The Ice Age

by Luke Williams

  She told me that Beck had continued using crystal meth right through the winter and deep into the spring, as well as the never-ending iPad game-playing that went with it. The arguments between her and Smithy worsened as Beck became increasingly worried that he was seeing another woman, and that she might be missing out on her share of meth. One day, things boiled over — a stoush started when they were both coming down, and both at their worst. Things got physical, and Smithy hit Beck in the mouth right in front of Alice.

  At one stage, Beck sat outside Smithy’s house, screaming and tooting the horn for over an hour. She had a physical scuffle with one of his housemates out the front, and eventually the neighbours called the police and she was arrested; Smithy would then get an intervention order preventing her from going near him or the twins. Following this, Beck went to stay at her mum’s, who became increasingly confused by her changing stories about people getting raped in their house or Smithy gang-banging her friends, or her outbursts about why it was wrong to feed wild birds just an hour after she had been doing it herself.

  Stacey kept sending me Facebook messages urging me to go to child protection — but knowing that I was still angry with Beck and Smithy, I said I wanted to wait a bit longer before I made the call.

  Amid all this, I decided that with my book advance, I would book a ticket overseas to anywhere — anywhere would be fine — so I picked a flight to Kuala Lumpur for February, the cheapest flight I could find.

  I started going on long half-day hikes around town, through bushland, lakeside parks, sugar cane fields, and outlying suburbs of Bundaberg. I walked for hours at a time, counting birds, trying to work out which plants were native and which were introduced, day-dreaming. Every day I would find a new route, or, at least, a new street; one day, when I was walking along the great Burnett River, I took a slight detour and came across a set of buildings in 1970s yellow brick. There must have been seven or eight of them, resembling a small hospital or prison.

  There was a sign out of the front: ‘Bridges, Drug and Alcohol Centre, Dual Diagnosis Clinic’.

  I walked in to see a woman with dark eyes and blonde hair, who asked for my details as ‘What a girl wants, what a girl needs’ played in the background. She took me into a small room where I told her my story, and she booked me an appointment. Three days later, I was back at the clinic — to my surprise, my appointment was with the same woman who had been at reception the day I first walked in.

  When we sat down, in a much larger interview room, my back to the window, and its view of palm trees, bamboo, and sugar cane, I detected a delightful mix of rattiness and sensitivity about her. She told me her name was Jay, and that she would be looking at the ‘underlying issues’ that led to my addictive behaviour, and that her therapeutic approach was based largely on CBT — the same therapy that I had undergone during my stay in residential rehab in 2008, and which was designed to help someone identify their ‘unhelpful thoughts and behaviours’, and to learn or relearn ‘healthier skills and habits’.

  I relayed what had happened over the past three months, which became a rapid overview of my life: the bullying at high school — how it cost me three years, how I didn’t think I would ever heal from it, how my parents failed to protect me — and the failed demo at triple j, which had effectively cost me my first career.

  She observed me with concentration as I told the story, and at the end she said: ‘I don’t want to sound clichéd, Luke, and I do understand some of the things you are talking about. I came from an abusive background and I am a perfectionist — I often just let go altogether when things go wrong — but the one thing that I have learnt, the thing that gets me through, is the ability to take everything bad I have been through, and use it to find my strengths. I’ve found that if I talk about my strengths, think about my strengths, and if I concentrate on them, I feel better about myself, and my life gets better.’

  She went to say that my negative experiences has also had positive effects: that they had made me more compassionate, and that the person I was had been formed by my negative experiences. Although this made sense to me, I was also cynical of anything that might seem like a ‘lightning bolt’ or epiphany, not only because I was distrusting my own brain, but also because I had been through rehab before, and had all these big ‘realisations’ only to then became a drug abuser again.

  One mistake I was determined not to repeat from my last rehab was to be overly optimistic about life when I stopped using the drug. After rehab in 2008, I felt as if the world was glowing with goodness by the time I got out. I believed everything depended on me only, that self-responsibility was virtually omnipotent. Then once I got out, I had the same job at the ABC with limited opportunities to work anywhere else; the same nepotism and celebration of mediocrity which drove me to madness; the same lack of affordable housing; 90 per cent of people still frustrated me, and the only people I liked were other drug users. The idea that your life is purely the result of willpower is quite simply at odds with reality. The notion of addiction is, in part, a modern, liberal idea: individual freedom is thought to be potentially limitless, but opportunity and experience will also be limited by economics, talent, practicability, other people, the body, and life in general.

  I wanted my beliefs to be realistic not convenient. I can’t make myself believe in a higher power, fatalism, or the essential goodness of things purely because it might be more psychologically healthy and spiritually fulfilling to do so. Fatalism can leave one dangerously passive. A belief in a higher power can lead to an abrogation of responsibility — and besides, when everything is said and done, I’m just not sure I see the world that way. During my recovery, I often wondered if my addiction would have still been seen as such a problem if I had endless amounts of money, didn’t bother anybody, worked a lot, still looked okay, and didn’t need anywhere to live.

  My adult life has been filled with drug use, and the five years in which I wasn’t using weren’t especially joy-filled or exciting. My friends of ten, fifteen, twenty years are all drug takers, and many of my friendships have been formed around taking drugs. I have had trouble forming relationships outside of this, finding excitement outside of drugs, and escaping pits of despair even when I’m clean. One possible solution I have considered is to use occasionally, but with that said — that’s what I did last time I left rehab, and I believe now that I sold myself short with this approach. I stopped looking forward to things, I stopped pushing myself, I stopped achieving things, I stopped living life to the fullest because I knew I could disappear into a drug world.

  In my friendless state in the aftermath of my addiction, the drug seemed to have created an abyss of strange, new needs; it seemed that the crystal palace would never be destroyed, even when its spell was broken. Sociologist Emilé Durkheim says human desire is a bottomless and insatiable pit, and that the world we live in is full of never-ending wants; this leads to ‘anomie’, which is the breakdown of social bonds between an individual and the community, and which creates a sense of purposelessness.

  Stacey kept on emailing me to ask if I was going to ring child protection, and eventually I decided it was probably the right thing to do — it would, at the very least, force Beck and Smithy to get their act together. When I rang, I was transferred to a woman with a thick Indian accent, and I told her pretty much everything you have read about in this book, including my involvement in it. Beck already — for reasons I’m not aware of — had a case manager at the Child Protection Unit (CPU). This case manager kept on pressing me on whether I had colluded with other people who had been to the house to report Beck and Smithy. I told her that I had spoken with Stacey, and that neither of us had any contact with anybody else who had been to the house. As it turned out, three other regular visitors to the house had also reported them to the department. Eventually, a formal investigation was initiated, and both were asked to take drug tests, or risk losing their children.

  Not lo
ng after the CPU investigation started, Beck stopped taking drugs, and, by all reports, enjoyed the novelty of her sobriety. Smithy refused to take the drug tests. Beck did everything the child-protection department asked her to do. She starting seeing a psychiatrist, and she continued to pass her drug tests. As the investigations continued, however, more pus was found festering just beneath the surface. When they rang Pakenham primary school, they found that Alice — the middle child, who was then in Year 6 — had missed nearly a month of school days. Now that they lived in the town, fifteen minutes’ drive away from the school, Beck had not been getting up in the morning to take her. When the department spoke with Beck’s family, they would tell them that she had been disappearing for days, and sometimes a week at a time, to go to Smithy’s — without warning — leaving Alice alone, and without a lift to school. When Beck did come back, she was usually so tired she would sleep for two or three days at a times, leaving it to her mother to cook and clean for Alice. The department would eventually make an order that it was Beck’s mum’s responsibility to take Alice to school.

  I kept seeing my counsellor, Jay, who told me that part of the overwhelming emotions I was experiencing was that I was ‘catching up’ on my emotions. Using drugs had numbed me, and now I had a lot of repressed emotion that needed to find expression.

  I agreed that it might be that, but I felt there were also things I was legitimately angry about. I found it a bit too neat to reduce all my experiences to being things that ‘made me stronger’ or ‘happened for a reason’.

  We moved on to talking about how my desire for meth was going. I told her I had been experiencing intense cravings.

  ‘How strong?’

  ‘Pretty strong.’

  ‘Does the thought of using ever make you drool with excitement?’

  ‘Sometimes, yes.’

  ‘Have you been considering using again?’

  ‘Um, yes, I think if I go down to Melbourne again, and see some old friends, if I just have it once, it won’t matter and I might actually—’

  ‘I thought so.’

  ‘Why do you say that?

  ‘You’re self-victimising, Luke. I’ve seen it time and time again: when somebody is having cravings for drugs, they begin to paint a picture of themselves as being a victim, so they feel they deserve to have meth. “Just one more shot, once won’t hurt” — these are the kinds of thoughts people have before they relapse. You are responsible, Luke, and the more you realise this, the more empowered you will feel.’

  I need to mention here that during the time I was in Bundaberg, I was sentenced to a hundred and fifty hours of community service for spitting on a café employee who had asked me to stop eating food I’d bought elsewhere on the café premises. I was very sorry about what I’d done — it was out of character — but I had been humiliated by what I perceived as the employee’s aggression towards me. Needless to say, the court case went against me, and although I accepted that what I had done was wrong, I appealed against the ruling, as I desperately wanted to get overseas. My appeal was denied, though, and so I was obligated to stay in Bundaberg until I’d finished my community service hours.

  I found the environment toxic — on my first day, I was offered crystal meth and marijuana, as well as being harassed for being gay. I just wanted to get out of Bundaberg, but I couldn’t. That night, I told Mum I needed to go the psych ward and left the house. I walked around streets in circles with no shoes on, forgetting where I was going or what I was doing; I kept having visions of cutting myself. When I got back to the house, I snuck back in to see that Mum was still sitting there playing her computer game. I told her how much I hated living with her because it was impossible to hold a conversation with her. I became increasingly out of control as I told her that I knew she and Dad had been discussing the ‘spitting incident’ in judgemental, non-constructive terms, and that neither had offered the slightest bit of help or support or advice. I went on to attack her personally, as all my frustration and the resentment of years spilled out of me.

  After I’d calmed down, I rang Lifeline and spoke to them for half an hour. I then slept for twelve hours, and when I woke up, Mum came into the room looking as if she hadn’t slept all night. She told me that she was tired of my abuse, and that I had to leave immediately or she would call the police. I said she was playing the victim. She in turn told me that she felt ‘threatened’ because I was in the house, and so I left the house and sent her an email asking her if I could just stay until I got the rest of my book advance.

  To which she responded:

  01/02/2015

  From: J Williams

  Luke I would like you leave tonight. I would prefer we do this without police involvement.

  http://www.bundabergtouristpark.com.au/

  http://oakwoodvanpark.com.au/

  http://bundyregionconnect.qld.gov.au/24-hour-crisis-support/bundaberg-homeless-mens-hostel

  Everything is packed and ready.

  01/02/2015

  From: Luke Williams

  Okay thanks.

  When I got back, Dad asked where I was going, and I explained I would be sleeping rough for at least one night because I didn’t have enough money to stay in the homeless shelter. I asked him to drive me to Bridges (the drug and counselling centre), where I slept on the porch, under cover, with a view to the stars and the palm trees, on a spectacular night where the temperature did not drop below 26 degrees. There were crickets creaking and bats screeching, and patches of thin wind-cloud over the moon, which looked about as comfortable as a mattress starts to seem after two hours of lying on concrete. In the morning, I was woken by a woman with glasses as I lay in the bright morning sunshine on a towel and a pillow.

  ‘Is Jay here?’ I asked.

  ‘She will be soon. Don’t worry, love, we will get you sorted,’ she said ‘Do you want a shower?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A coffee?’

  ‘Yes.’

  After the shower, Jay came in and tears welled in her eyes when I told her what had happened; this was the first time I had seen her since before the sentencing.

  Jay referred me to a social worker, who said I was a ‘high needs, complex client’. The social worker gave me food vouchers, paid for me to stay in a cheap motel room, and told me again and again how much she enjoyed my company — a small kindness on a horrible day.

  The motel room was small and hot, and my window had a lovely view to the KFC next door. But how could I really feel angry with people, and angry at a society, when getting help when I was down and out was so easy?

  Around the corner from the motel was a particularly beautiful part of town. A reminder that no matter how one feels, whether one is happy, sad, addicted, homeless, high, sober, alone, or in love — some things about the world will always exist whether we are able to see them or not. If we try hard enough we find selflessness, imagination, nature, long walks, a community, good people, and a place where we can pretty much do, or, at least, think whatever we like. There is a massive, wonderful, complex world that exists well outside of me, and what I might be in the mood to perceive.

  As I stood by the great flood-prone Burnett River, which has flowed through these parts for hundreds of thousands of years, I felt a breeze that was cool and fresh and easterly — and it kind of smelt like the ocean. I looked up across perfect blue sky that seemed to go on forever. There were at least a hundred different plants before me: patches of old dry eucalypt, regenerated rainforest that ran along a creek, a single tall palm tree dwarfing the lush scrub around it. Moths scattered as I walked, crickets buzzed, lorikeets screeched, there was a gentle buzz of traffic on a busy four-lane highway — I had no idea where it began or finished. I looked up into the sky again as three black waterfowl floated delicately over my head. Half a dozen galahs glided by to land in a rare flowering eucalypt tree, whose smell reminded me that I am but a guest i
n this wondrous, ancient land, and ultimately a servant to its laws. And one day nothing more than food to help the trees grow their flowers for the birds to suckle. I noticed a massive bird of prey — perhaps a kite or sea eagle — flying around in circles, higher and higher, until I could no longer see it amid the blue. No ordinary bird would fly that high; it moved effortlessly in a vertical direction, all the while maintaining perfect grace and poetry. The further I looked into the sky, the more birds I could see — birds you wouldn’t notice unless you stared for a long time, as I was doing. I had no answers, I had no revelations, I had no real plans other than going overseas, I had no idea what I was going to do, or where I was going to live, or what was going to happen, or whether I would find anybody worth loving again. Yet at that moment, the universe was infinite, and my possibilities alive and endless. I guess there was not just possibility but also hope. There will always be light, and whatever light is, is light.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Two steps forward, one step back

  I RETURNED TO Melbourne four weeks before I was due to leave for Kuala Lumpur. I decided to work on a project I’d been planning for quite some time — to move into Australia’s most notoriously dangerous boarding house, The Gatwick in St Kilda. The Gatwick is a spooky old mansion on Fitzroy Street, a privately owned hostel that gives shelter to 90-odd people at any one time who can’t find anywhere else to live: the mentally ill, sex workers, the Indigenous and indigent, the drifters and yes, the drug addicts. I had wanted to write a live-in piece about The Gatwick for a long time. I felt my experience with drug addiction, mental-health problems, and homelessness gave me unique insight, and a unique position from which to understand life for The Gatwick’s residents.

  It was also a good time, in practical terms, to stay there. I had four weeks to fill before heading Malaysia, and finding a room for a short period of time would have been tricky. I had nothing keeping me in Bundaberg, and after going public with my psychotic episodes and drug addiction in The Saturday Paper, I didn’t feel comfortable asking anybody if I could stay with them.