‘Treated people badly’: Jacinta Nampijinpa Price opens up about past drug and alcohol abuse

Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has opened up on some of the darkest periods of her life, including a drug-infused spiral during her 20s.

Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has opened up about her past. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Coalition Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has opened up about her abuse of drugs and alcohol, and what ultimately drove her to get back on track.

In the lead-up to the release of her first memoir, Matters of the Heart, Senator Price revealed the challenges she faced in the early part of her life – both highs and lows.

“It would be easy for me to gloss over this period, perhaps to briefly touch on it and move on, but there is no point in me telling my story if I’m not completely honest,” she told The Australian.

“And that means sharing the darkest period of my life. It’s a time I’m not proud of, but one that very much shaped who I am today.”

Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has opened up about her past. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

In her 20s, Senator Nampijinpa Price was a mother to three children, starting with an unexpected pregnancy at 17, and had escaped a violent and abusive relationship between her first and second marriages.
Amid the chaos she was experiencing throughout the breakdown of her relationship, the then-26-year-old turned to drugs and alcohol as an escape.

Senator Price told ABC’s Australian Story partying helped “fill an empty space, a chasm, trying to escape from how I was feeling”.

She and her friends would spend nights out dancing and taking drugs, including ecstasy and MDMA, which she referred to as a “great escape”.

Senator Price says she spent a period in her 20s in a drug spiral. Picture: Supplied/ NewsWire

But relying on illicit substances took its toll on her health and relationships with friends, she confessed.

“You can become selfish when you’re a drug user,” she said.

“I think I could have been a hell of a lot better friend. I treated people badly.”

While she curbed her partying when she had her kids with her, things were different when her children spent time with her ex-husband.

During the time when her boys were with their father, Senator Price admitted she was “hitting it hard”, spiralling back into drug addiction.

“That cycle got me into a state of depression, self-loathing and anxiety,” she said, adding she was reaching a point where suicidal thoughts crept in and she began “breaking down emotionally a lot”.

A doctor told her to “sort herself out” after she was diagnosed with drug-induced depression. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

It took eight months before she was told to “sort herself out” by a doctor, following a diagnosis of drug-induced depression.

She revealed the best thing she did was seek counselling in Alice Springs.

“I needed to pull myself out of that hole,” she told Australian Story.

“I couldn’t self-destruct, and I wasn’t going to kill myself because of the behaviour and the conduct of somebody else.”

Senator Price also revealed the dark sights she witnessed growing up, with Aboriginal women being subjected to alcohol and drug-fuelled violence.

“Aboriginal women have never had a feminist movement,” she told the NT News.

“The expectation has been for Aboriginal women to toe the line, you know, don’t stand up for your own personal rights.

“Instead, we stand up for the rights of our race and therefore put ourselves behind the rights of our race in terms of rights as women, as individuals in our own right.”

She has vowed to stand up for Australians “on the basis of need, not race”. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

She vowed to help empower other Aboriginal women in her role as Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs.

“Every day I am in Canberra, I will focus on supporting Australians on the basis of need, not race,” she writes in her memoir.

“Because one thing I absolutely understand is that being Indigenous doesn’t automatically make you disadvantaged.

“People are disadvantaged by poverty, by violence, by abuse – regardless of race.”

The honest revelations about Senator Price’s past is set to be revealed in her upcoming memoir, which will be released on February 12 online and in bookstores.