Why SA needs to double the number of residential rehab beds for drug and alcohol addicts

Young people and adults are dying from drug and alcohol addictions – SA needs to double the number of rehab beds to stop it happening, experts say.

South Australia needs to more than double the number of residential rehab beds for people struggling with drug and alcohol addiction, just to keep up with demand and to stop young people and adults dying, according to the head of the SA Network of Drug and Alcohol Services.

SANDAS chief executive Michael White estimated there were around 20,000 South Australians who needed some form of treatment for addiction each year and around 10 per cent of those would benefit from a stint in a residential rehabilitation centre.

Mr White said SA needed around 200 beds but that were currently between 50 and 80 rehab beds for addicts looking to quit in SA.

“We have the lowest level of beds per head of population anywhere in the country,’’ Mr White said. “If you only funded 25 per cent of cancer patients, what would people say?’’

“Addiction is a chronic, recurrent disease and we fund a quarter of the people who need treatment. If you are asking why we have kids dying or adults dying, that is why.’’

The state Labor government has promised a further 20 community drug and alcohol rehab beds. Eight beds will be added in Mt Gambier and Port Augusta, with the remaining 12 in Adelaide.

SA Drug and Alcohol Services Network executive officer Michael White

Mr White said there was huge demand for other services needed to treat addicts, such as counselling and detox. He said of the estimated 20,000 South Australians who should be treated for addiction each year, only half received help.

He said the situation was even worse for those needing help in regional SA, with most of the services based in metropolitan Adelaide.

Mr White said he had spoken to too many devastated family members who have lost loved ones, including sons and daughters, who reached out for help only to be told none was available, at least not in the short term.

In the meantime, they died of a drug overdose.

“Many SA towns, due to their small size, cannot sustain treatment services and local hospitals often will not detox or withdraw clients, so they have to travel to Adelaide (which) has significant complexities,” Mr White said.

Even if they can get to Adelaide the wait for the treatment they desperately need may be weeks away, due to the waiting list.

“What we know about people who are drug dependent (wanting to break the habit)… is that they go through what are called the stages of change (progressing to) help-seeking,” he said.

“If a person is ready to change but they can’t access support to change, they will shift back … or, they will exit the system completely, they will go, ‘this is too hard’.

“There are just not enough services … if somebody decides they want help, they want treatment and they phone up, they are likely to be told it will be in two, or three or four weeks time.”

He said SA’s comparatively small and sparse population added to the challenge.

“In South Australia, we’ve got one city and then the next major town is 25,000 which is very small in terms of delivering drug and alcohol treatment when you consider the cost of the infrastructure required,” he said.

Mr White one partial solution would be for each country hospital to include two beds dedicated to drug rehab.

‘That woman clawing at her skin? That was me’

An Adelaide woman fighting to beat a methamphetamine addiction is pleading for compassion, asking people to remember there’s a human face behind the hideous habit.

“It is not as simple as saying we are just ‘junkies and scum of the earth and beneath everyone else’ … we’re still human beings with feelings and emotions, just like anyone else,” Melissa Kemp, 47 says.

The former straitlaced bank worker, who rose up the ranks to a supervisory role as branch leader, first tried ice just almost three years ago and was hooked soon after.

Reeling from a long-term relationship breakdown that was suddenly ended by text message, she was feeling down and alone when she tried the unknown drug, which was offered to her by a man she’d met on an online dating app in late 2019.

“That was December. By February, I had someone stick a needle in my arm and I was addicted. It all went downhill from there,” she says.

“I had been pretty sheltered my whole life … I had never been around drugs, it wasn’t something my girlfriends or my work colleagues did. It wasn’t an environment I’d been exposed to.

“I knew nothing about ice, or methamphetamine. Nothing at all.”

Melissa Kemp used to be a bank worker in a senior role. She pleads to be seen as “a real person with feelings” as she seeks more support services in SA to help break her addiction. Picture: Naomi Jellicoe

She did recall a confronting TV ad, part of an anti-ice campaign several years ago, that showed a woman who believed bugs were crawling under her skin, madly picking at her skin.

“I remember thinking at the time, ‘that is really horrible and sad, you take a drug and that is what you do to yourself’,” she says, adding she has since done worse to herself while affected by meth.

“It’s horrible, I’ve clawed my skin up … I’ve had medical professionals who’ve been gobsmacked at what I have done to my skin.

“The scars are horrible, and I am talking head to toe. Everywhere.”

She says addiction is lonely and isolating. No longer working, Melissa is living back with her parents in the western suburbs.

Her spiral into addiction has, she says, fractured the family unit and caused immeasurable heartache – she is no longer on speaking terms with her brother and his family while her relationship with her dad is also now strained and long-time friendships forever changed.

“In the beginning I hocked electronics, my jewellery … my grandmother’s wedding ring. I lost everything (and) I got sucked into dealing,” she says.

“It has turned everything to shit … it is just a destructive, evil drug.

“I’ve known people on disability pensions who’ll blow the whole lot on drugs, and the pokies … they’ll steal from Coles and Woolies to eat, they’ll steal clothes from op shops to dress themselves. They just live a life of theft.”

She recalls the moment she realised she was an addict.

“It wasn’t so much shame or guilt but more, ‘Shit I need help and I’ve got to get out of this’,” she says.

After a failed attempt at SA’s only publicly-funded, long-term residential rehabilitation, The Woolshed at Ashbourne, Melissa secured a place at a private Sydney-based rehabilitation clinic.

Sadly, for the second time, she relapsed.

“I relapsed in January. The first hit I had, I got abscesses in both arms (due to an infected needle) and had to have emergency surgery at the Queen Elizabeth,” she says.

“I was told I’d come close to dying – that I could have died or lost my arm; that each year three or four people who present at the hospital as I did, die or lose a limb.”

For now, Melissa is managing to avoid using but speaks candidly about her addiction.

“It is like a battle in your head; you talk about how crap it is but on the other hand how much you love it – there is something that pulls you back or you wouldn’t do it,” she says.

“(When I am using) I sort of lose my mind quite a bit and become someone I don’t recognise … I get so messed up and am very much a different person.

“I’ve looked back at messages that I have written and had to ask, ‘who is this person?’

“It is not so much the drug that does the damage but the sleep deprivation it causes: your brain just can’t cope with it.

“Then, when I come off it, it takes me a while to recover and, once I have caught up on sleep, I’m generally very down in the dumps.

“Sometimes, without it, you just feel dead inside … when you are doing it, it livens you up, you are out and being social.

“By its very nature, its ingredients, the drug is addictive … it is made for you to go back for more, obviously, otherwise the people at the top wouldn’t be making all their money. They want to sell it.”

She says there’s easy access to the drug across South Australia and campaigns such as the one being run by the Sunday Mail to raise awareness of its prevalence and impact are crucial.

Melissa argues the community needs to be better educated about drug addiction.

“(Meth) is so easy to get, it is everywhere. Everywhere,” she says.

Melissa, who is studying a diploma in alcohol and other drugs, is determined to do what she can to help others, through her own lived experience.

“There is so much stigma and judgment,” she says.

“Even if I stay clean for the rest of my life, I’ll always have the ‘meth addict’ label … if you go to a public hospital, such as the Royal Adelaide, you’ll be treated like absolute rubbish if they know you’ve got meth history.

“I’ve never experienced such harsh and cruel judgment as I have since becoming an addict, from loved ones through to complete strangers.”

At the same time, she understands frontline workers need to be protected from those who become violent while high on meth.

“Emergency departments are overrun with people going into psychosis … we almost need a place to go that is separate,” she says.

Melissa, like so many this paper has spoken to over the past few weeks, says support is urgently needed with long waiting times for public services and private providers, costing upwards of $15,000, too expensive for most to afford.

“We need to acknowledge we have a drug problem here,” she says.

“You just can’t have waiting lists that are months long … committing to getting clean is hard enough, once someone decides to do that they need help almost immediately.

“The longer the wait, the more likely they will change their mind … end up in jail, or be dead.”

Melissa knows she will be ridiculed by some for sharing her story but is motivated to drive change and help others.

“If there is any way I can help just one person live a better life, I will be happy … I want to speak out and make a change,” she says.