A young hairdresser who was convinced she was going to be smoking meth until she was 60 has revealed the moment she kicked her addiction.
Jodie Annabelle, 32, said she was going through a break-up when she was 23 and started hanging out with people who went to raves.
“It was all very innocent,” Annabelle, a young mom, told news.com.au.
One night she was hanging out with those friends.
They offered her a pipe.
Being drunk, at a low point and “hanging out with the wrong people” saw her accept the offer.
It was the first time she’d even seen a drug.
Before this, it had only been something she’d seen in movies.
She doesn’t even remember doing it.
“I thought it didn’t hurt me the first time, so I said ‘yes’ the next time. That’s how it slowly got introduced into my life,” she said.
Then, she met a guy.
He’d had problems with ice in the past and was trying to turn his life around.
Annabelle offered to help him with that.
The pair started dating.
The man still used occasionally and so did Annabelle.
After a few months, she started wanting the drug every week.
The man started to “put her down” about her drug use.
That continued for a year.
The hairdresser said when she first started using, she was spending $150 a day on the drug.
“By the end of that relationship, I realized I was pushing back clients to go and get on the drugs. I noticed that was bad. But even though I noticed, I thought I’d do it a few more times and then stop,” she said.
“You don’t really think too much into it. After that relationship ended, I fell head first into my addiction.”
In addition to meth, Annabelle started using heroin.
There were some dark times.
Her home was invaded while her son was inside.
She had run-ins with the police.
She resorted to selling drugs to fund her addiction.
“I got quite big into that side of the world,” she said.
Two years into her addiction, she came home from taking her son to school.
The house was trashed by police.
She was also told that she wasn’t too far gone — that she could turn her life around.
It was a warning she ignored.
She called her brushes with the law “lucky” until 2020.
This is when she experienced a home invasion.
Another incident involved Annabelle giving a woman drugs in exchange for a driver’s license.
She didn’t have one and needed to hire a car so she could pick up a dog she’d bought.
The minute she got into town, she was pulled over.
Annabelle handed over the fake license, and the police officer processed her as the other woman.
She was also charged for having drugs in the car.
“When I got back to the Gold Coast, I’d obviously told them it wasn’t her. So they slapped me with a charge of perverting the course of justice,” she said.
For six months she was preparing to go to jail.
Police dropped the charges around the time Annabelle decided to get clean.
It was not long after this that she had a life-changing moment.
She was shot in the arm in an incident she did not want to go into more detail about.
“It was after I’d been shot in the arm. I was in the hospital. I was still getting people to bring me drugs and go to the bathroom so I could smoke,” she said.
“It was in the bathroom at the hospital where I thought, ‘What is going on?’.”
She said getting shot was a “wakeup call.”
But, at the same time, she knew she relied on the drugs so heavily.
“I remember crying in the bathroom thinking that I couldn’t even stop when I was in hospital. I thought I’d be 60 and still smoking the stuff,” she said.
Annabelle decided she would just take it one day at a time.
So, when she left the hospital, that’s what she did.
She didn’t use a rehabilitation facility or narcotics anonymous to get clean.
“I did it on my own. Mostly because I was scared of getting my son taken from me. My addiction was probably very obvious but I kept it to myself,” she said.
She curled up in her son’s bed and told him that, after six years, she was going to get clean.
Annabelle had never admitted to him before she’d used drugs.
She took it one day at a time.
At the three week mark, she saw a drug and alcohol counsellor.
She couldn’t believe she’d made it that far.
“I was in shock. I couldn’t believe I was getting up and cleaning my house. I couldn’t believe I was functioning without meth. It had been so many years since I could get out of bed without it,” she said.
Due to her heroin use Annabelle also pays $70 a month to get an injection in her abdomen that is designed to curb with the withdrawals.
It’s been two and a half years since Annabelle has used drugs.
Now, she’s sharing her recovery journey online.
She said it’s “crazy” that she has a normal job and life.
She just wants her story to help others who are in the midst of addiction.
“It’s horrible to look back at it. Before you do drugs, you don’t think you’ll become an addict. It’s the same when you get clean. You wonder how you became something you’d never thought you’d be.”
