I thought we’d have a period of having excerpts from our collection of Stories. Let’s start with the Story of my good friend Adam. I met Adam here in Perth and he now lives in the UK with his lovely wife and two young girls.
After years of having problems with amphetamine, alcohol and cannabis, Adam reached this stage:
‘Eventually, I ended up living in a caravan in Palm Beach, near Rockingham. I had sold my car for $50, which bought me two dope sticks. I got around on an old pushbike from the dump, but ended up selling that. I was just drinking and smoking dope to get blottoed, and often would wake up to find myself covered in vomit. The caravan, like me, was a mess. Eventually the dope ran out, then the money.
I contacted the Salvation Army in Rockingham and they said they could temporarily house me in a house in Mandurah. As far as I remember, I walked to Mandurah, carrying two black garbage bags containing my few possessions, $10 and a cask of wine.
Then came a moment in time I will never forget. I was walking through a small cemetery in Mandurah when I stopped to look at a gravestone and said to myself, “If I keep going with this destructive life, I will end up in a grave, or jail at the very least.” At the time, I didn’t really care. It was a bit of a strange moment in my life, a turning point you could say.
I continued on to the Salvation Army where I met one of their workers, John Stallard. He saw straight through me. He knew I had a big problem and asked if I wanted to do something about it.
In the ensuing quiet, you could hear a pin drop. Then, I just broke down and started crying uncontrollably. He put his hand on my shoulder and for the first time in a long while I felt safe. We spoke for a while and he gave me some options. John knew what I was going through. He had been there himself. No one had ever talked with me like this!
John took me to his place, fed me two meat pies and shared his story with me. He was over 30 years in recovery. He had been a real tear-away in his youth, but had turned his life around and was now helping other people. “This guy is an angel,”I said to myself.
He then drove to Perth and dropped me off at Fresh Start, Dr George O’Neill’s clinic. That was the day I started my long road to recovery. I was given a naltrexone implant two days later and then driven up to Fresh Start’s residential Centre in Northam, which is about 100 kms north-east of Perth.’
