I am on a methadone maintenance program. I get 90 mg of methadone once a day. I go to the chemist, the same pharmacy twice a week, only that pharmacy can 'dose' me unless I apply to be transferred somewhere else. He (or occasionally she) carefully measures the prescribed amount of methadone syrup and mixes it with orange cordial for me to drink. When I drink the mixture that is my treatment complete for the day - not a radical process, but one that fills many with fear, intrigue and wonder.

To all outward appearances I am completely straight. Very few people know of my addiction or my treatment. I am married to a non-drug-using husband, as in he has never used illegal drugs of any description. I have two perfectly normal, charming, beautiful children. I live a normal family life. Sound strange? The story of how I arrived at this juncture is a long one:

This is the story of how I came to be on methadone this time around. I have been on methadone before with varying degrees of success, you can read about those experiences in the second part which deals with the more distant past.

As this story starts I had been clean from heroin, methadone and all illegal drugs for three years. I had been severely depressed the whole time I was pregnant with my second child. Straight after she was born I was feeling better, but reluctant to stop Prozac, which I had been taking since early in the pregnancy; doctors also advised continued use of Prozac. 6 months after baby was born I had a manic episode which was attributed at the time to the Prozac. My Prozac dose was halved (from 40mg to 20mg per day). About 4 weeks later the depression returned. Prozac dose was put back up to 40 mg, but the depression never went away. Instead it got slowly, progressively worse.

Soon after, I went to visit some old friends in Canberra and scored a couple of times. This was the first heroin I had used in 10 months. That time 10 months ago was during the pregnancy when I was significantly weakened by depression and sickness. That was the first time I had used in over 3 years. When I went back home from Canberra I was subject to frequent depressive episodes which would often take the form of fierce cravings for heroin, and this, after I had been largely drug free for 4 years.

All through that 4 years I had been experiencing mild cravings, I would often have dreams about going to Melbourne/Bangkok/London/Amsterdam and scoring and taking drugs. For 4 years these thoughts never left me, they haunted me. Did it lessen with time? No. But I lived with it for those 4 years. Then, when I was suffering with depression (around this time I was actually diagnosed as having manic-depression) the depression severely impaired my self-control, concentration, thinking, rationality. I contacted the friends in Canberra to send me drugs through the mail, because I knew no one here in country Victoria who took or sold drugs other than marijuana. While living in the country I had studiously avoided anything or anybody that had anything to do with drugs because this was a major factor in my remaining drug free while I was here.

My Prozac dose was increased to 80mg per day. I was given other drugs to take with the Prozac. Valium to calm me, Epilim (Valproate), to control my moods. Epilim is an anti-epileptic drug, but it is used to treat manic-depression to stabilise mood, to stop radical mood swings. It is a substitute for Lithium. Unfortunately all these drugs had some side affects. Of course, Valium is addictive. I was warned that Epilim could make my hair fall out, that it could damage my liver. I had to stop breast feeding the baby because the Epilim was unsafe for breastfeeding. She was a year old by now, but neither of us was ready to stop and it was a very painful process. She would cry, try to get into my shirt, I couldn't comfort her because for as long as I tried she was expecting me to take her to the breast. My husband had to comfort her. I felt so helpless, she would cry, I would cry. On top of the depression it did not help at all. Filled up with all these drugs, I was a walking zombie. My legs would not always do what I wanted them to, I would walk into things. I couldn't concentrate. When people talked to me there would be long pauses while my brain worked out what was going on and how it should respond. People often asked me if I was alright, "You look terrible, is anything wrong?" "Don't worry, you'll get better soon" etc. I was turning into something altogether different from the alert, studious person I usually am.

Manic-depression is treatable, but not curable. I was told that I would be taking these drugs for the rest of my life.

So I was faced with a dilemma. These anti-depression drugs were awful. They were doing horrible things to me and they weren't even working effectively. When I took heroin though, I felt great. It was like going on a holiday. The depression lifted, I was relaxed, euphoric, vital, I could concentrate, play with the kids, make love to my husband: I could do anything. Even my husband, who had always been very anti-drugs could see that the legal drugs were killing me and the illegal one was saving me. I made the decision to go to Thailand and smuggle in enough heroin to last me some months so I could live like a normal person and actually enjoy my life and to my great surprise, my husband gave me his blessing.

So that's what I did. I came back with 3 bottles of heroin. I gave them to my husband to administer because I was still an addict and knew that I would take too much too frequently if I was left in charge. I mixed a large amount of powder with water and kept it in a bottle so all my husband had to do was put the syringe in the bottle and draw out a couple of units of the liquid. This way my dose was the same every time.

And it worked! He would give me a dose a few times a day. The depression cleared up. I used to go to my bedroom and shut myself away from everybody for most of the day, but now I was out playing with the kids, reading them stories, coping with their behaviour. I was coping with life for the first time in two years. I was happy, my husband was happy, the kids were happy. They were very young (3 and 1 yrs) but they knew there was a difference and they liked it. I was taking enough heroin to feel the effects but not enough to be really stoned. People started commenting on how much better I looked. Many wanting to know how such a radical change occurred. "Whatever you did on that holiday it sure worked, you look great!

We started with 1 and 2 unit hits twice a day. 1 unit = 0.1 ml. I have no idea how much actual heroin was in that amount of liquid but that did the job. It kept me feeling good, but not stoned. Of course I wanted more. We changed it to 3 or 4 units 3 times a day, then 4 times a day etc. Finally I asked to have access myself. My husband went to Geelong anyway for a couple of days, so I had to do it myself. I pigged out something shocking. If we had kept going the way we had started out the dope would have lasted for 9 months. That isn't an estimate that is a calculation based on the amount of powder to liquid and the amount of liquid used. I had had visions of it lasting for at least 6 months, we could sell a little of it to fund another trip OS. It lasted just over a month. The addictiveness of the drug defeated me.

Part of it was that about half way through I realised that it couldn't be kept up. After talking to doctors and counsellors I began to agree with them. I couldn't keep doing it. I couldn't make regular trips to Asia to get drugs. The risks were just too high. It may have made sense to me when I was in the throes of depression, but with the heroin I could see much more clearly. The consequences were just too dear, too shattering. To be caught smuggling out of Thailand/India/etc would mean that I would probably not see the kids again till they had grown up. The thought of that is enough to make me wonder would I live through it. It's making me cry as I type. Not seeing the kids I would just curl up in a ball and lose the will to live. If I got caught in Australia it would be a little better, but still devastating. Was I prepared to live with those consequences if I got caught? No. Definitely not. Wholly, emphatically NO. The counsellors/doctors talked about getting me on methadone. I didn't want methadone. For one thing there was no guarantee that it would be effective against depression, I would be tied to a chemist having to turn up for my dose everyday like every other junkie, like the junkie I used to be. I asked them if they could list the reason for my being on the programme as manic depression treatment instead of drug addiction, but none of us really believed that would be accepted. My heroin was running out, I had no means to replace it, my options were limited, I opted for methadone with all the attendant inconveniences. I was totally unconvinced that it would do any good.

The first day was horrible, I was hanging out badly in the transition. I was in bed all day, sweating, feeling like death warmed up, but not warmed up much. The next day was a little better but that night I got every receptacle that had any tiny smear of powder left on it, I had timed the heroin to run out when I started the program. That was as much an excuse to take what was left really fast, shooting up 10 times a day, as wanting it not hanging over while I'm starting on methadone. So I got every little thing that had a dusting of heroin on it and washed it all down into a spoon. I got a very small hit out of it, but BOY did it feel good. I spent that night feeling human again, in a much better humour than I had been for a couple of days. When I woke up in the morning I didn't feel so bad and so on it went. I got used to the methadone and was feeling good on it. Then I was waiting for the depression to start making itself felt, but it hasn't. Since I've been taking methadone, and it's been five months now (mid 1997 at time of writing) I've been feeling just great. I am happy, full of energy, not euphoric as on heroin of course, but this is a straight feeling and I really just feel good. It was a pleasant surprise.

Now I'm at the point where I'm beginning to take it for granted all this feeling normal and good, but whenever anyone suggests that one day in the future I should reduce my methadone with a view to ending it I say NO WAY! All the stuff I read on manic depression said that it is a permanent condition. People who have it take their medication for the rest of their lives. Why should this be any different? They say that if a manic depressive stops the medication she may feel ok for a few months but it will catch up to her. I'm scared that if I did stop the methadone that the depression would come back and I'd be back on that merry-go-round of trying to lift it. Prozac worked the first time for me, but not the second time. Who's to say that if I take that chance the methadone wont work next time and I'll have to find something else. Would I find something else? Or would I live in a death of depression and misery, not being able to live up to what I want to be, what I know I am capable of.

Given all this, you may wonder why I am bothered with law reformation, heroin trials etc. I have found what seems to be a passably good solution. This would be overly simplistic, and heroin addiction is not a simple matter, but this discussion doesn't belong on an autobiography page.

If you think you can still handle more of this stuff there is:

My Autobiography Part 2 where I talk about what happened in my life to get me to the point where I started on this page.
My Autobiography Part 3 with some of the things that have happened since I started on methadone.
Plus you may like to check out the What's New page because I sometimes write down recent happenings there.

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