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22 | drinkanddrugsnews | October 2012
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sexually active – I was always one of the lads – so this was the worst experience
ever, made worse by the fact that male officers were present too. Then my name
was called out and I was taken to a room that looked like something from a
horror movie, with an old hospital bed.
I was asked to remove my underwear, and as I lay on the bed, I freaked out.
The details of what happened next scared me for a very long time, as I was
forced to have an internal examination. Even now, I find to it hard to understand
such unnecessary abuse. I sat in the bath feeling disgusted and contaminated,
completely invaded. My body was the only thing that truly belonged to me. These
feelings were exacerbated by the increasing intensity of my withdrawals.
I was only there for nine days, but that was enough. My mum was at court
waiting for me, tears running down her face, but she was greeted with a mouth
full of abuse for leaving me there. I can only imagine how distraught my parents
must have been. Nobody had contacted them to let them know where I was, and
it was only through a reception letter that they knew.
Pandora’s box was well and truly open, and the pain and hurt were unleashed
on my family and friends. I was an addict with a conscience but the only way I
knew how to cope was by dulling the pain of my guilt with more drugs, especially
opioids and barbiturates. So came the same old familiar cycle – prison,
promises of change, rehab, probation, court, drugs, and more criminality. I felt
totally disconnected to society and like a misfit in the world. While I was in
rehab, my dad told me of the pain of witnessing me go through this every day,
not knowing if I was going to come home, or if they’d find me in my bedroom with
a needle in my arm, dead, or hear that I had been raped or murdered.
He said, ‘At least when Pauline was killed, it was over and done with and I knew
she had gone. This is torture, Marie, please stop – it’s making your mum and me
ill.’ These words should have given me strength, but instead I was unable to cope.
I so wanted to stop, but I just couldn’t work out the pathway to do it.
Next issue: Can Marie come off drugs?
First person |
Marie’s story
‘So came the same old familiar cycle – prison,
promises of change, rehab, probation, court, drugs,
and more criminality. I felt totally disconnected to
society and like a misfit in the world. ’
In the second part of her story,
Marie Tolman
finds herself falling deeper
into addiction and has her first brush with the law
My journey
of self-discovery
AT 16 I WAS A REGISTERED HEROIN ADDICT
. Smack became my security
blanket, comforting my troubled soul, providing me with a place to hide from
myself. And then she would turn on me, making me suffer unimaginable
withdrawals – not just physical but also emotional. I was incomplete without her
presence.
My boyfriend at the time had acquired some peach Palfium. He was already an
IV user, but up until now that was one thing I said I wouldn’t do, purely because I
was frightened of needles. He was furious and said I must inject them. I had tears
streaming down my face, terrified, as Kevin placed the torque around my arm.
With my heightened senses I could feel every movement he made, every
breath I breathed, the feel of the belt tightly wrapped around my arm, the sound
of my skin piercing, then the release of the tourniquet. I felt euphoric – this was
so intense, so overwhelming. I was comfortably numb, silencing the constant
chatter in my head and blissfully at one with myself.
By the following day I was expert at injecting. Sad as it seems, I was actually
proud that I had moved up a notch in the hierarchy of drug taking. My criminality
stepped up to feed my ever-increasing habit. At 16 I had been arrested twice for
shoplifting and was feeling quite proud of myself – I was a real criminal now. We
used to steal cars to go and score.
One night, things went very wrong and we were arrested. They found me
hiding under a van a few roads away, and my mate Sean in bush. It was a Friday
evening and the following day we would go before Saturday morning court. Sean
was remanded in custody and I was granted conditional bail, but my parents
didn’t have a phone, so together we went in a sweatbox to grizzly Risely [remand
centre]. I was sort of excited that this would buy me creditability, but at the same
time I was frightened – a little girl trying to be a big girl, and way out of my depth.
Up to this point I had only done a few hours withdrawal and nothing prepared
me for the events to come. On arrival, I was horrified that you had to take all
your clothes off and bend down to touch your toes. I had never really been