Authentic

At school, I felt constantly uncomfortable in my skin. It was as if I were itching to get out of myself, to be anyone else but me. Which is why, when I turned eighteen, I let loose – drinking, smoking and partying. I was desperate to break free. At the time, I was studying nursing full-time while living with chronic nerve pain in my shoulder (which would eventually spread throughout my whole body). To try and dull the pain, I was prescribed opioids. They didn’t quite hit the spot, but the high was kinda cool. Upgrading to party drugs seemed like a natural step, so I took it.

The first time I took ecstasy, I had a cracking time. As a little girl I’d loved to dance and had taken dance lessons from the age of four. Taking my first pill felt like that pure childhood experience of dancing freely, uninhibited and with absolutely no fucks-in-sight to give. I danced the night away in a pure loved-up state, having an amazing time with my friends. Oh, the freedom, the forgetting of all the junk in my head! It was just too easy for me to fall into taking drugs every weekend and it became a sort of ritual. During the week I studied nursing and worked at a nursing home and on the weekends it was full-time partying. But by ‘Terrible Tuesday’ each week, the comedown was real. This became my rhythm for about a year and a half.

Initially, I was taking one ecstasy pill when I went out. But as with any addictive substance, you build up a resistance and therefore need more to get the same fix. That was my friends and me. We started to take an extra half, then an extra three-quarters, then two pills a night. A few of my friends would continue to party on once the club had closed at 6 am. From the Prince nightclub in Melbourne’s St Kilda, they’d go to OneSixOne, then move on to Revolver at 9 am to continue partying through Sunday. So, a night that started at 11 pm on Saturday was now moving into the next day. Sounds pretty gross, doesn’t it?

I thought so too. So I promised myself that I would never go there, that I would draw the line at 6 am and go home. But the side of me that liked to be liked, to be needed, to be included and be loved, aka Little Miss Needy, adored the fact that my friends wanted me to keep partying with them. It meant that I was ‘important’, ‘cool’, ‘in’ and ‘wanted’.

One morning, instead of going home at 6 am, I went back to a hotel room with the crew. There were lines of speed on the table. ‘For you!’ said my friends.

‘No, not a chance am I snorting anything!’ I said.

I had vowed I was never going to do ‘hard drugs’. But my friends were begging and pleading and, I hate to say it, their puppy dog eyes won me over. I snorted my first line of speed. It gave me the extra pep and energy to keep going and so, of course, I found myself at OneSixOne, and soon after, Revolver. This led to taking even more drugs to ‘keep going’. To where, I have no idea. For what legitimate reason, I have not a clue. This turned into coming home Sunday night after a whole twenty-four hours of taking drugs, not sleeping and not eating.

On those Sunday mornings, oblivious to where I was and what I was doing, my beautiful Mum would text message me: I love you, Neng (my Filipino nickname). Back then, there was no phone tracking and no way for her to know where I was. She had no idea I was at Revolver, high as a kite, reading her message. I’d feel a pang in my heart, a pain that touched me deep in the well of true knowing. It touched the part of me that wanted to go home, to be wrapped in her safe arms and held. It touched the knowing in me that said I was pushing the envelope too far and knocking on the door of ‘shit’s gonna get real if you don’t stop’. It touched the sense in me that wanted to be honest about the pain and suffering I was living with.

But the outside me, the party-girl me, the I-wanna-be-loved-by-everyone me didn’t want to hear it, see it, or feel it. Dancing my little drug-addled booty away was all I wanted to care about in that moment. So I would shove my feelings and awareness way, way down. Push them out of mind, out of sight and let the good times roll.

I was becoming too thin, my skin was breaking out, I had constant ulcers in my mouth and the Terrible Tuesday comedowns were getting worse. At university, I wanted to climb out of my skin, desperate to escape my body and how shit I was feeling. But I was in a rhythm, a synced-up routine of going out, partying, recovering, repeat. I was in with the crew, man!

My family were really worried about me, friends who were not in the drug scene were really worried about me, but I didn’t give a fuck – and not in the ZEROFKS Tuesday good kind of way. This was the you-don’t-get-me-or-my-life kinda fuck, the nor-do-you-get-to-have-a-say-about-how-I-live kind. The not-give-a-fuck with an invisible middle finger shoved right up in their face. The defensive, reckless, chip on the shoulder not-give-a-fuck.

All these people who cared about me would ask after me, a look of desperate concern in their eyes, but I ignored them. I was going to live life my way. Forget Little Miss Needy, now Little Miss Independent wanted to take the stage. And I was lost in the middle. Between these two extremes was the real me – somewhere . . . but I had no idea how to find her, or even if she really existed. These two opposing forces were working double-time against the real me, ensuring she could never see the light of day. Bouncing back and forth along this sliding scale of; on the one hand, people-pleasing to the max; and on the other, not caring squat about what anyone else wanted but me, meant I was constantly making really poor choices and hurting people who loved me and whom I loved too. Most of all, I was hurting myself.

One night I was out partying and this god-awful pain zapped in my shoulder blade. It was killer and I was so uncomfortable. I remember saying to my friend, ‘I think I need to go home, this pain is bad!’

She looked at me and said, ‘You just need to take another pill.’

Something in me knew that wasn’t what I needed. Something in me knew I needed to go home, but the false persona I had built that was so down for pleasing and forgoing my truth took over, so I popped another pill and kept going. Little did I know that the pain in my shoulder would spread throughout my body over the next six years, eventually overtaking my entire life, my happiness, joy and whole being. Little did I know that chronic nerve pain and opioid dependence would be my next battle – I had another reality check to face first.

Have you had those moments? I bet you have. Those moments when you know in your bones what will serve you, what is best for you, what is right for you, good for you and true for you. But something overrides this, obliterates it as if it never even existed and makes you act, say or do something that temporarily relieves you in the moment, but has you pondering later, Was that the best choice?

The peak of my drug taking came one night after a three-day bender. By bender, I mean I hadn’t slept, hadn’t eaten and had been taking multiple drugs to either stay awake, or get a high, or chill out a little bit, for three days straight. I was staying with a friend, house-sitting her brother’s place. Seventy-two hours in, I had no sense of reality. I went into the bathroom, looked at myself in the mirror and did not recognise the person staring back at me. I was looking at my reflection, completely confused, thinking, Who the fuck are you? I literally did not recognise my own face. It freaked me out and I started bashing the mirror, yelling, ‘Who the fuck are you?’ over and over again.

The friends we were hanging out with tried to enter the bathroom, but I’d locked the door. They forced their way in, so I ran out of the bathroom and onto the balcony. I was looking for an escape, any escape, so I thought I should jump. I wasn’t thinking clearly – I didn’t want to kill myself, I just wanted to get away – the screams in my head and body were deafeningly loud at that point. Nothing made any sense, I didn’t know who I was.

My friends grabbed me, put me in a cold bath and sat with me until I came back to reality. Maybe that’s why I hate ice baths now. Although my friends were also on drugs, they sobered up pretty quickly. They fed me as I was sitting in the bath, and kept a close eye on me. After a while, one of my friends said, ‘Katty, you need help. This is not fun for you anymore, this is a problem. Either we call your brother, or we call your parents to come pick you up.’

It was the last thing I wanted in that moment, but everything I needed. I had stripped myself to raw bone, all my armour gone. I had seen the face of someone I no longer recognised in the mirror. It scared me into stone-cold reality. I had tried to flee, but could not escape. Naked, I had nowhere to hide. Realness and honesty were the only things present – enough to make me want to see, hear and face what was going on underneath. I was being invited by some invisible force to turn within. Every ounce of me wanted to resist its call, but I had no strength left to fight.