High Sobriety

by Jill Stark

  But the standout winner moves all three judges to tears. It’s the story of an out-of-control 15-year-old girl. She hides vodka in her school locker and turns up to class stoned. There has been no love in her life. When Maryann, a motherly addiction counsellor, tries to reach out to her, she runs away, seeking solace in the bed of a nameless stranger: ‘My heart had no room for anyone — not even me.’ But slowly she learns to trust Maryann, and reveals the secret of her sexual abuse. This story, hauntingly real and yet remarkable in its restraint, is made all the more poignant when we learn that it’s a eulogy to Maryann, who passed away not long after coming into the girl’s life. Yet, despite the grief, she finds a way out of her hopelessness and goes on to have a family of her own, ending the story with a question: ‘How did I get so lucky?’

  In a meeting at Odyssey House Victoria’s Richmond head-quarters with the other judges — author and child-protection campaigner Barbara Biggs, and Odyssey’s chief executive Stefan Gruenert — we are unanimous in our decision. It leaves me thinking of this young woman’s struggle, and I realise something. My ‘fuck it, I just want to get smashed’ moments are usually about boredom and pleasure-seeking. When I get drunk, it’s a choice. For so many others, it’s about obliteration — a way to block out the pain. Yet, despite the tragic circumstances that cause already vulnerable people to seek solace in a bottle or through a needle, as a community we still treat addiction as if it’s a character failing. How often do we turn our heads as we judge the unpleasant-smelling man staggering through the train carriage? It’s funny how we view public drunkenness as socially unpalatable if it’s an old man drinking Scotch from a brown paper bag, but it’s a bit of fun if it’s a group of young women causing a commotion on a hen’s night. It makes me wish, once again, that I’d shown more compassion to my granddad. I was young, but I still judged him.

  After we make our decision, I stay behind to chat to Stefan. The stories we’ve read are real life for many of the people he sees in treatment at Odyssey House. He hopes that this inaugural short-story competition will encourage others to share their experiences of drug and alcohol addiction. The stigma of substance abuse is fairly entrenched, he says, but it’s slowly changing. Those who have long toiled in this unglamorous sector of health prevention and rehabilitation are starting to see a shift, both here and overseas — people struggling with addiction are choosing to waive anonymity and to publicly celebrate their road to recovery. They and others are giving addiction a visible presence, through walks organised by groups such as the United Kingdom’s Recovery Academy, and Faces and Voices of Recovery in the United States. Melbourne’s first recovery walk is scheduled for 2012. Central to the movement’s philosophy is that everyone’s road out of addiction will be different and, to borrow a cliché, recovery is not a destination but a journey.

  ‘Previously, recovery had a whole lot of baggage around it. It was just the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step program, and you had to say, “I’m an alcoholic or a drug addict and I will be for life, and I’m going to completely give up.” It worked for a lot of people, but it wasn’t very inclusive,’ Stefan says. ‘Recovery’s now much broader, less concerned about the definition and more a movement for people to celebrate wellbeing and change, and for inspiring others to think about their quality of life. Whether you’re still using or not, you can be in recovery — even if you’re working towards it.’

  By lifting the veil on addiction, in the same way that mental illness is slowly being demystified, the hope is that more people will seek help, and that the public will come to view substance dependency as they do any other medical condition. ‘You don’t have cancer and [feel as if you have to] be anonymous, and that’s part of the shift,’ Stefan says. ‘All of the self-help fellowship movements have been very underground and hidden because of the shame and stigma. It just feels like the timing’s right for people who have their own personal journeys of addiction to suddenly be okay to start sharing their stories and not lose their job or fear that that’s going to hurt them. We’re at the start of some upswing here, where you’ll see more of the people like Ben Cousins — not just the high-profile people but at all levels of society — sharing their story in workplaces and at barbecues, saying, “Actually, I had issues years back and I’m better now.”’

  When Cousins, one of the AFL’s biggest stars and arguably one of the greatest to ever play the game, had his very public fall from grace, there were many lining up to condemn him. He had fled a booze bus, spent time in a Los Angeles rehab clinic, and been arrested for drug possession, which led to a 12-month playing ban for bringing the game into disrepute. He was a supremely talented, wealthy young man with Hollywood good looks, who seemed to be throwing it all away for the sake of a party. Yet, following a screening of a documentary outlining Cousins’ battles with substance abuse, Channel Seven invited Australian Drug Foundation chief executive John Rogerson to explain the complexities of addiction to the audience at home. For Rogerson, and for many others in the field, it was a sign that addiction was starting to be taken seriously by mainstream media, and to be viewed as a health problem rather than a lifestyle choice.

  But sometimes the spotlight can be a curse. As more people seek help, treatment services are buckling under the weight of demand. Between 2000 and 2010, there was a 29 per cent increase in the number of publicly funded treatments for drug and alcohol problems in Australia, with booze being the principal drug of addiction in nearly half (48 per cent) of all cases, up from 37 per cent of cases in 2000. These figures don’t include those who drink heavily while using another drug. In Victoria, the Salvation Army estimates that the drug and alcohol treatment sector is already under-funded by at least 50 per cent. Nationally, the situation’s no better. Those in the sector complain that politicians are quick to allay middle-class paranoia about violent smackheads and the rise of illegal drugs, however spurious the evidence, but are loath to tackle a legal substance that wreaks widespread havoc — perhaps because it’s a drug that most voters enjoy on a regular basis.

  A senior drug and alcohol–sector professional told me that they were once forced to sit next to a politician at a press conference, nodding in stony-faced agreement as the pollie announced a multi-million-dollar crackdown on methamphetamine. The money came after a series of hysterical and largely unfounded stories in sections of the media that claimed there had been a massive spike in the use of the drug, often known as ‘ice’, ‘meth’, or ‘crystal meth’. There was a heightened level of concern about this nasty substance, which can cause users to be aggressive and delusional. Yet there was no evidence of an ice epidemic on the streets of Melbourne. Still, when the government comes knocking, you don’t turn them away. They smiled for the cameras and accepted the funds. Then, much of the money was spent where it was needed most — in alcohol-treatment services.

  In 2008, Labor announced that $53 million was to be committed to a national binge-drinking strategy, to be rolled out over four years from 2009. But much of the money has gone to anti-drinking campaigns and early intervention for young people; very little has been spent on the treatment sector. Like other rehab facilities across Australia, Odyssey House has experienced a massive increase in the number of people presenting with alcohol problems in the last decade. At any given time, there can be 100 or more people waiting for a place in Odyssey’s residential rehabilitation facilities. Stefan says that only about 10 per cent of people with a drinking problem will seek help, compared to up to 80 per cent of those with an illicit drug habit. When people reach that fork in the road, just as Will did — where left means oblivion and right means survival — they can easily be hurried down the wrong path if there’s a long wait for treatment. Will was fortunate that he could afford a private facility, but even then he waited several weeks before a place in residential rehab came up.

  In the public system, the situation is dire. Demand grows exponentially every year. I’m reminded of a man who left a comment online, und
erneath my binge-drinking story, in April. He’d been fighting alcoholism for 26 years. ‘I wish I could give up for a few days let alone a few months or a lifetime … my liver is getting more fragile and I can tell brain damage is setting in. I’m not stupid … [I] have two degrees, teaching at university and about to start a PhD.’ He lamented the lack of publicly funded treatment options for those with alcohol addiction, predicting that he’d have to get much more seriously ill before being offered support. ‘Of course, if I get taken out of my house in a body bag I’ll be sadly beyond help.’

  As more people find the confidence to speak up about their battles with alcohol, Stefan fears that a system already at breaking point will be swamped. ‘We’re getting a lot of people in their mid to late thirties, but we’re also getting people right into their sixties, and I think that’s going to be another emerging issue among older Australians. We’ve got a growing cohort of people going to be entering aged care, and a lot of them have had drinking patterns all their life that have been pretty unhealthy. How are we going to manage those people?’

  At the other end of the spectrum is a young generation of drinkers who have grown up in a culture that embraces excess and teaches them to mark every life event with alcohol. For most teens, binge drinking won’t lead to dependency. But for some, it’s the gateway to addiction. The number of young people being treated for alcohol-related brain damage grew five-fold in a decade. Arbias, one of Australia’s only treatment services for brain injuries caused by drinking, saw the number of patients aged 16 to 25 jump from 120 in 1997 to 600 in 2007.

  A few years ago, I spent the day with the Youth Substance Abuse Service, Victoria’s biggest treatment and support service for 12- to 25-year-olds. I visited its residential rehabilitation centre and drop-in day program in Fitzroy, an area traditionally associated with high rates of drug and alcohol problems. About 30 young people, mostly under the age of 21, visited it daily. I like to think I’m a fairly worldly-wise person, but I was shocked by what I found. There were kids there who had suffered unimaginable neglect and abuse. Some of them sold themselves on the street to feed their habit; many were homeless. When the centre opened its doors in the late 1990s, heroin was the main problem, but now, overwhelmingly, it’s alcohol. In a decade, the number of young people being treated for alcohol dependency has doubled. Some are so hooked they’re drinking a slab of beer or two bottles of spirits a day.

  After I leave Odyssey House, I go back to the Youth Substance Abuse Service, now known as the Youth Support and Advocacy Service, to see what’s changed. I arrive at the Fitzroy residential withdrawal centre — an eight-bed facility for young people detoxing from alcohol and other drugs — and a support worker invites me into the living area, as I wait for chief executive Paul Bird to make his way over from the YSAS office nearby. It’s a colourful space that feels like a big share house, with a pool table, couches, beanbags, and a pinboard filled with photographs of young people smiling and pulling faces. A punching bag hangs in the courtyard.

  A guy, wearing a baseball cap and baggy jeans, walks past the dining table, where I’m waiting. He scowls at me as we make eye contact. He’s gaunt and pale. Despite the tough exterior, he has a child’s face — he can’t be much older than 16.

  When Paul arrives, I’m keen to know what kinds of back-grounds the kids who come here for help have. As it was when I last visited, he says that most of them come from broken homes, have been in trouble with the police, or have experienced homelessness. What’s changed is that the service is now seeing more young people who came to Australia as refugees from Africa and Afghanistan, and have lost their way in our drinking culture. Alcohol abuse is so rife in those communities that the centre recently closed its doors to new referrals for a week to look after young Sudanese men exclusively.

  ‘Their parents have come from a stricter culture, where drinking and substance use are not practised regularly, and then they arrive here, to a very open culture, and they’re all of a sudden put in an Australian school with Australian friends. Their friends are completely different from their family, so you see family breakdown as well,’ Paul tells me. ‘They may have greater ties to community groups, but not to their parents and elders, so they kind of go from nought to 60 very fast. You see very heavy substance use in a very short period of time, and that’s causing massive issues with anger and violence, not to mention that alcohol and drugs are used as a way to escape from the trauma they’ve experienced in their homeland.’

  It’s not surprising that these new Australians, suddenly furnished with freedom and access to cheap booze, would mimic the ways of their adopted country. And it almost certainly doesn’t help that many migrants are being housed in already disadvantaged areas, such as Greater Dandenong, in Melbourne’s south-east, which has the second-highest youth unemployment rate in Victoria.

  But the increase in demand for treatment is not just in underprivileged communities. The YSAS helpline increasingly fields calls from parents in Melbourne’s growth corridors. In these outer suburban areas, where there are inadequate or often non-existent public-transport links and few after-school activities for young people, excessive drinking is a burgeoning problem. Paul says: ‘People have moved there to get a bigger house. They see the developers’ adverts, they see images of people frolicking in fields, and they go there as a lifestyle choice — and suddenly they’ve got a very big house, mortgaged to the hilt, their commute times have increased, both parents are at work, so the kids come home from school alone. They may end up with another peer group who doesn’t go straight home from school, and that’s where disengagement comes from. The stress, financially, is so great that families are just breaking up, but they still look prosperous because they’ve got big houses, they’ve got the McMansions. There’s a kind of facade that there’s wealth and wellbeing there, but if you look behind it, nobody sees that.’

  Paul says, too, that while boredom, frustration, and the risk-taking nature of teenagers can contribute to them turning to alcohol, it’s also behaviour they learn from their parents, many of whom drink to cope with financial and relationship problems. ‘In the past, [parents] may have had the social connections to deal with this, but now they’re living in the outer suburbs, they have less connection. They’re less engaged with their kids, and they’re not established in local football or the myriad things that more-established suburbs have. There’s more alcohol use, and anger and violence in the family, and learned behaviours that the kids have picked up as a result of their environment.’

  Despite the increase in alcohol and drug problems in these communities, services like YSAS are trying to cater for such growing suburbs without extra funding. In six years of health reporting, I’ve watched the treatment sector buckle under the weight of seemingly never-ending growth in demand. Governments have talked tough on cracking down on alcohol-related violence and teenage binge drinking, yet those at the sharp end of the problem continue to flounder, with limited money to help those most in need. In March 2011, Victoria’s auditor-general released a damning report, asserting that the state’s drug and alcohol treatment system was chronically under-funded, after successive state Labor governments had failed to act on 31 system reviews over the last decade. As the politicians sat on their hands, waiting times for residential rehab had doubled. The report also revealed a revolving-door system, with 70 per cent of those treated later re-admitted, after suffering a relapse. And not only has funding failed to keep pace with the growth in demand, but it has actually gone backwards in terms of per-capita spending.

  When former premier John Brumby released his much-vaunted Alcohol Action Plan for Victoria in 2008, it committed $14 million to awareness campaigns and help for GPs to support people with drinking problems, but gave no new funding to the treatment sector. The Baillieu government has pledged to address the problem, but services such as YSAS and Odyssey House won’t see any new cash until the completion of a long public-consultation pr
ocess — essentially, another system review.

  In the meantime, I wonder what will happen to the teenagers who drink themselves into oblivion night after night, and find there’s nowhere to go when they have a moment of clarity that gives them the impetus to seek help. How many of those disaffected kids in the outer suburbs will slip from binge drinking to dependency, when proper support might have prevented that trajectory?

  It must be unbelievably frustrating for those who see firsthand how vital it is to treat addiction early. Awareness campaigns are simply not enough. But there is hope. They’re buoyed by the rise of the recovery movement, and by youth-led organisations such as Hello Sunday Morning, which celebrate those who choose not to drink. They hope that, just as the boozy photos and status updates on Facebook create a social-contagion effect, the growing numbers of young people talking about taking a break from drinking or going teetotal will have a ripple effect in peer groups.

  There’s some evidence that this is already happening. It doesn’t make the headlines, but there are a growing number of young people who are staying sober or delaying their first drink. The Australian School Students Alcohol and Drug Survey, which is carried out every three years and is considered the most reliable gauge of substance use in young people, shows that the number of 12- to 17-year-olds who had never had an alcoholic drink grew from 12 per cent in 2002 to 18 per cent in 2008, when the last survey was conducted. The 2010 National Drug Strategy Household Survey recorded that 77 per cent of 12- to 15-year-olds had not had a drink in the previous 12 months — up from 70 per cent in the 2007 survey. Among 16- to 17-year-olds, the proportion who had not drunk in the previous year increased from 24 per cent to 32 per cent over the two surveys.

  What may help boost those numbers is the increasing list of celebrities who are proving that you can be sober and cool. British pop star Lily Allen gave up drinking after confessing her wild-child ways were turning her into a ‘character in a comic, and that character is always drunk’. In July, Oasis bad boy Liam Gallagher quit booze after ‘20 years drinking and messing about’, and said that it improved his singing voice. And at the tender age of 21, Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe, hero to millions of children, turned his back on the bottle, saying he’d become too reliant on alcohol. He said he got swept away in the celebrity lifestyle and had been using booze to fit in. More locally, in June, 23-year-old Triple J radio host Alex Dyson became the 1000th person to take on the Hello Sunday Morning challenge, with a three-month break from drinking; the publicity from his decision led to an immediate jump in sign-ups.