read the letters and I looked in the mirror at myself and just wanted to vomit. I was not taking meth, but I was still an addict.”
What happened to Lisa and Haydee?
It’s eight years since Lisa smoked her last crack pipe. Haydee Richards has been clean for more than five years.
Being former P addicts is not something the women are proud of, but nor is it something they are ashamed of. Both want to speak out now at a time when meth use is on the rise in the Bay of Plenty. Experts and local Tauranga MP Simon Bridges say the region is facing “a resurgence”, with a widening number and cross section of users including young people, women, and professionals. Agencies are reporting a spike in the number of people testing positive for meth in the workplace, an increase in the number of people presenting for treatment, particularly women and professionals, and a record number of police seizures of the drug.
HIt is difficult to accurately measure methamphetamine users in New Zealand. Not all may present for treatment. For those who do seek help, until recently, information about effectiveness of treatment has been recorded only by individual treatment providers, but this is set to change, says Vanessa Caldwell, chairwoman of the National Council for Addiction Treatment.
“We do not currently have accurate national figures for this. The Ministry of Health introduced mandatory recording of this information in July 2015, however, so within the next six months to a year this information will be available.” Dr Caldwell says two things are being seen nationally — a slow rise in the number of users and a significant rise in people experiencing problems with methamphetamine.
“It takes a while to develop an addiction, what we are seeing more visibly now is the number of people that have developed addiction issues.” She agrees there is a rise in the number of people seeking help for problematic methamphetamine use given that over the past year several treatment facilities have reported from their entry data that methamphetamine — not alcohol — is the primary substance of choice for most people seeking treatment.
This is the first time, says Dr For a video interview with Haydee Richards, visit nzherald.co.nz Caldwell, that more people will present with meth addiction than alcohol addiction.
It is a trend noticed by Johnny Dow, director of Higher Ground residential clinic in Auckland, where two-thirds of residents currently list meth as their “drug of choice”.
“Although our research shows between the 2012 to 2015 period 48 per cent of residents had methamphetamine as their drug of choice, since April this year the numbers have been between 62 per cent and 70 per cent.”
Higher Ground at present has 70 people waiting. Dow says if he counted all self-referrals from prisons it would be 200. The clinic has 48 beds, with just eight funded for people outside Auckland. Three of these eight beds are currently occupied by people from the Bay of Plenty, and two of these are women.
Dow agrees the meth problem is increasing in the provinces.
“It is getting worse everywhere and I have seen it get worse year on year. Northland has a huge meth problem, so does Waikato, and it’s getting worse in the Bay.” On average, clients who attend Higher Ground have been addicted to meth at least 10 years.
“A therapeutic residential community facility is essential for people with such long addictions who also may be cross addicting.
“Clinics like Hanmer in Tauranga do a great job and do what they can but certain clients need to be referred to us. These clients compete for beds with the rest of New Zealand.”
Dow says a residential approach for long-term meth addiction helps women in particular.
“When people come off meth there is a void and a risk of cross addicting to food or shopping. Women face particular issues — they may have lost care of their children, have suffered emotional and physical and sexual abuse. They may have eating disorders which surface when they stop using.”
Women find it harder to come to treatment, he says, because of families, and often their addiction is hidden when children are small because they are at home.
Professional women — and men — also find it harder to seek help and many don’t, although he has seen an increase in professionals and women.
“There used to be a 60/40 male female split but now it is about equal. And we are seeing more professionals — nurses, lawyers, businesspeople.” Dow says women may turn to dealing or sex work to fund their habit — one female professional client had been spending $7000 a week on meth.
The Salvation Army national director of addiction services, Lieutenant Colonel Lynette Hutson, says in the Bay of Plenty it is “alarming” to note there are three times as many females presenting for treatment compared with males.
“The usual proportion is a 60/40 male/female split. We think this is an