HOW A 3-YEAR BATTLE ENDED A 20-YEAR HEROIN NIGHTMARE

Theirs is an exceptional story, of near-death experiences, of tenacity in
the face of inflexible medical bureaucracies, great love and a bloody-minded
refusal to take no for an answer.

Tony Sands is possibly the only person in Australia who has managed to
convince the medical establishment that the way to handle his 20-year battle
with heroin and methadone addiction is by allowing him to self-inject
legally prescribed morphine, as close a drug as you can get to the illegal
opiate heroin.

As the NSW Government continues its 18-month struggle to open a community
sanctioned, medically supervised injecting room, Tony's wife Deb has
zealously worn down a more conservative Queensland medical and legal
establishment to harness support for her husband's controversial treatment.

Indeed, after a 3-year battle, Tony is following a special regime: every
morning he visits his pharmacist and is given a script for his day's
morphine and pethidine regimen. He is in constant contact with his
supportive GP and specialist, and his health is monitored rigorously.

"This regime suits him really well ... I honestly believe that this approach
may be applicable to others," his GP says.

For the first time in their adult lives the Sands family are able to pursue
a normal life in suburban Brisbane, free of the heroin addict's nightmarish
lifestyle.

"I'm not at risk of disease, death or further injury ... I receive known and
regulated doses of a pure opiate," Tony says. "I don't suffer withdrawal, my
syringes and ampoules are sterile, and infection is prevented. More
importantly, there's no criminal involvement in my life... Had I received
this treatment way back in 1995 my body would not have undergone the
terrible damage that it did, and my family, who I love and owe so much to,
would not have suffered so much. At least there is peace and some quality of
life now."

Tony's addiction began when he was nearly 16, during what he remembers as a
pot drought. He always kept a job, but by his late teens and 20s life had
settled into a pattern of terrible binges, periods of abstinence, frenzied
attempts at lone withdrawal and, later, a decade-long reliance on methadone.

He saw the inside of many jails, was a veteran of police raids and overdosed
more times than he can remember. Deb, his teenage sweetheart - she is now
the mother of his three children - watched his dependence with increasing
trepidation.

At times finding heroin became as much her terrible burden as his. She says:
"People used to say to me, 'Put him out on the street'. But there are five
lives involved here ... I just ignored them. I wanted to fight."

By the end of his decade-long methadone stint - punctuated by periods in
which he continued to use heroin and amphetamine until moving to Queensland
- - he had gone from using 60mg a day to 100mg a day to keep the craving at
bay.

In 1995 tragedy struck. The makers of methadone replaced the glucose that
sweetened the syrup with sorbitol, and Tony's body seemed unable to tolerate
the new formula. He began to vomit the drug, ending up convulsed by severe
withdrawals.

For 12 months he and Deb begged for detoxification or methadone in tablet
form but were denied. In the end, to Deb's horror, Tony resorted to using
20mL syringes to inject the methadone. In early 1996 he ended up in
intensive care, his body wracked by a deadly infection, bacterial
endocarditis. He had open heart surgery and spent four months in hospital
recovering from severe damage to his vital organs.

The last time he took oral methadone was the day he went into intensive
care, Deb says. Eventually, in recovery, he was placed on a pain relieving
regime that also kept his opiate withdrawals at bay.

Deb says the real fight began when Tony was ready to leave hospital - with
no pain management treatment or plan.

She embarked on a 3 year journey of learning, visiting libraries,
photocopying statutes, reading law textbooks and medical tomes. She beat
down doors and demanded meetings with bureaucrats. Finally, using health
laws that define drug dependency as an illness and the right of an
individual to secure medical treatment suited to his or her particular
needs, Tony's pain management regime and opiate dependency were recognised,
and treatment offered to deal with both.

Tony and Deb are adamant that all drug-dependent people who cannot tolerate
methadone or have similar problems should be offered such an alternative.
They decided to tell their story to the Heraldand ABC TV (Australian Story,
tonight) in an effort to educate families wracked by the same problem.