FORMER ADDICT WOULD HAVE KILLED FOR A FIX

``I lived to use, and I used to live.''

That's how Joe Latty looks back on the days when his life was consumed
by drugs.

Those he hurt most, he says, were those like his mother who loved him
most, ``people I would have laid down and died for''.

``But if they had stood between me and my drugs I would have killed
them.''

Telling such a story can't be easy; telling it to over 200 MPs,
academics and other experts at the NSW drug summit must be that much
harder.

Mr Latty, 43, of Sydney, who has been drug and alcohol free for 20
years, told how he first took LSD at the age of 13 to ``flirt with
danger - and away I went''.

He used many different drugs, the irony being that he didn't much like
them.

But on his 16th birthday he tried heroin.

``I really liked that. It did everything for me,'' he
said.

``It filled a whole lot of gaps.''

Mr Latty, who now runs his own company in the computer industry, said
he knew he was hurting his family and that his life was going the
wrong way, but could do little about it.

He resorted to a life of crime, went to jail a few times, went to
detoxification centres many times.

When his best friend died of an overdose, he had nowhere to go but
home.

``My mother, who loved me deeply, was too scared to open the door,''
he said. ``My dad put me in the back of a ute and took me to detox'.''

This time he met someone he once used drugs with.

``He said to me, if you stay today I'll stay. I stole a day back and I
went on that way for three weeks,'' he said.

That was the beginning of his redemption.

He still goes to Narcotics Anonymous meetings, explaining: ``To keep
what I have, I have to give it away.''