I was a hopeless addict for 20 years, yet barely missed a day of work and had four children. This is the reality of the drug everyone says they will never touch

When you ask people about the drugs they experimented with in their youth, you often get an answer along the lines of, “Oh, I’ve tried everything… except heroin.”

Well, that drug that everyone promises they won’t touch cost my life for twenty years.

When I tell people I’m a junkie, they imagine someone lying in the gutter or shooting in an alley. While the stereotype may be true for some addicts, my experience was different. During my addiction, I had a full-time job for decades. I also earned well.

I was always able to function and even learn new skills while using heroin in my late teens. When I got married at the age of 25 and had two children, nothing changed. In any case, it escalated.

I was good at my job and was a top-notch welder, so I never had any problems at work. Later I ran my own business and, incredibly, managed to keep the money flowing.

My problem was when I finished work at 5pm. When you’re addicted, the more money you have, the deeper you spiral.

Even though we looked like a normal family, I was cheating, stealing, manipulating, and doing horrible things to feed my habit. And I was completely unaware of the damage I was doing to my loved ones.

Heroin numbs you. It takes away all your feelings until you live in a foggy cloud of nothingness. You are not completely in reality; you are always numb. It is a place without pain and without happiness.

There were times when I could barely get out of bed, but I still had to work and was able to drag myself there. Looking back, it’s a miracle I kept it together for so long, but eventually it all came crashing down.

How it started

Heroin started to rule my life when I was 19. My addiction landed me in jail, overdosed three times, and left me in and out of the hospital for years.

But let me take you back to the beginning.

While most of the other kids were focused on school, I tried different medications. I started smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol when I was 12. I used it every day from the age of fourteen. I started taking acid and selling it at fifteen.

That year I left high school and started a four-year apprenticeship to become a boilermaker in Brisbane, which I managed while getting high. At seventeen I turned to intravenous drug use and at nineteen I found heroin.

I used it as often as I could. Whenever I was struggling or feeling lost, medication was the answer. Before I knew it, my life revolved around heroin.

Meanwhile, I treated the people around me terribly, as if I were a man possessed.

People became like objects to me, and I never thought about the consequences of my actions or the harm I caused others.

I started stealing money – the most I ever took was about $7,000 – and at age 19 I was caught robbing a post office and was charged and convicted.

Theft helped maintain my habit, and when you’re addicted to this point, you do what you have to. I would steal from anyone, even my own mother, whom I robbed regularly.

I didn’t realize that I was hurting people mentally, emotionally, and physically with my crimes. Today I worry about what I did and the trauma I caused, but at the time I was blind to it.

I went to rehab at age 24 and spent 10 months there. It had gotten to the point where I was becoming seriously unwell from mixing drugs – I was mixing pills, heroin, weed and alcohol every day – but I was eventually thrown out for breaking the centre’s rules.

At the age of 25, I met the woman I would marry. She already had two children and we would have two more of our own. Those four children were my everything, but my heroin use didn’t stop. It was always a beast lurking in the shadows.

We ate dinner together, got the kids ready for bed, and I read them a story before they went to sleep. But as soon as the lights were off, I took medicine to relax.

At the age of 29, I was sentenced to four years in prison for armed robbery, but I only served two. I was released on bail and regained contact with my wife and children. I also rekindled my toxic relationship with heroin.

The struggle to get clean

When my drug use worsened after prison, my biological children, then two and four, were taken to their grandmother’s for their own safety, and I returned to rehab for another year.

I really tried to turn my life around and quit drugs. The support groups and programs seemed to work. When I was able to break the habit, life was good and I felt like I saw light at the end of the tunnel.

But when I was just 24 days away from two years clean, I relapsed. I bought heroin, cooked it and shot it. Overnight, the cycle of drugs, lies and crime resumed.

That relapse lasted almost six years. I lost it all again: my wife, my children, everything.

This is the part that will shock you. During that entire time I was running my own business. I worked, balanced the books, did my taxes and generated a steady income.

My professional life may have miraculously continued, but my personal life was a mess. At the age of forty I hit rock bottom. I was homeless and hopping between men’s hostels.

One evening I went to the train station and stood on the edge of the platform getting ready end my life by jumping in front of an express train.

I looked up at the night sky and I cried out to a God I didn’t believe in when a vision of my children appeared before me. It was so vivid and powerful that it brought me back from the edge, as if they were saying to me, ‘Don’t do this, we need you here.’

It was a moment of clarity when I needed it most. I took a step back and walked away.

The next day I went to the methadone clinic and was an emotional wreck. I was a forty-year-old man bawling my eyes out and saying, “I’m dying.” I need help’. That was the start of my recovery, although it took a while before I finally stopped.

My first day of cleaning was April 7, 2011.

I try to live along spiritual rather than religious lines. I encourage belief in a greater power, but whatever that power is is entirely up to you.

Now I am 54 and know that my past does not define the person I am today.

When I sought help, they dissected my entire life piece by piece, leaving no stone unturned. We went through my entire life inventory and talked about relationships, emotions, sex, everything.

Part of that was recognizing that I needed to make amends, and that my soul was sick and needed to be cleansed.

One of the greatest gifts of getting clean is having a relationship with my kids again.

We love each other, have a great bond and I am motivated to be the best father I can be. Despite my past, I will not let it define me and my future. Today I am a decent man, a good father and grandfather of three beautiful grandchildren who know nothing of my past.

One benefit of being in recovery for so long is that you feel far enough removed from the person you used to be to conduct forensics into what made you addicted in the first place.

I know now that I was in pain, felt it abandoned and unloved, and never believed I was enough. These feelings are normal, but if you don’t learn to deal with them, you push them down and self-medicate.

Today, I have a toolkit of coping strategies to help me process whatever I’m feeling. I read, meditate, pray and know that sometimes life just happens.

I hope everyone who reads this knows that they are not alone, and perhaps my story can inspire them to seek help and find their way out of the darkness.

• As told to Carina Stathis