Turning points: June 06 - Natalie

Life can change with the strength to overcome addiction, the courage to travel through life alone, the conviction to make the world a better place, or the determination to succeed on your own terms.

Natalie Galea, 24, was addicted to drugs at 12 and living on the streets at 15. Today, she has been drug-free for six years, is studying for a degree at university, engaged to be married and the mother of a three-year-old son.

“When I was twelve years old, I didn’t know anything about drugs; who does at twelve? But then I met an older man. One day he took my arm and told me to turn my head the other way. He said, ‘This will make you feel really good’. And I know it sounds silly, but I didn’t know what he was doing. Suddenly I felt really weird, a feeling of not knowing who I was. He’d injected me with heroin.

“It became a regular thing. At first my parents didn’t know anything about what I was doing. When I turned fourteen, they finally intervened – by then they knew something was happening. I think they didn’t find out for such a long time because I was still managing to keep up a front, still going to school and doing my school work, still doing music and my drama and dance classes. So they didn’t really notice for a while. But then they started to see changes in me. They put me in a hospital to detox and then they drove me to a rehabilitation centre. I only lasted eight days; I just didn’t want to be there. I was pretty far gone.

“When I left the rehab centre, I started living on the streets. At home my parents were always fighting about me and I just couldn’t take it. They almost divorced over me; now I say sorry to them every day for the trouble I caused. I was living on the streets for two years, still taking drugs, and sleeping in places like squats or under bridges.

“By the time I was sixteen, I’d been to numerous detox centres. Lots of people tried to help me. By this time I was living in a halfway house. I was still going to school; I think I just kept going because I needed some sort of normalcy in my life.

“I did a rapid detox when I was seventeen. When you finish it you’re clean, but you also have the tolerance of a baby for drugs. I didn’t listen to anyone. I left the detox centre, took heroin and ‘flatlined’ three days in a row; I nearly died. Luckily, someone got me to a hospital. I just couldn’t stay away from heroin. Addiction is an illness, and not many people are aware that it is – they’re very quick to judge people on drugs.

“When I turned eighteen I just made a decision that I didn’t want to do this any more – I didn’t want to do drugs. I think I had just had enough of that life. I got a job as an office administrator and went on a methadone program where they do a ‘blind reduction’. They lower your dose of methadone gradually until one day they say, ‘Congratulations, you’ve been off methadone for a week’. I’ve been clean for six years now.

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