Chapter 2 - Drug Addicts Deserve Shit Furniture

At 1 o clock Merran picks me up. I’m nervous. She’s polite. She’s plump and homely. It’s just the two of us in a white van. It could be a love story. A love story set in a neat white van that had probably over the years seated more drug addicts and criminals than a public high school bus. The little white van is plain and earnest and functional. For all anyone knows it could have been a van for the spastic society. For all anyone knows the guy with the disability who sucked me off on the weekend could be riding in a similar looking van right now.

Merran makes small conversation. She says the area is transforming from rural Queensland to outer-suburban Brisbane.

I'm polite. I'm acting normal.

I’m acting so normal it’s like I am not even fucked up.

I do hope Merran gets the impression that I’m not like those fucked-up, rough as fuck meth-heads you see on TV. I don't do petty crimes and I don't talk like a football player. My drug taking was always done in style, with stylish people.

I'm a drug taker and that is, even on the way too rehab, pretty hot right now.

And when I think about it I'm sure I'm not fucked up enough to go to rehab. I'm sure the place is crawling with absolute crazies and messed-up Debbie Dollbludgers. I, on the other hand, could be functional, and surely I could live without drugs if I just got over my bad fucking attitude. Maybe I am being a bit dramatic. Maybe I shouldn’t even be on this bus. Maybe I'm taking fashion just a bit too seriously. I reckon most of my friends take more drugs than me, although most of them haven’t had a life too lose either. But I’m not one of those too-kool-for-school gay guys who smoke ICE constantly, wear designer clothes and are 'over it' - whatever that means.

We arrive. It's a long driveway. It's surrounded by farm. We are an hour and a half south of Brisbane. There's gum trees and a dishevelled tennis court. The buildings are plain and ugly, built from suicidal-brown bricks. The garden is tropical. It was a bit like a resort for poor people. It backs onto a river and is surrounded by tree covered mountains. The views are good and I feel fucking weird being here.

Eileen, the woman I spoke with on the phone walks out of the office. She looks younger than she sounds, she's maybe 45 with blonde hair and a quiet demeanour. I look at her knowing she knows all kinds of weird shit about me. At least she has actually seen me she now knows I also have a good hair, a cool headband and I’m a little bit hot.

She gives me a pile of paper work. Admin forms, Centrelink forms. Centrelink pays for my rent when I'm at rehab. She tells me "It's ok to feel anxious, most people feel like that when they first arrive".

I wonder why she thinks that I am anxious.

She sits me down at an outside table to do the paperwork. Another new resident is sitting down. I’m fascinated with the type of people I might find in here. I’m scared none of them will consider me a bad enough drug addict to be in rehab.

"This is Elizabeth" says Eileen.
"Hi" she says and then shrugs her shoulders as if to say 'somehow I’ve ended up here as well'.

We sit in silence. I flicker guilty little stares in her direction. She's got a respectable haircut, big ugly glasses and can clearly afford decent clothes. She looks like an office lady or maybe a librarian. By that I mean, a librarian gone very wrong. I imagined her just loosing one day at the borrowing counter.

"You can take your Bryce Courtney and shove it up your arse. I’m going out to the morning tea room and snort Coke until I think I’m Charles Fucking Dickens"

That may not have happened; but clearly Mrs Straight-arse had been doing something very naughty.

Elizabeth catches one of my glances.

"Where r u from?” she asks.
"Bundaberg most recently" I tell her "u?"
"Rockhampton. I’m glad to be out of there, the floods have made the place smell awful".
I remain silent. I'm not really interested in her flood story.
"Why are you here?” she asked me.
"Abusing party drugs, u?"
"Well mine is a bit of a long story"
Of course it is.
"I’ve got a mental illness" she went on "I’ve been abusing prescription drugs"
"Yep"
"I can’t sleep at night, so I'll take anything, anything I can get my hands on in order to sleep. My main problem is with Phenergan. I just get out of control; I need something to switch my brain off"
"What sort of mental illness do you have?"
"I'm bipolar"
Well that might explain the symptom of not shutting the fuck up when I’m trying to fill in my little mountain of paperwork.
"How's your condition now?"
"It’s good, really good"
Her face lit-up like someone in the library had asked for an Enid Blyton book.
"The medication I'm on at the moment is really good. What about you Luke, do you have a mental illness?"
"I’ve been told I have Major Depression and possibly a Borderline Personality Disorder"
"Yes, well I feel good and when I’m bad I can’t even hold a conversation" she said.
I kind of wish she wasn't feeling good right now. Perhaps then I might be able to finish the fucking forms, either that or I wish I was having a manic episode. A bit of naturally occurring Dutch courage would definitely help me get through these fucking Centrelink forms.

I'm done. Eileen asks if I have deodorant or Listerine or any medications. I say yes and she takes them off me and puts them in a locker. She tells me that people can get high on deodorant and Listerine in rehab. She tells me I can keep my asthma medication in my room. She takes the Zoloft off me. I can only take my Zoloft during specified medication times, she says. She takes my mobile phone and locks in a locker, I feel relieved to see that little bit of neediness locked away in prison.

"You cant make any phone calls for the first 21 days" she said "After that we have a pay-phone u can use after five in the evening. We don't have internet use either. So I hope u like writing letters"

I don't think people write letters anymore Eileen.

"I'm just going to touch on some of the important rules here Luke. There's no touching, no swearing, no drugs or alcohol, u will urine and breath tested at least twice a week, u need to be up by 630 in the morning, u need to do half an hour of exercise in the morning...scared yet?"

"No that's fine Eileen I need a bit of structure"

"I just don't want this to sound like a jail that's all, cause this is about making u better...um...what else? No pornography, no harassment, no bullying, no discrimination, u have classes 5 days a week and u will have a personal counsellor who will work with u for one on one sessions once a week. Ur first day leave is in four weeks, there is no leaving the premises until then. Although we have a weekly shop run...I think that's everything"

She smiles a very middle-Australian smile

"Oh wait, before we check your bag, we have a term in here called no neg-raving. That means it's against the rules to talk about drug use in a positive light. Ok"

A guy from the office comes out and starts checking my bag. They pull everything out. They pull out my $300 jeans, my $120 t-shirts, my $80 eye cream, my night creams, my moisturiser, my tinted moisturiser, my pro-age face wash, my funky robots t-shirt, my 6 headbands and a drug bag. Whoops.

"What's this?" the guy says holding it up to my face.

I feel myself go red, there were even a few bits of white powder left in the little clear plastic bag.

"Is it rubbish?" he asks, giving me an escape route.
"Yeah it's rubbish" I say

They continue taking everything out and then putting it back in. The pull out my books Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, The Atlas of Depression by Andrew Solomon, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Murakami and Illness as Metaphor by Susan Sontag.

Another staff member sees the pile of books on the table. He looks at me, looks at each book and looks at me again. I'm not sure what these books say about a drug user who has checked himself into rehab. Except, that maybe I picture myself reading leisurely by the pool on sunny summer afternoons.

"Ok that's all fine" the staff member says "Your bag check is complete and uve passed. Welcome to Logan House. Try and get as much out of this program as u can. If u want to become a new person it's all waiting for you here. If you want to stop taking drugs, if u want to have a wonderful new life this is the place to be. But it all depends on one thing, ur attitude. U have to want to. Do u want to?"

"Yeah, I mean I checked myself in here" I say

"Good. Now before I let u go. I just want to say one thing - just like community this community has a tendency to get very political. My advice is for u to stay out of the politics and the gossip and just concentrate on ur own recovery. Just concentrate on u, u are number one over the next 12 weeks. Got it?"

"Yep"

Of course, he's forgetting that in order to be political u actually have to give a shit - which I don't.

"Ok then, let me show u were ur new home will be over the next 3 months" Eileen says.

She walks me out into the yard.

There are three villas. Each is self-contained, each has its own little garden. I'm in villa two, with 12 other guys.

"They call this villa 'the Bronx'" Eileen says maybe you can help improve the reputation of this villa".

I walk in everyone is friendly, church-friendly, way-too-friendly. There are no obvious hardened crims or really obvious drug addicts. They just seem to be happy, satisfied little Bronxsters.

One guy is fast asleep on the couch. He smells terrible. It's hot and muggy and he's wrapped in a thick blanket. Actually he does look like a drug addict.

The villa is....ugly. The couches are disgusting. Britney Spears does not use this rehab facility. I repeat Britney Spears does not use this rehab facility. In fact, I don’t think people from public housing would feel comfortable sitting on these couches either.

I'm shown to my room. It's basic. It's aesthetically upsetting. There are three beds. I am going to spend the next 12 weeks sharing a room with two strangers.

Eileen leaves me to it.

"I'm sure the boys will make u feel welcome"

A guy named Sam with wild curly hair comes up to me. "what's your poison?" he asks
"Party drugs” I say "Meth mainly", I add, just too sound a bit more hardcore "And u?" I'm guessing that is the standard line of conversation, drugs are after-all what we all have in common here.
"Heroin and about 65 other drugs" he says
"Ok" I say
"Yeah I was a dealer at Uni and fuck man, drugs just became my life"
He looks like someone who has put his body through fucking torture over the past few years. He's skinny and scatty. With his drawn cheeks, he looks kind of, um, reptillian.
"What r most people in here for?" I ask
"Most of the people here are alcoholics. But there's a few speed heads and a few pill heads as well".

I walk outside. Three guys are chatting. They introduce themselves. There's an overweight Asian guy named Lee, a pock-holed bloke's bloke called Wayne and a dark=haired Scotsman called Jimmy. They are all about 30 or so.

"We are just talking about chicks actually" Wayne says.
Oh good, something I can relate too.
"All the important stuff here, we can't talk about drugs, so may as well talk about sex" Jimmy says
"What kind of chicks do u go for Jimmy?" Lee asks
"Hippie chicks"
"Hippie chicks, hey?"
"Well not like full not feral chicks, but earthy kind of women"
"What's the attraction?" I ask
"They're soft and feminine and caring, most of then anyway, I've met some screwed-up hippie bitches as well"
Personally myself I can’t remember whether the hippies in my neighbourhood growing-up lost their appeal when they took drugs when pregnant or when they actually gave birth to deformed children.
"What about u Wade?" Lee asks again
"I like big chicks. Big fat bitches, I love em. I once put an ad in the newspaper saying I liked fatties and I had all these girls writing to me wanting to suck my dick"
"That's alright mate" says Jimmy
"Yeah and I also like girls with really, really hairy pussies. Big fucking, messy, hairy cunts"
Everyone laughs.
I'm not sure if feminists would be appalled or warmed by Wayne's unusual taste in women.
"Hey, um, I better go unpack, nice meeting u guys" I say
"Yeah, welcome to rehab, Luke. I hope u enjoyed the conversation" Jimmy says smiling

I don't really need to unpack. I just wasn't quite ready to talk about the kind of chicks I'm into; boys with good haircuts.

I walk back inside. A guy in his 50's with yellow stained teeth sits jittering and splattering. He's a mess. Sam takes me aside
"That's Stan, he's a cannabis addict. He's only just started talking in the past few days"
"This is my last chance" Stan says to no-one in particular, putting his head in his hands, feet bouncing on the spot.
"Hey, man good luck sleeping in here. I've had an awful time. I've been having hallucinations because of sleep deprivation" Sam says
"Is that a bad thing?" I ask
"Its more that it just make u feel a bit unsettled, when u start to feel unwell u start to miss the bad old days"
"Yeah, well I think I'm kind of over it" I say Ten years of taking drugs, I've done pretty everything I can do when it comes to the drug world"
"Just try and keep yourself occupied in here" he says
"How do u keep urself occupied in here Sam?"
"I sing songs and make fun of people and I throw shit at the fan and I make shit and put it on the walls. Like that" Sam points to a piece of paper on the wall above the bathroom.
It reads
Zero
Emotion
Alone
Among
Friendly
Talk

"What does it mean?"
"Read down the middle, it says Zoloft" he says and starts laughing
"R u on Zoloft?" I ask
"Yep"
"Me too, I take it u have mixed feelings about taking an anti-depressant"
"I just want to be able to sort stuff out, just get over some shit, I don’t want to be taking an anti-depressant forever. I just want to get more than 2 hours sleep a night"
"R u just awake thinking about stuff?” I ask
"Yeah man, just... stuff"

There's a silence. I looked right into him, he looks at me back. I'm not sure whether or not to ask what's on his mind. Whatever plays on his mind at night I'm sure is the same stuff that played on his mind during the day before he came to rehab. I'm sure it was the same stuff the ultimately drove him to fuck himself up on heroin.

"Hey" he says as I walk into my room and start unpacking "The guy who was in here before u was a big fat fucker and I mean like obese. He was disgusting. He could barely fit on ur bed. He was so fat, he couldn't find his arsehole on the toilet and would shit all over the toilet seat"

I suddenly feel the need the disinfect the entire villa.

"I have a real problem with fat people" Sam says "I hate fat people and I hate germs, so Dave was a real problem"

I get my stuff unpacked and I go over to the gym. My goal was, above all else, to get the perfect body while I was in rehab. Rehab was a bit of a sham. If I could just get a good body and a good boyfriend I wouldn’t need to take drugs. I knew that might seem a bit glib, but the evidence suggested otherwise. I'd given up drugs for the last 4 years of my 6 year relationship. It was only when it ended 12 months ago -and it ended nicely- that depression snuck in. When a relationship ends, depression takes up the same place in your mind that love once did - all seems lost and you scream for an escape. Depression is after-all I think the absence of love.

Besides which, I'm not that much of an addict. Drug addicts take drugs all the time. That wasn’t me. I'm just a substance abuser, not an addict. If I wasn’t constantly on the look out for guys, I wouldn’t be in those drug-prone situations to begin with. I can live without drugs, I just can’t live without love. That's just what it means to be human. My supposed 'drug addiction' is just a sham and if not a sham then drug use for me is very, very secondary.

In preparation for my rehab time I've printed out a 12 week 'new body' program from the internet.

I go into the gym, with the program in my hand. The gym is basically a shed with a few basic weights. There aren't enough mirrors. I work my arse off anyway. I work on shoulders and abs. I'm sweating like a mother-fucker. I like how pumped-up my muscles get during a work-out.

A pretty Asian girl, named Danielle comes up and says hi.
"What's your poison" is again the conversation starter.
She tells me she used speed during the day to keep her going and heroin at night to help her relax.

"Heroin destroys u" she says " U stop being human, u just want the drug, nothing else matters when your a junkie"

It was kind of nice she had come to such a revelation. But it sounded a little like rehab-speak to me. Like a bad girl who had been brainwashed or had a bit of an Oprah moment or something.

"I've used heroin" I said "I don’t really understand what all the fuss is about". I then walked away and started lifting the heaviest weight I could find.


I finish my work-out. I feel good. I walk around the property. There are chooks and carp in the little pond in the yard. The swimming pool is small. This is definetly a resort for poor people. And I meet some of the poor people.

A froggish woman named Vicky with brown hair and a fixed, bitter shit-brown facial expression. She's here through Drug Court to avoid a jail sentence. She says she "used to organise big rock concerts before she got into crime".

Alicia. A big, tough, stocky bitch with a blackeneyed tooth. She's friendly and outgoing. When she finds out I've been living in Bundaberg she says "I'm from Bundaberg, I fucking hate it. Everyone there is a fucking arsehole"

And a perculiar young girl named Mel. If u picture the most unpopular, screwed-up, self-mutiliating girl in high school. Now put her in the most obscene assortment of clothing u would find in a brotherhood bin. Give her the body of a short, stocky lesbian then u have Mel. "It's nice to see I'm not the new one anymore" she says, in a way that is mysteriously creepy.

I also bump into my new roommate, Justin. He sits down. I take it an invitation and sit down next to him.

He's bald. He looks about 30. He looks hardened. He looks a bit drug fucked. He has a bit of a druggies drawl in his voice. His eyes twitch at nothing in particular except his fucked-up nervous system when he speaks.

"You'll like it here" he says "You'll come out a completely different person"

I hadn’t really thought about the need to be all that different for a long time.

"What annoys me is when people treat drug-taking in isolation to other shit in your life" I say.

He gives me a serious stare.

"Yeah, that's the thing mate; you’ve got to work out why you abuse drugs. Uve gotta work out why you’re a drug addict" he says

I sat daydreaming about what the Queens the club land would think of my new body.

"Hey man, what do you do for work?"
"I'm a journalist"
"Yeah you seem really switched on"
"Do I?"
"Yep"
"What do you do?"
"I'm a social worker" he said as he smiled a cheeky, ironic little smile.” I deal with people like me all the time and now I'm here in rehab"
"I know its crazy isn’t it, you and I know in our heads drugs aren’t the right thing to do, but we do it anyway"
"Yep, it’s crazy all right. I used to smoke ICE at work to help get my big workload done”

I sit starting at him for a bit. He had obviously done some serious brain-frying. I imagined him as a bright, young, successful social worker and then bit by bit it all falling apart for him.

"I had a breakdown" he said without prompt "And then I went back to the booze"
"How are you now?"
"Ok, getting there. It’s difficult. I’ve been here 6 weeks. I’ve been too rehab before, but I really want to make it this time....and don’t worry there are lots of educated professionals here, you'll fit right in. There are teachers, business owners, musicians, even a psychologist"
"A psychologist in rehab? You mean as a client?"
"Yeah, man, u gotta meet her, she's fucking nuts. Hey, I'll see you at dinner, were having Roast Chicken. It should be a good feed"

Roast Chicken sounds good in theory, but I hate the thought of some grubby fucker cooking my dinner.

I continue to wander around. I catch glimpses at people and their faces. People smile and say hello. I wonder what happened to them. How did they end up in here? What could it be that goes through their minds, which tortures them and makes them sink right into oblivion?

I end up spending most of the day lying in bed.

At night I have my first 'feelings check'. They happen here twice a day, one in the morning and one at night. Everyone is there. Everyone sits in a circle and has to talk about what they are feeling.

"I've been made to feel welcome" I say when my turn come.

Everyone clapped.

In fact nearly everyone got clapped.

This is not the real world. I've said some amazing shit and never got clapped before.

Although some people did say some interesting stuff, little insights into their addictions.

"I felt sad today and that made me feel like a drink"

"I felt like taking drugs today, so I ate something instead"

"I talked to my kids today for the first time in 3 weeks"

Clapping and clapping and more clapping. Validation for the sake of validation. Reward just to make us feel better for being drop kicks in rehab.

I end the night by playing ping pong, scabbing a cigarette and then for the first time in ages, forgot to put on my anti-ageing cream before I went to bed.