OFF THE HOOK

Queensland Health this week gave the go-ahead to a hospital trial of the
heroin rapid detox drug Naltrexone, although former addicts warn that there
is no quick fix. Karen Milliner reports

IT'S every parent's nightmare. Your son goes to the bathroom, says be's
having a shower, but soon you realise he's been In there an awfully long
time.

You knock on the door, but there's no answer. So you go in, only to find him
slumped unconscious on the floor, a tourniquet round his arm and and syringe
by his side.

And he's stopped breathing.

Trying to tight off panic, Dad starts CPR while Mum calls an ambulance.
Officers arrive and administer oxygen and life-saving Narcan, the antidote
drug for a heroin overdose.

It works. Your son comes back from the dead.

Daniel Waterman, 21, knows all about that scene. It was played out in his
family's Brisbane home about 12 months ago.

"It didn't so much scare me because overdoses go hand-in-hand with heroin,"
he says. "You overdose, you get back on, you do it all over again. It
doesn't bother you. But I hated letting my parents see. It shook them up."

After that incident, Daniel tried to get clean and stay clean. But he only
lasted three weeks.

"Everything started to get to me, the pain, the cravings. I got depressed,
so I went back out and used heroin," he says. "I overdosed again, and that
time I thought 'I've had enough'. That was on my birthday,"

Daniel had tried, and failed, to kick his $200-a-day heroin habit several
times. He'd started taking drugs when he was 13. First it was marijuana,
then LSD, then speed and finally, at age 17, heroin.

His story is not unlike that of many youngsters who fall into the drug
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"I wanted to fit in everywhere. I couldn't handle being on the outside of
any different kind of group," he says. "I took drugs because I needed to
feel good. The people I was hanging around with who were doing drugs were
older. I thought it was all bright lights, appealing."

Daniel moved out of home, worked at various jobs, but went progressively
downhill on heroin, "messing up", getting arrested for breaking and entering
and assault.

"I feel bad about having a criminal record, but crime goes hand-in-hand with
a drug lifestyle," he says. "You've got to do what you got to do to get a
hit."

Daniel has been clean since March last year when be entered Teen Challenge's
residential drug rehabilitation programme.

Introduced to Queensland last year, the rehab model has been run by Teen
Challenge, a non-profit non-denominational organisation with a Christian
philosophy, in 52 countries since the 1960s. American studies have put its
success rate at 70 percent.

After detoxing at home with his parents, Daniel spent nearly nine months at
the Teen Challenge rehab facility at Charters Towers.

"It's actually an old Queensland hotel which was offered to us to use," says
the organisation's executive director, Alan Le May. "There's some definite
irony there. It's been dubbed the pub with no beer"

While at Charters Towers, addicts study life skills and work skills to keep
their bodies and brains active.

"Addicts have learned to behave in a certain way through a drug lifestyle,
and they have to re-learn a lot of basic things - like how to look after
themselves, how to budget their money, how to make good decisions, how to
get on with a job or a career, how to relate to people without drugs,"
explains Le May.

"People think that detoxing is all there is to giving up drugs. Going
through 'cold turkey', the withdrawal, the nausea, the vomiting, the
convulsions, that sort of stuff. It's ugly, but it's really the easy bit.
What people have to ask themselves is, 'Why did I need to take drugs and
what do I have to do to stay off them?'. Rehab addresses those issues.

"That's what's being overlooked in the debate over Naltrexone. For some
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Daniel admits it wasn't easy, and there were many times in the initial
months of his rehab when he thought, "I don't want to be here".

"But you've got a great bunch of people working up there helping you," he
says. "They never put you in a box and say, 'Hey you're a junkie and you're
here because you have to be, but we expect you to be using again as soon as
you leave'. There's a lot of one-on-one contact which gives you a greater
chance to work through the issues."

Daniel also believes it was an advantage being in a programme away from his
network of suppliers and drug-addicted friends in Brisbane.

So does 23-year-old Geoff Harrison, who went through rehab with Teen
Challenge at the same time as Daniel.

"Heroin is so easy to get in Brisbane." he says. "Call to a mobile phone.
Ten minutes later someone drops it off in a car. It's easier and quicker
than dial-a-pizza."

Geoff got into drugs when he was 14, "smoking pot because it was cool", then
taking speed and acid "because it was there".

"We used to go into the Valley and sneak into clubs at 14 and speed and acid
were the things to do when you go to a night-club," he recalls. "But pot,
speed and acid didn't really satisfy me."

Heroin, which Geoff first took when he was 17 and studying environmental
engineering at university, did.

"Once I tried it, I realised that's what I wanted to do," he says. "I didn't
really have a direction in my life. I wasn't enjoying my uni course. I
played guitar and was mixing with musicians and drugs were part of that
scene. I loved the euphoric, unconscious feeling heroin gave me. Like I was
Superman, I didn't have to do anything. No more worries, everything was just
perfect at that moment."

But after the highs, came the lows. Geoff gave up university, moved out of
home, and withdrew from his parents, who divorced. "That totally alienated
me from them. It was really easy to slip into the drugs. Heroin was like a
security blanket. You don't have any stress.

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$100-a-day habit. He worked at menial jobs and dealt in drugs to support it.
He knew he was on a road to nowhere, and decided to get help by signing up
for a methadone programme. He now believes it was the greatest mistake he
ever made.

"It did more damage than good, simple as that," he says. "Methadone is more
addictive than heroin. It gets into your bones and teeth. It doesn't give
you a high, it just blocks out the pain, the physical withdrawal pain, but
you still crave a hit of heroin. You're still getting on.

"And when you can't get smack, you drink or smoke lots of pot or try to get
wasted in different ways. It's a toxic mix. I had some messy incidents
related to that, some overdoses. The memories are blurred, I don't remember
parts of it. Methadone makes you lethargic, it clouded my mind, I had no
motivation to live. I had a girlfriend then, and she was on methadone and as
soon as she started taking it, it made her depression worse. She wanted to
kill herself. She wouldn't go out. She'd spend days at a time just crying in
her room."

Methadone also led Geoff into crime.

"I lost my job while I was on it, and crime became an option," he says. "I
was dealing large amounts of dope, scamming people, defrauding them cause I
needed a hit. Heroin was all I could think about. I stopped thinking about
my girlfriend, I stopped thinking about eating. My life went into a
tail-spin."

Geoff got himself off methadone, but found his heroin habit was even
greater. A year later and he was "terminally unhappy". He tried to detox at
clinics a couple of times, but found it "too hard. I was in too much pain".

"I'd lost all hope," he says. "I wanted to stop but I didn't know how."

The same week his stepmother gave him the number of Teen Challenge, he
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the magistrate allowed Geoff to go into rehab.

He admits it took him three months at Charters Towers before he starting
taking the programme seriously. "It was really intense, but I knew I had to
finish what I started," he says. "It gave me a chance to find out who I was.
It gave me direction"

Geoff and Daniel returned to Brisbane just before Christmas. They're sharing
a house at Stafford and with back-up support from Teen Challenge, learning
how to live independently. They're also both doing volunteer work with
troubled youth at the organisation's crisis housing facility, Hebron House.

They glow with good health, they're rebuilding relationships with their
families, they feel fit and strong - and lucky.

"It's too easy to die on heroin," says Geoff. "You don't know what's in it
now, how strong it is. You get on, and if someone's not around to help you,
you're dead. Goodnight. That's it."

He's concerned that teenagers are now being offered heroin, rather than
marijuana, as an introduction to drugs. Heroin starter packs sell on the
streets for as little as $5 or $6.

"Walking down the Valley after coming back from Charters Towers, there were
dealers standing out in the open doing deals of heroin," he says. "That's in
your face. That's not in a dark alley, or a nightclub or in somebody's home.
That's reaching out to you."

The Queensland Ambulance Service has seen stark evidence of this increasing
exposure to heroin. In 1996, paramedics used Narcan to revive 152 people who
had overdosed. Last year, the figure was more than 400.

"The facts are heroin use is on the increase, users are getting younger, and
we are sick to death of going to these young people in the street not
breathing and dying," says paramedic Ron Henderson. "And not only do we go
to them once, we go to them again and again."

Henderson's comments prompted the XXXXXXX

ON each brochure they put the person's name, where and in what condition
they were found, and their vital signs. By personalising a message, they
hope that in a quiet, reflective moment, an addict will read the brochure
and contact the agencies mentioned inside.

"The psychologists and counsellors tell us a motivating factor for heroin
addicts to seek help is often a near-death experience," says Henderson.
"Well, we see that happening every day, These kids are stumbling towards
death and every time they use heroin it's an unlucky dip because they don't
know what's in it."

Both Daniel Waterman and Geoff Harrison want their experiences to serve as
ones of hope for others in trouble.

"I look at heroin addicts out there and I know that they're feeling like
it's an impossible situation," says Geoff, "Like 'it's too hard, there's too
much pain. I can't go through with it. And my life sucks anyway so what's
the point of getting clean if there's nothing to live for?'"

"But it's not true. Without drugs you start thinking rationally, you work
out that life isn't as bad as it at first seems and there are ways around
obstacles. and when you overcome them they make you stronger. It's not easy,
but it's possible, very possible. I'm reminded every day that I'm alive, and
I'm lucky."