Each day in drug rehab opens with a walk through the purple Cairns dawn and, with that - a little bit of hope.

The walk usually takes place at 6.30am on the Esplanade or the Botanic Gardens. They are learning a new way to live; trying to feel again, try to mend wounds.

People come into the rehab in varying degrees of broken, explains Donna, Client Outcome Facilitator at St Vincent De Paul Society residential rehabilitation centre on Minnie Street.

“Addiction breaks people,” Donna said. “There is often loss of children, their family no longer talks to them, trauma or prior trauma or trauma while they have been addicted. For example, some of the depths women go to feed their addiction, all of this comes to the fore once the substance leaves the system”.

Donna, vibrant and vivacious with her blonde locks wrapped in a topknot she wears like a crown, would know. The former flight attendant spent 35 years in drug addiction.

“Working as a flight attendant brought a can of worms. I was a user of multiple substances, but once I found crack cocaine, that was it for me. I just went on a tangent; my son couldn’t take it, my family couldn’t take it, I was constantly in and out of rehabs’,” she said.

When people arrive at rehab, they usually have their bags and pockets searched for substances. At some rehabs, people aren’t even allowed to have mouthwash or deodorant cans (hand sanitiser can disappear suspiciously quickly at some rehabs), and all contact with the outside world is prohibited.

At the St Vinnies rehab on Minnie Street, the situation is less strict; for the first weeks, they are not allowed off-site, but gradually, they are allowed to go out, leave alone and have visitors.

After the morning walk, there is medication, a meeting where residents discuss feelings and issues, followed by a morning class and then an afternoon class involving things like art therapy, sound healing, or anger management. They learn about traumas and triggers. About relapse prevention and when they tend to use — sometimes this can be writing a chain of events which led to the last time they used; what was happening that week, that day, that hour.

People also learn about the circumstances that led them to pick up drugs in the first place.

“I had a good upbringing,” Ms Wattenburg explained. “But I did have a family who were big drinkers.

“I can remember the first time I took harder drugs and when other people were saying that’s going too far. I was like, I loved that, I just want more.”

She said in some cases, addicts come from people who just used drugs for fun, and it got out of hand; in majority of cases, it starts as a response to trauma.

Jamie Moore, 38, and a St Vinnies rehab graduate, said he started smoking weed at age eight and had his first intravenous shot of speed at 12.

“Growing up, there was someone who used to come to our house, and he (allegedly) couldn’t keep his hands to himself,” he said.

“I was five or six when it started. They even used to (allegedly) videotape us; they did terrible things to us. Rehab taught me that I had hatred and anger in my heart from a young age”.

Mr Moore said that he walked on a man shooting up with a needle when he was 12, and the man responded by calling him over, rolling his arm and giving him a shot of amphetamines.

“I was awake for five days,” he said. “But what I found was that it was the only time I stopped thinking about the (alleged) abuse - that and pot, and I was able to stop thinking about it. My heart just used to pound because I was always worried he (the abuser) would come to the house.”

Mr Moore ran away from home age 13. He lived in King’s Cross, where he was shot in the chest one day (“because I was showing off, trying to prove what a big man I was) but recovered and moved to Tamworth, where he remained involved in a life of crime and violence. At one stage, he was choked unconscious, and during his eight years in prison, he was stabbed right through the knee and he was scared of reporting it he told guards he “slipped on something” to avoid repraisals. He was then later bashed by a gang who held him down and injected him in the veins with bleach which he said led to him having a cognitive impairment for several months.

He said coming to rehab in his late 30s allowed him to see the link between the alleged abuse, drugs, and his criminal behaviour; in particular deep-seated shame.

“I just wanted to escape, but the drugs, especially ice, turned me into a devil,” he said. “If I met someone, I just wanted to rob them or hurt them.”

Mr Moore said he had a realisation of how good life can be during a morning walk through lush jungle as part of the rehab’s recreational therapy.

“We were doing a walkout in Redlynch, and I thought, oh, this is the life, and I just thought, why wouldn’t you want this? Why wouldn’t you just want to enjoy life on its own terms.”

He also learned he had a love of arts and tattoo drawing. He has now been drug-free for more than a year and is about to become an assistant to a supervisor at his work.

“There is always someone worse off than you in the world.”

Donna said drugs numbed her feelings, and she had to go through a process of learning to feel and expressing how she feels.

“I had stopped feeling things, I had a lot of anger, nothing was ever good enough,” she said.

“It’s a lot of work getting them to look at themselves in the mirror and recognise that they are way more than the addiction; I guess that’s what we are, therefore, to say you are way more than that.”

Donna said along with working with addicts every day in her rehab job, she also wants to fight stigma in the community

“I would ask people to remember, they are someone’s mother, son, father, they are struggling with the affliction of an illness. Recovery is possible. There is always hope.”

luke.williams1@news.com.au