Addicted?: How Addiction Affects Every One of Us and What We Can Do About It

By Matt Noffs and Kieran Palmer

This book is about addictions of all kinds. Addictions to smartphones, sex, games, social media, gambling, money, but most of all to alcohol and drugs.

The words 'addict' and 'addiction' are loaded with baggage. Not just in Australia, but the world over, addicts are considered to be sub-human, if not alien. This book aims to reclaim their dignity. It aims to rescue the word 'addiction' from its kidnappers and restore its humanity. It offers personal accounts from inspirational people who have found themselves in the grips of such addictions, and their amazing stories of survival.

At the Ted Noffs Foundation, Matt Noffs and Kieran Palmer spend their lives working with young people who have serious and often debilitating drug addictions. This book shares the tools they use every day. It offers insights into why addiction takes place and why it's a natural part of being human. It journeys across the spectrum of addictive behaviors, from social media to drugs like heroin. It questions the assumptions and begins to debunk the myth that all addiction is identical and predictable.

Addiction is something that could affect any of us. This is a book that everyone should read.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Jun 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781460707036

Matt Noffs

Matt Noffs is the co-founder of the Street Universities and CEO of Noffs Foundation, Australia's largest drug and alcohol treatment service provider for young people under 25.The Noffs Foundation is a leader in providing drug and alcohol services for young people in Australia. Working in the social sector has been part of Matt's life for as long as he can remember. The Noffs Foundation was founded in 1970 by his grandfather, Reverend Ted Noffs and Margaret Noffs. The couple established Sydney's The Wayside Chapel, set up the first drug referral centre in Sydney and co-founded Lifeline in 1963. Work in the drug rehabilitation field was continued by Matt's parents. As CEO of the Noffs Foundation for a new generation, Matt, with his partner Naomi, established and now runs an early intervention service known as The Street University, in Sydney's west and southwest, which aims to reconnect kids with their communities and help them discover their innate capacity.

Book preview

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

The Noffs Foundation is a leader in providing drug and alcohol services for young people in Australia. Working in the social sector has been part of MATT NOFFS’ life for as long as he can remember. The Noffs Foundation was founded in 1970 by his grandparents, Reverend Ted Noffs and Margaret Noffs. The couple established Sydney’s Wayside Chapel, set up the first drug referral centre in Sydney and co-founded Lifeline in 1963. Work in the drug rehabilitation field was continued by Matt’s parents, Mandy and Wesley Noffs.

As CEO of the Noffs Foundation for a new generation, Matt established (with his partner, Naomi) and now runs an early intervention service known as the Street University, in Sydney’s west and southwest, ACT and southeast Queensland, which aims to reconnect kids with their communities and help them discover their innate capacity.

Partnering Matt in this endeavour is psychologist and clinical services manager KIERAN PALMER. Kieran has dedicated his career to supporting some of the most vulnerable young people in the country, along with their families. Kieran has worked on the front lines of addiction and trauma as a psychologist and program manager, and now has clinical oversight of all Noffs programs nationwide.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you to those individuals who have inspired this work. Your stories are harrowing and beautiful. Your challenges are great but your spirit is unwavering. And your stories won’t end once the final page closes. Your resilience will continue to inspire. Your courage and bravery will push us further.

You are mothers, fathers, daughters and sons. You are all of us – together. Because first and foremost, we are all human beings, and no one in the world is a stranger to us.

Matt Noffs and Kieran Palmer

This book was a group effort. Many people put in countless hours in many different ways. There’d be no wisdom if not for the people whose inspiring stories have filled this book – thank you for your generosity. There’d be no grammar without my Cyrano – TC. No science without Kieran. Not enough research without Shelley. No structure or shape without Lu and Emma. There’d be no Noffs Foundation without the dedicated staff and volunteers across Australia. There’d be nothing to make it happen without our supporters. There’d be no bravery without the kids we work for. No sense without Toni. No guidance without Frank. No reason without Jamie. No mentoring without Neil. No me without Mum and Dad, and Ted and Margaret before them. No courage without Alex. No community without the neighbourhood. No ideas without Phillip. No encouragement without Greg. No joy without Chris, Eck, Matty B, Matty K, Roo. No feedback and inspiration without Chris. No ‘no email’ without Iain. No time without Mark and no Mark without Mike and Bec. Not enough love without Naomi, Ami and Eti. And no book whatsoever without Helen.

Matt

I would like to thank:

My wife Melissa and beautiful twins. You give my life purpose and keep me smiling every day. You have my heart forever.

My family for your love, guidance and endless support, and for always keeping me grounded.

My friends for the laughs, the experiences, and for always being there no matter what.

My colleagues past and present, both at Ted Noffs and around the field. I continue to grow thanks to you. You are the voice for those who don’t have one . . . yet.

And every young person I have had the privilege of working with. Your energy and spirit are what drive me. You continue to challenge me and hold me accountable to the highest standards, and you have changed me profoundly.

Thank you.

Kieran

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to

the lives behind the stories

EPIGRAPH

I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I

sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of

pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has

been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories,

from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some

strange impending doom.

–Edgar Allan Poe

CONTENTS

About the Authors

Acknowledgements

Dedication

Epigraph

Foreword         Dr Alex Wodak

Introduction    Matt Noffs and Kieran Palmer

PART I: PLEASURE

ONE: ORIGINS

TWO: PLEASURE ON THE BRAIN

THREE: SCREAM TIME

FOUR: A HIGH PRICE

FIVE: WE’RE ALL REMOVED

Mindful Seeing

SIX: RETHINKING ADDICTION

SEVEN: MORE THAN JUST A GAME

EIGHT: RAISE THEM LIKE GLADIATORS

NINE: A PRESCRIPTION FOR ADDICTION

TEN: OFFERINGS AT THE ALTAR OF RATINGS

ELEVEN: HEROIN SAVED MY LIFE

PART II: PAIN

TWELVE: THE DARK DANCE OF TRAUMA AND ADDICTION

THIRTEEN: FEAR AND THE BRAIN

A Heightened Threat Radar

A System in Overload

An Issue of Timing

FOURTEEN: I AM JACK, BUT WHO IS JACK?

A Broken Internal Relationship

Difficult Relationships with Others

‘I Just Can’t Seem to Stop’

FIFTEEN: OF THE WORLD BUT REMOVED

‘Why Can I Never Get My Emotions in Check?’

The Tragedy of Avoidance

Rendered Speechless

An Identity in Crisis

SIXTEEN: TEN TIPS FOR FAMILIES AND FRIENDS

PART III: HOPE

SEVENTEEN: BEATING ADDICTION

EIGHTEEN: A SUNFLOWER AMONG THE SUGARCANE

NINETEEN: A CHILD BECOMES MAN OF THE HOUSE

Coping with Cravings: Urge Surfing

TWENTY: BAD CHOICES?

Coping with Cravings: The Four Ds

TWENTY-ONE: THE GIRL WHO STARTED SOMETHING

Coping with Cravings: Self-Talk

TWENTY-TWO: BLINDING LIGHT

Social Support and Positive Activities

TWENTY-THREE: IN THE FIRING LINE

Balanced and Positive Thinking

TWENTY-FOUR: DIONYSUS

TWENTY-FIVE: SPIRIT

Endnotes

Bibliography

Where to Find Help

Copyright

FOREWORD

There are striking parallels between drug use and other appetites and behaviours.

Shakespeare wrote a sonnet about sexual lust which begins:

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame

Is lust in action; and till action, lust

Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame . . .

In the final couplet, Shakespeare goes well beyond his original subject of lust:

All this the world well knows; yet none knows well

To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

He reminds us here that some objects of desire are so irresistibly alluring that we continue to pursue them despite being fully aware of their potential to destroy us. In the very act of satisfying our appetite, we simultaneously feel shame and despise the very thing we crave.

Long before Shakespeare, Homer’s Odyssey also dealt with the question of resisting that which is irresistible and fatally self-destructive. Odysseus had a healthy respect for the power of temptation. In Greek mythology, the seductive song of the Sirens often lured sailors to their deaths. Like moths drawn to a candle flame, these sailors steered towards the enchanting sound, dashing their ships to pieces against the rocks.

Odysseus, determined to avoid this fate, ordered his crew to plug their ears with beeswax and tie him firmly to the ship’s mast. Not surprisingly, on hearing the Sirens singing, Odysseus begged to be untied. But as the crew had been instructed to block their ears, they were deaf to his pleas. In this way, Odysseus managed to avoid the destructive pull of the irresistible.

Odysseus deployed a ‘Just Say No’ tactic very successfully in this ancient myth. However, for most people encountering day in and day out the siren song of drugs, such as heroin or ice, overcoming temptation is far more complex.

All too often, previous trauma plays a critical role in the lives of people struggling with severe drug problems. Often the demons are external; sometimes the demons are internal. How early deeply traumatic experience influences later drug use is discussed in this book, as well as the important role of poverty. It makes sense to me, after decades of experience working with people struggling with drug problems, to connect significant social and economic disadvantage to illicit drug problems. As long as large numbers of young people with poor housing, education and employment prospects have little to look forward to for the rest of their bleak lives, a brief and blissful chemical vacation will always seem pretty attractive. The offer of a sizeable sum of money to deliver a mysterious package of unknown contents on a shiny new red motorbike to a stranger in a distant city will always seem compelling to someone who can’t find regular satisfying work.

Minimising disadvantage among Australians living in extreme poverty, however, has not been attractive for our policy-makers in recent decades. Despite calls to implement reforms in taxation, welfare and education that would help address the problem of social and economic inequality in this country, the gaps continue to grow. Matt Noffs and Kieran Palmer have compiled stories here that remind us that humanity must be our first and foremost priority. They should know. Like me, they’ve spent their lives on the front line of drug treatment and harm reduction.

The Noffs Foundation has made a unique contribution to Australia’s response to illicit drugs over three generations. Ted and Margaret Noffs established the Wayside Chapel in Kings Cross in the 1960s. They accepted that people who used drugs were just as worthy of respect and compassion as other members of the community. They also set up the country’s first drug referral centre. Ted made it his mission that politicians wouldn’t ignore the drug issue. Ted Noffs’s son, Wes, and his wife Mandy, created the country’s first adolescent treatment service with evidence-based harm reduction principles at its core. Ted’s grandson, Matt, alongside the next generation of Noffs staff including Director of Clinical Services Kieran Palmer, have created a network of effective drug treatment programs for young people across Australia.

It is time to take a fresh look at legal and illegal drug use as well as more ubiquitous and emerging challenges – technology for example. This book calls for a broader and more mature discussion about how the community should respond to drugs and other addictions. But beyond discussion, it also offers strategies, tactics and tools for the reader to use in their own lives. After all, half a century of criminalising people for their drug use hasn’t got us very far.

Think of this as you contemplate Shakespeare’s wise words:

All this the world well knows; yet none knows well

To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

Dr Alex Wodak, AM

President, Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation

Emeritus Consultant, St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney

Director, Australia21

INTRODUCTION

1982. Kings Cross. A throng of people files into the Wayside Chapel.

‘Have you seen him?’ asks one lady.

‘No,’ replies her husband.

They’ve come all the way from Albury to hear a talk by Ted Noffs, Australia’s most famous minister. They never thought they’d be in a church again – if you could call the Wayside Chapel that. In the 1980s religion was falling by the wayside. But Noffs was preaching something different. In fact, his message was so different that the Church had charged him with heresy three times. He’d implied that Jesus was a human being, not God. He’d declared that homosexual people should have the right to marry. But perhaps his worst slight against the Church was to say that all religions were equal.

His most profound statement was probably his Creed of the Family of Humanity:

I am a Protestant but I am also a Catholic! I am a Muslim but I am also a Jew! I am a Hindu but I am also a Buddhist! I am an agnostic but I am also an atheist, because first and foremost, I am a human being. And no one in this world is a stranger to me.

He was taking the words of the ancient Roman playwright Terence – ‘nothing that is human is alien to me’¹ – and moulding them into something that resonated with thousands of families across modern Australia.

As Alain de Botton and John Armstrong argue in their book Art as Therapy,² Terence’s phrase ‘captures the idea of being able to find personal resonance even in areas far from one’s own direct experience and culture. It is when we find points of connection to the foreign that we are able to grow.’

It is through our connections – not just with our immediate family, but also with the entire family of humanity, with what normally feels alien – that we become healthier as a society, as a community and as individuals in that community. The difference between us and ‘others’ can be a source of strength and solace. It is the judgments and preconceptions that we have been taught to harbour which are the source of our fear. Therefore, whether it be skin colour, sexual preference, religion or drug use, the grand paradox and crux of Ted’s creed is this: it is precisely in what scares us about others that we will find freedom from that fear. He reminds us that we are all human.

* * *

1995. Sydney. I am fifteen years old. I have just been informed that Pa – the word that still presses against my heart today, the name I called my grandfather, Ted Noffs – is dead.

It’s the end of a bitter eight years, during which the life has been sucked slowly out of him. A severe stroke has left him unable to move. That loss is visible: he’s skeletal. The energy once so recognisable when he was in the room with you is now so evidently missing. His frame is splayed out across his nursing bed. He is always staring at the ceiling, mouth agape – forever moaning, wailing.

How could someone so powerful and so good be reduced to this? I have no memory of him from those eight years when he wasn’t crying in my company. From the time he had his stroke in 1987 to the moment he died, I worried that my presence was causing him pain.

Had I disappointed him? What could a seven-year-old do to disappoint his grandfather? Could he see into the future?

He taught me wonder and magic. He once wrote: ‘You are a child of the stars!’

He wrote that about all of us; all children, all people were as important to him as his own grandchildren. ‘What about the children?’ he’d constantly cry out to my grandmother in his post-stroke years. Nothing was more important.

Even from a young age, he filled me to the brim with the excitement and potential of life. He would constantly quote the famous cellist Pablo Casals:

We teach [our children] that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: . . . You are unique . . . there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, . . . the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? . . . We all must work to make the world worthy of its children.³

Ted loved those words. My own childhood – thanks to my loving parents and grandparents – was certainly imbued with a sense of wonder and possibility.

But over those years of watching Ted wither away, I learned to mistrust the universe. That night sky that was full of mystery and wonder became a dark, heavy sheet that would press down upon me like a hot iron. I learned that God was not what Ted made him out to be – benevolent. I learned a darkness that perhaps, I would tell myself, my grandfather never understood.

How could I resolve this deep mistrust with a desire to help? Ted went through the very same kinds of experiences in his own life. As a child, he found a dead sparrow in a field, and as he cradled its tiny body in his hands, he questioned the cruelty inherent in the universe.

These feelings aren’t unique to Ted or me; they’re something that you may have grappled with at some stage too.

Perhaps it was because I had been raised to see the good in people that this darkness was something that both bothered me and gave me solace as I reached my twenties. It was destructive and at the same time protective. I struggled to resolve the fact that Ted had loved people so much when I, on the other hand, was mostly wary of them. And that wariness didn’t have any place in the heart of a Noffs. A Noffs had to be kind in all his dealings. A Noffs had to sacrifice his own needs and wants for the needs and wants of others. A Noffs was a guardian of the weak and an enemy of the selfish.

Of course these black-and-white definitions were juvenile and unformed; nonetheless, they embedded themselves in my consciousness from a young age. We are never one thing; as Walt Whitman once wrote, we ‘contain multitudes’.⁴

It would take years for me to overcome the trauma of seeing my heroic grandfather reduced to bones.

At twenty-seven years of age – and just before I met Naomi, who would become my wife – I sat inside a dark and deserted warehouse in western Sydney. I had no idea where I was going to start, but I had a strong vision for a thing, based in this warehouse, that I was calling ‘The Street University’.

I pulled out a piece of paper and scrawled a quote from Henry David Thoreau on it: ‘If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.’⁵

I reached for a piece of mangled Blu-Tack and stuck the paper to the wall. The quote gave me some solace that I knew what I was doing. I didn’t.

In each of the many ideas that Ted helped bring to life – from the Freedom Rides for Indigenous rights, to the Lifeline crisis support service and the Wayside Chapel, the country’s first drug crisis centre – he followed a hunch that first needed to be tested and evaluated. I suppose I became ‘addicted’ to following hunches of my own. I became addicted to testing and building and creating.

We now have Street Universities across Queensland, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, with more to come. You can read a little about them in this book. They have become something different from – better than – the castle I first imagined. And they are all informed and sculpted and made beautiful by the young people who run them.

What I learned along the way was that the young people themselves are the foundations Thoreau was referring to. Listening to them was the most important decision I have ever made.

They have also taught me something of addiction. That it’s complex. That it comes in many forms. That it isn’t just one thing, it’s a spectrum of behaviours.

It may come as a shock to learn that many neurologists, psychologists and researchers also see addiction as natural – and certainly not as evil. We experience moments of addiction, as you’ll discover later, in unexpected places like romance and love.

I also learned over the course of writing this book that while we in the drugs field replaced the word ‘addiction’ with ‘dependence’, the rest of the world sees both those terms in a very different way.

Perhaps most importantly, you’ll discover in this book that while not all addictions are destructive, when they do become destructive, there is a way out. But tackling destructive addictions is not as simple as asking people to ‘Just Say No’ or ‘gamble responsibly’. Gimmicky solutions like those are now gone with the wind.

So what does work? Should we now be telling our children to ‘Say Yes’ to drugs?

Of course not. Our conversations with our children require tact and nuance. But parents especially are left in the dark as to how to approach this new understanding of addiction. What tools do we give parents and other carers today? Hopefully this book will equip you with some of those.

This book is an exploration of what addiction has been and what it might become in the future. Or more accurately, how it has been defined in the past and how we might come to define it in the future.

I also want to take a moment to discuss trauma, which often plays the protagonist’s role in the story of addiction. In speaking of trauma we must also speak of darkness, something that we all try to avoid in our lives. And yet if we can grow a capacity to admire darkness, we will paradoxically grow to tolerate its unexpected gifts.

But what gifts can possibly come from trauma? To begin with, none of us can ever eliminate horrible events from our lives. Conversely, and perhaps cruelly, trauma teaches us to become resilient, and it can ultimately help us to thrive. The personal stories in this book are imbued with trauma, but they are ultimately stories of loving and living.

I include my own stories in this. The darkest parts of my youth have helped me become resilient in the fight for equality for those suffering with drug issues. They have made me more capable of working with young people experiencing their own anger and trauma. In learning to appreciate darkness, we allow space for our past to become just that: the past. We learn to live in the here and now.

When we are young, this is difficult to appreciate. And as adults it isn’t always fully resolved. However, what hasn’t killed us becomes easier to integrate into our lives. We can learn to acknowledge the pain and, secretly, somewhere deep down, the most honest of us may admit to cherishing it. We can sit in the tension that it created and find peace. We can begin to see that the darkest bits of our lives, the traumas, have become part of the patchwork quilt of our experience.

In this way, our experiences differ on the surface. The characters are different. The plots and subplots meander in different directions but the gist is always the same. We are all trying to get by. In this way, I am a part of you and you are a part of me. That’s what the Creed of the Family of Humanity speaks to. We are all in this together.

* * *

Before I introduce my co-author, Kieran, I want to move beyond the darkness and tell a story of my grandfather when he was alive and strong and well.

It is a Sunday. I’m five years old and in a park looking out over Sydney Harbour. Seagulls scream in the salty air above. Boats of all sizes slice through the blue water like scissors through paper. Hot chips are massacred left, right and centre by the ravenous gulls.

I carefully cradle a bright-pink strawberry milkshake and my remaining chips. Pa places me on the swing; my little lunch is handed to my father, who stands nearby with his face to the sea.

With a whoosh! I am pushed up into the air – high on a swing attached by folded metal chains, and sitting on a hot rubber seat.

Whoosh! I’m sent higher and higher into the air. The rush, the air – fantastic.

‘Careful, Dad, not too high!’ my father calls to his father.

‘He can handle it!’ Ted tells his proud son. And so my grandfather pushes and pushes.

Higher and higher. I almost touch the stars!

After a minute, I slowly come back to earth. My grandfather plucks me out of the seat and puts me on my feet.

I look up at him with a wide smile and proceed to vomit pink half-digested chips all