How Port Augusta’s rehab centre Footsteps is helping addicts recover

Some have been to jail, others have lost their jobs, their houses, relationships ... and their kids. But at a regional rehab clinic they are aiming to put their lives back together, piece by piece.

There’s an almost collegial atmosphere around the morning BBQ, even though it’s chilly. Winter is not quite here, but it’s sent advance notice that it’s on the way. Alan and Melissa are looking after the cooking. The bacon is sizzling, pineapple rings are turning black on the edges, cooked burgers are keeping warm in a steel container, the fluffy white bread and individual cheese slices are waiting to be made into steak sandwiches. A carton of two dozen eggs is about to be cracked.

Nearby, and warmly wrapped, Anthony, Amy, Josie and Simon are watching and waiting for the signal that it’s time to eat. The smell of cooking is making everyone hungry. The barbie is a weekly highlight at Footsteps, a drug and alcohol rehab centre in Port Augusta.

Those cooking the barbie and those waiting to eat are addicts of various substances who have come to Footsteps in a bid to save themselves, to change their lives. The addictions are the common ones; ice, cannabis and alcohol.

Some of the residents have been to jail, others have lost their kids, lost jobs and houses and relationships. There’s many a tough tale to be told.

Yet, the atmosphere around the food is relaxed. Friendly even. A sense that even though most of them have only met recently, that new relationships have been forged, that support is on offer.

Footsteps sits behind one of Port Augusta’s caravan parks. In fact, it looks like an extension of the park. The cabins where the residents live are neat and well-maintained. There is a games room and a pool table. The grounds are neatly tended. Perhaps the only sign it’s not a normal holiday park is the large steel sliding door that eases back to let cars in and out of the grounds.

Footsteps clients Alan Collins, Melissa Gates and David cooking a BBQ at Port Augusta. Picture: Tom Huntley

After the midmorning feast, Anthony Pullenis sitting around the firepit. He’s dressed all in black – from his black beanie, to his black Adidas hoodie and black shoes. Pullen has only been at Footsteps for a week. Before that he’d been in detox. Before that he’d been in jail. He doesn’t want to go back.

“I had to hit rock bottom, which was jail,” he says of his decision to seek help.

The 35-year-old has been a serious injector of meth for four years.

“In four years I would have had four days off,” he says. “I would have shots before I started work, I would have shots in the toilet at work and I would have shots after work.

“I would flood my brain from the time I woke up to the time I went to sleep. If I went to sleep.”

Pullen’s problem started after a lung condition resulted in a serious operation. To kill the pain he was prescribed the opioid OxyContin. He became addicted to that but once the prescription ran out he went looking for a substitute. Ice was the answer.

He was holding down a good job at the time. He was a front-end loader operator. It’s a skilled job. At times it involves hoisting 4½ tonnes of grain in the air.

Before his addiction took over, he reckons he had assets of half a million dollars, built up over 10 years, but blew it all up through his drug addiction.

Pullen says he managed to hide his addiction for a long time.

“I was a really good operator,” he says. The only indication he was high, he reckons, was “sometimes I would get a bit chatty on the radio”.

He was married with two daughters, had a house, was earning good money and lost it all. He talks of the “urge”, which draws you back to the drug time and again.

“It dominates your mind, it clouds your mind to the point you can’t think straight,” he says. “The thought of losing my kids should have been a good enough reason not to use, but I wasn’t able to stop the urge.”

He reaches for an analogy to describe the sensation to someone who has not tried the drug: “It’s like being starving hungry but not being allowed to eat but everyone else around you is eating.”

Footsteps client Anthony Pullen opens up on his experiences with addiction. Picture: Tom Huntley

His relationship broke down, he became involved with another addict and the two would become high together. He walked out of his job when they started random drug testing. He talks about some of the ridiculous stuff he did with regret, but also with a sense of wonder that he could be so stupid. Like driving around and ripping plants out of people’s gardens. Pullen would also get high with other addicts and play the pokies for hours. He would sell “points” of ice to play pokies. There is something in all those flashing lights that appeals to the addicts’ brain. But there was also the hope of the occasional victory and he once won $4500.

“I got high that week,” he says with feeling.

Pullen talks with honesty about his problems. He wants to complete Footsteps’ 12-week course. He wants to stay out of jail for the sake of his daughters.

He’s not sure he can ever entirely quit ice, but, somewhat optimistically, believes he can limit his use to “recreational” levels.

He wants “to stop the urge”.

But there’s an underlying sadness in Pullen. He’s fighting this the best way he knows how, but that might not be enough.

Asked how he sees his future he says he wants to “live till I’m 50”.

Pullen’s story is his own but far from unique; it typifies the destruction long-term addiction can wreak on individuals and their families. At Footsteps, everyone has a story.

Josie Murray is a 39-year-old with nine children. She is a cannabis addict, turning to the drug to help cope with a violent relationship. She no longer has a left eye because a former partner attacked her with a tyre iron.

Murray’s children, who range in age from 17 to four, have been taken from her care. It’s her desire to bring her family back home that persuaded her to seek help.

“I thought I would be able to handle it (the violence) myself by self-medicating,” she says. But she was wrong. The cannabis took over and she was no longer able to look after her kids.

Now the kids are “my first focus”. She takes comfort in the support of her children to kick her habit.

“It makes me want to do this when my kids tell you ‘we’re proud of you’ and ‘you can do this’,” she says. “Being in here makes me stronger each day, each week.”

Footsteps is run by the Aboriginal Drug and Alcohol Counciland offers a 12-bed service, which is split between eight men and four women. It offers “therapeutic residential rehabilitation” and focuses on the “social, psychological and behavioural aspects of harmful alcohol and drug use”. There is counselling that examines the root of addiction and practical courses in everyday skills such as cooking. Pathways to education and employment are also pursued. It helps people find accommodation after they leave and to help them re-engage with their community.

Footsteps takes in addicts from an enormous area, which it estimates is about 900,000sq km. From the APY Lands to Maralinga and Ceduna, to Port Lincoln and Roxy Downs. It is the only such facility for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the state’s northwest.

Project co-ordinator Donna Meyers says Footsteps would like to expand its services, help more people, but funding hasn’t increased in “six or seven years”.

“Footsteps could do so much more,” she says.

Meyers would like more beds. There is currently about 20 people on the waiting list and that is managed by taking in those at most risk first. She says more resources are needed for detox. And she would like to do more to help train and educate clients, to help them find accommodation and jobs, and support them when they leave Footsteps.

Meyers says those most vulnerable to addiction are those most susceptible to unemployment, have had a relationship break-up, are a single parent or experienced domestic violence.

Footsteps project coordinator Donna Meyers. Picture: Tom Huntley

At the Stepping Stones day centre in the middle of Port Augusta, support workers Joseph Botomani and Samara Wallace say many of their clients have addiction problems.

“Our clients, most of them are vulnerable, they’re homeless, they have got addictions – ice, alcohol, ganja and all that,” Botomani says.

At Stepping Stones, they refer them to services such as Footsteps, but they also provide basic necessities such as a hot meal, and somewhere to have a shower or do laundry. About 50 to 75 people will turn up for breakfast every morning, another 30 or 40 will return for lunch. Most are homeless.

As with Footsteps a lack of funding for Stepping Stones is an ongoing problem. They estimate they receive around 60c a person to provide breakfast. The funding didn’t improve even though during Covid, costs increased as the centre had to ensure they were safe, and had to buy protective equipment and testing kits.

“We don’t have a budget for that stuff, so it’s really hard,” Wallace says.

And it’s a busy centre. “We do a lot of programs, activities to try and show them things that they can do rather than resorting to drugs,” she says. “We do a lot of painting programs and weaving programs to keep them busy, and keep them distracted as well and learning new skills, because a lot of the time it can be boredom that leads them to take drugs.

“They lose their skills with how to deal with anxiety. We’re trying to teach them new ways of dealing with it.”

But, again, they would like to do more. She says a counselling service would be invaluable, particularly for those suffering from grief. There were four deaths in Port Augusta in one year, including three hit and runs, Wallace says.

“We’ve got one client who lost their son when he was hit by a truck. He was only nine. So he’s been struggling with ice last six, seven years. And it is all linked to him losing his son,” Wallace says.

While funding and resources have been going backwards in real terms, the problem of ice addiction is increasing in Port Augusta. Before the Covid lockdowns, ice had become cheaper than alcohol, dropping to around $30 a point (around 0.1 grams). After SA closed its borders that jumped to around $100.

“It’s highly addictive,” Botomani says. “If you do it, maybe once or twice – then you are hooked. It’s hard to kick off the habit.”

Homelessness also increased in Port Augusta during Covid. Many Indigenous people were stranded in the town, as access to the APY Lands was closed, to limit the spread of Covid. There is also a housing shortage and Botomani estimates the cost of renting a two-bedroom house in Port Augusta has jumped to $300 a week from $190.

On the road back out of town, towards Adelaide, sits the Port Augusta prison. Dr Yilma Woldgabreal is a Department of Corrections senior rehabilitation psychologist and runs programs at the prison. He has been there for 20 years and says ice over that time has become an increasingly big problem. He says prisoners undergo a psychological assessment when they arrive in the jail that looks at risk factors.

“Drugs and alcohol is one of them, and among those amphetamines is really the main one,” he says. “Cannabis and alcohol used to be the biggest problem but over the last 10-15 years, it (ice) has really accelerated.”

Woldgabreal says many of the crimes that land people in jail have their roots in funding a drug habit or are as a result of actions taken while under the influence.

During their time in prison, inmates can take part in programs that aim to help them rebuild their lives at the end of their sentence. There are general offending programs and programs on family violence. There are six month and 12 month programs.

Woldgabreal says all programs address drug and alcohol problems but they don’t address them on their own. Other “risk factors” are included, such as lifestyle and peer groups. The broad idea is to give the prisoner more tools to be able to recognise what drags them into trouble and find ways to avoid repeating the same old mistakes.

It doesn’t always work. Woldgabreal sees return customers and they will do the program again and work through what went wrong. One benefit, he says, is that the level of offending of the repeat customers tends to be at the lower end of the criminal scale.

He says most prisoners want to change. That during the courses in prison they are full of good intent. But in prison they are in a “confined environment” and when they emerge back into the outside world, they struggle.

“When they go out there are some that persist in trying to do the right thing. Others go back into the same environment,” he says. “And that’s the biggest challenge I think – the temptation to get back into that old habit is really significant.”

Woldgabreal says the prison system tries its best to rehabilitate offenders but more needs to be done to support them when they leave that “confined environment”.

For most offenders the reality is that finding a job is very difficult, finding a secure place to live is difficult. If they are genuine about wanting to change, they may have to leave behind old friends.

Anthony Pullen relaxes with a game of pool. Picture: Tom Huntley

Woldgabreal says there should be greater focus on “reintegration” into society.

“We need to have that close follow up with those people and being able to support them whether they go to vocational education or employment, or even just doing voluntary work,” he says. “They have to have that structured daily life. As soon as they leave the prison, they lose that structure.”

There also needs to be more mental health support, more drug and alcohol support. He cites the example of the Scandinavian approach to prisons.

Norway changed its approach in the 1980s away from the punitive and attempted to bring a degree of “normalcy” to prison life. The idea was that the loss of freedom was the punishment, but that the prisoners should live as normal a life as possible. They have single rooms with ensuites and TVs. There are walls but no razor wire. There is a heavy focus on education and life outside jail. Sentences are lighter. Families can stay overnight.

The result is that Norway has the lowest rate of recidivism in the world at 20 per cent, that is the number of offenders who return to jail. In SA it’s around 33 per cent; across Australia it’s around 45 per cent. In the US, with its focus on mass incarceration, it’s about 50 per cent.

Norwegian politicians also mainly stay out of the crime and punishment debate, leaving it to criminal justice experts to decide the best policies.

“When people come out, they know that they are accepted by the society. They take that responsibility, they don’t come out hardened,” Woldgabreal says. He accepts this would take a mind shift from politicians and the public but points to the US system of “mass incarceration” as proof the policy of retribution is not a long-term solution to crime.

“If getting tough on crime and locking people up is the solution, the Americans would have found the perfect formula,” he says.

Back at Footsteps, Amy Donnelly is thinking about the future in a more positive way than she has for many years.

“It’s the most sober I have been since I was 17 or 18,” the 35-year-old says. “I am trying to find myself after 10 or 15 years.”

Donnelly came to the centre to get on top of her cannabis addiction, although she has had problems with alcohol and other substances as well. She makes a joke that it’s time to become addicted to “something else, maybe the gym”.

There is a determination about Donnelly. She wants a new life. She says she wants to be “free”.

When she leaves Footsteps she has plans to travel to WA with her dog. She thinks this is her last chance to kick all the old habits and live a better life.

“I feel like I am at the point in my life where it’s now or never. I don’t want to keep making stupid decisions and failing. I don’t want to go down that road anymore.” ■