I found a photo of myself on my phone. It forced me to rethink my whole life

“Your honour, hand on heart, if you bail me today, I will go and live with my mum and won’t use. I will sign on every day, I will work wonders and poo cucumbers, your honour,” I plead.

“Michael, two days ago, I bailed you from this very court, and you went straight down to the fines enforcement office and reached over the counter and emptied the till,” the magistrate states bluntly.

“OK, you got me, I’ll just shut up.” My mind searched for an out, but it seems like this is where heroin has taken me. Jail.

Now, at the age of 52, I am haunted by all the times that heroin nearly killed me. It has only been the past three years where I truly feel that I have put my addiction behind me, and have gained some perspective on the mistakes I made, the traps that I fell into, and the people I hurt.

Were any of my overdose experiences shocking enough to snap me out of my addiction? Are you kidding? It would take more than the very real risk of dying to beat the ridiculous nature of addiction. The very essence of addiction is that there is no common sense to it.

One morning almost eight years ago, I was scrolling through my phone, as we all do, only to stop stone-cold. WTF! Looking through the front passenger door, it showed me in the driver’s seat of my car, USB cord wrapped around my arm as an ad hoc tourniquet. I’m unconscious, so pale I look dead. Who took the photo? To this day, I don’t know, but I’m glad they did.

I had the fortune of surviving to see that horrible, surreal, image. Myself looking dead, slumped over, arms limp, skinny – and it stayed with me. Nobody was telling me that I was overdosing, but seeing myself in this way, I was being given a chance. It was a ghost of the past, or maybe a ghost of the future, showing me my bleak prospects if I didn’t change.

Somehow, I needed to stop living the life I was living.

During one spell out of prison, I overdosed three times in six weeks … and somehow thought everybody else was doing life wrong. Bail isn’t always the best answer; neither is prison. I don’t pretend to know all the answers, but one of the few things that I do know is that what we have been doing about drug use and addiction is not working. And now we’re seeing violent youth crime rising again.

My addiction was a dumb accident. Every new generation is looking for rebellion in some way, and at that time in the ’90s, the likes of Kurt Cobain and Kate Moss made heroin chic alluring. I’m also convinced I would never have gone down that path if the good guys controlled the market – if my trusted supplier for cannabis and ecstasy hadn’t also sold heroin.

Having survived nearly 20 years of heroin addiction and 12-odd years of prison, I have seen my share of the misery, jail and eventual death that addiction leads to. Life can get so bad as a young heroin addict; the sad truth is that death can often feel like the best option.

I vividly recall a heartbreaking letter written by a mother to thank us, a group of inmates. Her son had found some belonging, some mates, some of himself – some sobriety – in a maximum-security prison. It turned out that her son overdosed within a week of getting out of prison.

I pictured this lovely woman, alone in her suburban home, drinking a Nescafe with her Arnott’s bikkie, and in despair, blaming herself for her son’s death. I thought about how bad the problems in that heroin addict’s life must have been for him to consider the time he spent in a dangerous maximum-security prison as some of his happiest.

Often, I think of a mate I shared a cell with in the ’90s. He gained notoriety for being able to steal a Porsche in under a minute in the middle of the city, in the middle of the day. He earned the nickname The Porsche Kid. He was muscly, tough as nails … and a heroin addict. He never found a way out from the cycle of addiction and crime and died in prison at the age of 43.

History repeats. When I now see signs of this latest wave of crime – angry youths lashing out, stealing cars or taunting police – I worry they will fall further into a short life of crime and addiction.

I think about the number of people I have known who have been taken by heroin. Good people. Ripped, athletic, great AFL players, great boxers, great artists. It won’t happen to us, they think. That is what we all thought.

I was lucky to get out. Only now am I feeling strong enough to bump into old friends from prison and feel that I can walk away. Only now have I got the confidence back that I lost from being homeless and drug-addicted. I had the motivation of seeing myself in that shocking photo and the support of family and friends. I had just enough to live for. You have to want it; nobody can do it for you.

We will never arrest our way out of society’s problems. People with addiction problems need support, not to be locked up. Sure, jail protects people from addicts and sometimes it even protects addicts from problems on the outside. But it doesn’t solve the deeper problems that will need to be dealt with. Not everyone gets a chance to see themselves dead as a warning before it happens.

I hope just one person reading this might think about seeking help for their addiction. I am committed to staying clean; I am a full-time TAFE student and in regular contact with my loved ones and family.

If I can do it, you can too.

National Alcohol and Other Drug hotline 1800 250 015.

Michael Kalaf is a student studying a diploma in IT.

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