MY TRAGIC LIFE AS A JUNKIE: CASSIE

Cassie has been a Darwin girl for most her life and got into drugs when she
moved south to Sydney and Melbourne.

Heroin was just too easy to get and she blew hundreds of thousands of
dollars in a 13-year addiction. She has now been clean for six years. But
it's an ongoing battle.

Cassie (not her real name) said: "Just don't call me an ex-junkie. I am an
abstaining drug addict."

She admits to making some bad decisions as a teenager which she blames on
the emotional trauma of being when a schoolgirl.

Not being able to deal with problems, she went south.

Cassie said: "I was young and silly. You could smell the gumleaves on me.

"I was very pretty when I was young and the drug scene was so easy to fall
into.

"Heroin was there. I loved it but hated the consequences.

"It's the greatest buzz you can ever have - it's the ultimate. If I was
any cleaner now, I would be a nun."

She funded her habit working as a prostitute but was never on the street.

Cassie moved back to Darwin in 1989 and brought her heroin addiction with her.

But said she had to stop because she had children, and Darwin police were
"breathing down my neck."

Cassie said people had to realise drug users were not the scum of the earth..

She said: "It's not like that."

"They have very good jobs and children."

"Mr Burke (the NT's chief minister) says alcohol is the biggest problem but
it's these other drugs involved with it."

"People are walking around shit-faced. That is why you have people getting
hit over the head with baseball bats as they are so off their face.

"A lot of youth crime is combined drug use with alcohol. Heroin is out
there but is too expensive. In the NT, morphine-based drugs are the
preferred drug of IV users."

Cassie said heroin had been great for relieving her pain - pain from
personal issues she had to deal with.

They included being raped at knifepoint on the Nightcliff beach when a
15-year-old schoolgirl.

Cassie said: "It was my turning point. I was a good student, intelligent,
but afterwards my behaviour became destructive."

She ditched school and went to Sydney and Melbourne and started doing drugs
and working as an escort.

She said: "I was an addict before I was a working girl. It's all I've ever
known."

Cassie said she was earning $1000 a day as an upmarket escort, but spending
$500-$600 on heroin.

She never worked the streets. Cassie decided to return to Darwin when it
all got too much.

She said: "I was losing control. Every junkie thinks they have it in
control but obviously I didn't."

Cassie said she moved back to Darwin permanently and continued buying and
using heroin while working as an escort.

In Darwin, between 1989 and 1993, Cassie said she was using a gram of
heroin a day and would buy a street deal for $500, or weight gram for
$700-$800.

She said: "I could get it everywhere. The assumption by Denis Burke that
heroin use is minor is still bullshit.

"A lot of heroin users can't use morphine (which is cheaper) because it's a
chemical drug. It pays back on your body. It malfunctions your lungs,
liver, kidneys."

But Cassie said there were people using morphine-based heroin as the
morphine was so accessible in Darwin.

She said: "You can go to a Darwin doctor and get a morphine prescription
for $3.10 on your health care card - 100gm of morphine tablets.

"You use what you need and resell the rest for $30 or $40 each tablet on
the black market.

"Tablets were around a couple of hundred dollars each a couple of years ago.

"But with an easy supply, the price is down."

Cassie said heroin, by comparison, was "$100 a whack."

She said there were always rumours which Darwin doctors had a tendency to
prescribe morphine.

She said the NT Government must realise that morphine and speed abuse was
very high in the Territory.

Cassie still has a continuing struggle with keeping off her drug of choice.

She said she last used heroin over 1995-1996 Christmas and New Year in a
four-week binge.

She said 80 percent pure heroin had come into Darwin at that time.

During the final binge, she said people literally had to grab hold of her
because she was bouncing off the walls.