The Ice Age

by Luke Williams

  ‘How did you learn how to make it?’

  ‘From a friend,’ she said, going on to explain the process of making meth via the ‘shake and bake’ method — for obvious reasons, I will provide a mere skeleton view of what she told me.

  ‘The first step involves grinding everything in a food processor, and then you shake it all up in an empty Coke bottle using lithium from a battery,’ she said. ‘The main ingredients are over-the-counter cold remedies. I know people who case big warehouses for this stuff, but most of the time I don’t need it, because with a few packets I can make about three grams in a few hours.’

  There are plenty of strange places where meth labs have been spotted: Melbourne police officers once discovered people cooking crystal meth and selling it from a van in a park, as if it were an ice-cream truck. In Bundaberg, a car was pulled over with smoke rolling out of its windows — the driver was making meth as he drove. At other times, it has been found in bathrooms, car boots, caravan parks, and even retirement homes. Hotel rooms can be the perfect place to make the substance, particularly when booked under false or no ID.

  Drug manufacturers more generally seem to favour rented properties, so they don’t have to carry the liability of a property that has become so infested with toxic smoke that it seeps poison out of the walls for months, even after a lab has been removed and the area has been professionally cleaned. First National Real Estate in Queensland even held two specific information sessions at its recent national Property Management Conference to ensure its property managers are fully equipped, both to identify and effectively manage their response to the rise of meth labs.

  And in Australia, meth-lab cleaning is becoming a fast-growing industry. In 2011, the Meth Lab Clean-up Conference and mini trade-show, held on the Gold Coast, drew 150 delegates. Other exhibiters at the conference included Real Estate Dynamics, Veda, and AON, who have recently included cover of up to $10,000 for illegal drug production in their landlord insurance. Jena Dyco International, the leading Australasian trainer in carpet and upholstery cleaning and restoration, announced the addition of a new course to their scope aimed at teaching restorers how to clean-up and remediate illegal drug labs.

  I spoke with Jenny Boymal from Jena Dyco, who said they had noticed a spike in the number of meth-lab cleaning inquiries from around 2010 onward.

  ‘Government departments didn’t know about it, nobody knew much about it, we actually had to contact a forensic scientist in New Zealand about it, and we developed the course as a result. It’s not okay to say, “I have been cooking meth in this property — I’m going to paint the walls and she’ll be right”, because it won’t be fine. It will seep right through the paint in many circumstances,’ Jenny told me. She also explained just how toxic the stuff I had been injecting straight into my veins could be — or, at least, how toxic the production process is.

  ‘The first thing we do is test for mercury and lead … what happens is that the smoke from the chemical process means these substances are in the wall, so if we find mercury and lead we need to more than just a surface clean; if you just do a surface clean then these substances will simply start seeping out every couple of months. If people live in this environment they often come down with colds. We know of one cleaning company that didn’t use masks going in and they all came down with excruciating headaches after inspecting a meth-lab scene,’ she said. ‘Our cleaners usually go in with respirators, Tyvec suits, shoe coverings, gloves, and eye goggles.’

  Each kilogram of meth manufactured creates 10 kilograms of waste. Ammonia and hydrogen chloride are both corrosive gases that will affect the eyes and respiratory tract, with damage increasing with concentration, and in a worst-case scenario, the result is pulmonary oedema and death. Currently, there are only state guidelines for meth clean-ups, and there is no obligation for landlords or prior owners to tell new tenants or purchasers that the property was used as a meth lab — a fact that has led to some calls for national disclosure laws.

  Making meth is dangerous work. Royal Perth Hospital alone has treated at least 50 patients in the past five years for burns linked to methamphetamine manufacturing. It seems being a meth chemist can be dangerous and messy as well as lucrative.

  Aaron Dalton’s father told Fairfax media in May 2014 that he had watched his son transform during his two years in Port Phillip Prison. Aaron went from constantly talking of ‘getting people back’ to telling his father how bad ice was and what it was doing to people. Dalton is now studying behavioural science. Meanwhile, with Dalton behind bars, Wangaratta thought the worst of the crystal storm was behind them. History was, however, determined to tell a different story. Just a few months after Dalton’s syndicate were dismantled, a new, highly sophisticated syndicate sprung up in the town. A few months after Dalton was put in jail, another gang — this time an OMCG — started selling meth in town, and police again went to work, making more arrests and seizing $100,000 of dollars worth of the drug

  And as for ‘Hot Wheels’? He was sentenced to eight years jail for drug trafficking on 19 December 2014. The 33-year-old Ryan Salton appeared in a hospital bed for his trial, in which Judge Anthony Serrick rejected any notion of lenience in his sentence because the paraplegic had a history of drug and firearm convictions.

  Chapter Nine

  Understanding the lure of crystal meth

  THIS IS A surprisingly difficult sentence to write, but here goes: meth has a good side. It is a sentence I have to write, though, because if I am going to tell the story of meth, I have to tell you about all the fun times that I and others have had, and continue to have, on the world’s most powerful stimulant.

  I spoke with a number of users from different states in Australia, and from different walks of life, about their experience of meth, and each of them said very similar things about its positive qualities. When I asked one user (who wanted to remain anonymous) about meth’s good side, he said it makes him feel ‘giddy, like I’m in love’ and as if every single cell in his brain ‘is more alive than ever before, more awake, more happy than ever before. I feel like the most entertaining, edgy, cool fucker whoever did live’.

  One woman who works a 9–5 office job and maintains a marriage and three kids in the western suburbs of Sydney reported that, for her, taking meth feels like ‘getting something done; I feel this immense sense of pride, as if I’m the smartest and most accomplished person … I feel flawless, and that I haven’t made a single mistake in my whole life’.

  If we take her line of reasoning a little further, we could arrive at the following: ‘You can do anything and be anything you want in life with just a sprinkle of meth’. From my experience, I would say this is true, provided you don’t want it done particularly well, and provided that nobody rudely taps you on the shoulder to say ‘it’s all in your fucking head’ — which is unlikely to occur if you surround yourself with other meth users.

  Using crystal meth makes it difficult to tell the difference between what is real and what is not. It enables you to construct a fantasy that what other people (who, in reality, are all as self-centred as each other) do and think revolves around you and how good you are. Meth psychosis and its self-centred excesses are really just a more extreme version of the individual narcissism that meth creates.

  After the initial rush, meth users are often enraptured by fantasies that they experience as either real, imminently real, or a hidden truth that they have finally discovered. The fantasy world creates the impression of a new, higher, more authentic, and ultimately more satisfying form of meaning. A shot of meth effectively goes straight to the brain, where it quickly forms a bubble cushioning you from the banality of the here-and-now, as well as from the failures and shortcomings of your past life and self. The consequence is that users tend to think of themselves as much more successful than their actual lives would suggest. Crystal meth allows you to become pleasantly confused about who you are, and these daydreams of imminent
achievement become so real that they are instantly incorporated into your definition of self. The drug allows the construction of a new life narrative — a simplistic, victorious mythology, in which you are not only as beautiful, strong, successful, and popular as you can possibly be, but also that you are more beautiful, stronger, more successful, and more popular than anybody else in the room.

  This process of believing your own delusions is what I call being in the world of ‘Fantasia’. I’m not talking about psychosis, or crazy out-there ideas like being able to fly or being a foot taller than you really are; Fantasia is when a waking fantasy means you think you have achieved your ego ideal. It’s almost as if you are a kite, and your ego swells roughly to the level of how high you are flying.

  Molly Andrews writes in her book Narrative Imagination and Everyday Life: ‘We know that the not-real might also be the not-yet-real, and that that which is real is never a static category … The real and not-real are not then polar opposites.’

  Once you come out of Fantasia, you are presented with a chance to reach genuine revelation — or, at least, it seems that way. It seems, in fact, as if you have a clean slate. You have to pick up the pieces, to find a way to work out what is actually true: where imagination ends and reality begins.

  My experience of Fantasia taught me that the ways in which we construct our selves and our egos are built equally on our fantasies of ourselves, our interpretation of the past, and our expectations of the future. Much of our life is given meaning through mythology, fantasy, and imagination, such as, for example, the ‘fantasy’ of currency’s value, the ‘fantasy’ of property rights, of the need for fixed working hours, the ‘fantasy’ of the ideal self in a media- and marketing-saturated world. I hope I haven’t lost you here: please allow me to explain.

  Prior to moving into Smithy’s house, I had been living in Darlinghurst, Sydney. I really disliked the city, and I disliked the Oxford Street strip particularly. But when I reflected upon this after coming out of a Fantasia trip, I felt it had become clear to me that it was a place where people were trapped in their own imaginations. In particular, the imagined value of property, both to own and rent, meant people worked long hours in jobs which were not very fun, sacrificing weekends, week nights, and treating their minds like they were working in a nineteenth-century factory. Why? As far as I could tell, the professional middle classes of inner Sydney believed themselves to be in the throes of an imaginary social hierarchy, a bit like professional tennis players who play each week to improve their ranking. Many of those at the upper end of the scale longed to be in the elite — which meant owning a house that they and our society recognised as being of high value, and working in a job that, while not enjoyable, placed them at the top of an invisible ranking. Eventually, everything about the experience led me to believe that the conventions of bourgeois life were a charade; from the homogenised dress code and mannered passive-aggression of it all to the fact that people worked unnecessarily long hours to pay off ridiculously over-inflated mortgages.

  As a gay man, I noticed that virtually all the gay men living around Darlinghurst pretty much looked the same and many, including myself, spent hours in the gym after work to maintain muscular bodies so they could feel ‘in the game’ or even that they were ‘winning the game’ — even though, for the most part, nobody spoke a word to each other in the gym. Everyone seemed very self-absorbed, and it was difficult to believe they really cared about anyone else. This was a city where homosexuality was embraced, and yet some homosexuals living within it had found their way into another type of oppression — the prison of the modern citizen. I was living in the gayest area in town, yet there was no sense of community. Then came the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, which was sponsored by a bank that year, and had what seemed to be a majority of corporate floats — corporations, of course, being the essential beneficiaries of this type of society. Now here’s the bit where I admit to something really unpleasant about myself as well: there were many times when I was strolling through the streets of Sydney — with its franchise-filled shopping strips and gay men wearing gangsta-black basketball tops — that I began to fantasise about using meth. Fantasise perhaps isn’t even the right word — crave, water at the mouth. Similarly, one of Chuck Palahniuk’s character in his novel Survivor notes that, ‘You realise that people take drugs because it’s the only real personal adventure left to them in their time-constrained, law-and-order, property-lined world. It’s only in drugs or death we’ll see anything new, and death is just too controlling.’

  Despite meth’s atomising, individualising effects, there is no doubt that drugs also bring people together. One of the major appeals of crystal meth, for me, remained the intimacy and affiliation of using with others. We had sleepless nights and endless private jokes. There is a certain ritualistic spirituality to preparing and injecting drugs. When I shot up, I felt as if I was also shooting down the invisible walls and hierarchies that divide us. I used to love going to Smithy’s room with a few of his straight mates, shutting the door, getting the spoons out, boiling water and mixing the gear — knowing that not only would I get high, but that we would all share in it together, and share that bond for the rest of our lives. (Although, to be honest, there are few things more awkward than meeting a former drug buddy when you’re no longer using. You generally find that not only do you have nothing in common with them, but that you don’t particularly like them.) I would get excited when I heard the kettle boil at 2.00am, knowing Smithy didn’t drink coffee or tea. If I saw a few ratbags going into a room, the door shutting behind them, it was very hard not to gently knock and ask if I could join them. Injections often took place just after midnight — my favourite time — and I loved living in a house that was often a buzz of activity right through the night. There were always people hovering around, feeling that weird mix of trepidation and elation at the prospect of letting a grubby little junkie inject them with a sharp, fresh needle. After taking meth, any social anxiety or awkwardness would be instantly lifted. My confidence would skyrocket, and at times I would even feel superior to those who were too afraid to use syringes — it seems that as one hierarchy disappears, another appears in its place.

  All things considered, though, it is perfectly legitimate to ask whether meth experiences such as these are genuinely cathartic, or whether they are, in fact, just re-opening old wounds (or creating new ones). Does drug use expand your consciousness, or shrink it? One group of people who had to ask real questions about themselves and the world because of their experience with drugs was the infamous American Beatniks: by the mid-1940s Beat-Generation writers Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg were sharing a drab apartment on 115th Street on the west side of New York. Searching for a new type of experience and creative flow, one that was free of restrictive thinking, they began to experiment, at first with Benzedrine (benzo) inhalers and pills.

  Kerouac was a particular fan. He would write to Ginsberg saying that Benzedrine ‘made me see a lot. The process of intensifying awareness naturally leads to an overflow of old notions and voila, new material wells up like water forming its proper level and makes itself evident at the brim of consciousness’. Kerouac loved to get on the gear and listen to jazz and bebop; he then tried to emulate the sounds in his writing.

  Was Kerouac actually becoming more creative? Was it opening his mind? Or was he just becoming over-confident? Well, he would go on to write the poetically titled On The Road on a three-week benzo bender during which he barely slept a wink. There is no question that the Beat Generation enjoyed the glow from the golden age of amphetamines for both creative and social purposes.

  And during my first six weeks on the drug, I can’t deny I did a truckload of writing and had an enormous amount of fun while doing it. It helped me write creatively not simply because it enhanced my imagination, but also because it gave me confidence, and silenced that annoying writer-block-inducing voice that was forever telling me ‘your
work is shite’. Writing and meth seemed to be a very good combination. Meth might make you more creative, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will also increase the quality of your work; it is effective in producing original ideas, but they won’t always favourably compare to the ideas that will come if you really apply yourself creatively, without drugs. Dopamine is not only characteristic of a psychotic, over-confident brain, but it also characterises a highly creative brain. While there was often very little that separated my experiences of psychosis and controlled creativity, in the end it was over-confidence and infantile delusion that won out.

  Psychologist Nicole Lee believes there are six main forms of methamphetamine use — experimental, recreational, circumstantial, binge, regular use, and polydrug use — and has noted that dependence is more likely to be associated with regular use. But the demographics of who uses meth are also revealing. Writing in The Australian Methylamphetamine Market: the national picture, a complementary intelligence report released in March 2015, Chris Dawson (the CEO of the ACC) said the ‘availability and addictive nature’ of crystal meth had ‘created new demand in urban, rural, and disadvantaged communities. Stay-at-home, low-income parents with less education, living in country areas indicated notable levels of trying ice and using it compared to other groups.’

  Those who are unemployed are more likely to take meth, as are gay men, labourers, and people who live in regional and rural areas. A 2015 Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) study found that the prevalence of methamphetamine use was likely to be higher in Indigenous than non-Indigenous communities. A 2011 report from the Burnet Institute of Medical Research found that 30 per cent of female meth addicts said that weight loss or maintenance was the primary reason for their first use of the drug. And there is certainly a stage in meth abuse when people consider you at the peak of your attractiveness — this is before the sores develop, and your body shows the signs of malnutrition. I noticed that when I had my quarter-life meth addiction at the age of twenty-seven, people complimented me at first on my weight loss, one person noting I had a ‘boyishly thin’ figure, and another saying I had lovely cheekbones. It is impossible to sustain this state, however; before long, I began to look like Skeletor with acne.