Diary Of An Ice Addict

From high-achieving professional kicking career goals to spending $1000 a week on meth, one woman tells of her battle with addiction

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Five years ago, if you’d asked Rebecca Smith* if she could ever imagine herself taking ice, she’d have laughed you out of the room. Like the rest of us, she’d seen the shocking images posted online of addicts – gaunt, toothless, sore-ridden – and she had no intention of being a part of that. “Crystal meth is a scary drug,” she says. “I knew enough to stay away from it.”

Yet, according to the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, the number of Australians using methamphetamine (aka crystal meth or ice) has tripled in the five years to 2016. In the 1970s, long distance truck drivers took it to stay awake. In the 1990s, it moved on to the party scene. And now? It’s not impossible that one of your colleagues has been taking ice at work.

And far from those stereotypes of rapid physical deterioration as addiction takes hold, for those on a decent income, it’s easier to mask the effects – depression, exhaustion, paranoia, even hallucination – for months or years. But there’s only so long you can hide behind a pair of designer sunglasses.

A Sydneysider climbing the ladder in project management, Rebecca was no different to many of her 20-something friends, taking the occasional ecstasy pill, sometimes a little speed. Then one night in 2007, despite everything she knew, a line was crossed. Rebecca, now 33, shares her story.

I grew up in Sydney’s Sutherland Shire. My childhood was loving, well provided for and supportive. I did my HSC and got a place on an admin course at TAFE. Then I went into an office traineeship and got my foot in the corporate world. By the time I was 21, I had a good job, I was living at home and I should have been happy. But I wasn’t. I had low self-esteem. I had all this stuff going on internally and I just felt kind of lost.