Recovering drug addict pushing to help others

Colac district footballer Harry Sinclair is almost five months sober after battling drug addiction for the past nine years. Now the 27-year-old is using his experiences to help others.

Harry has organised narcotics support meetings in Colac, and has opened up to the Colac Herald’s Ben Martin to educate people about the help that is available, and fight the stigma attached to drug addiction.

 

ADDICTED

Every day was the same for Harry Sinclair during the height of his drug addiction.

There were no weekends with friends, or social events.

By this stage he was relying heavily on ice and GHB daily.

One day just rolled into the next.

“It was: wake up, find drugs, ways to get drugs, or ways to get money,” Harry said.

“Then I’d use as hard and as much as I could for as long as I could,” he said.

“Then I’d realise what I’d done, assess the damage and try to start the process all over again.”

Drugs had become Harry’s everything.

They consumed him.

“I wouldn’t get out of bed without it, I wouldn’t get into bed without it,” Harry said.

“I felt stuck in the lifestyle that I really f*cking hated,” he said.

“I hated the things I was doing, the people I was hurting, hated the way I thought about life, my future.

“I turned to drugs to get relief from my problems and that worked for the short term, what followed that was just pure torture.”

Harry admitted drugs had brought him trouble with the law; “as an addict you can’t live that lifestyle without coming into contact with the police”.

He knew he was addicted, but for the first four to five years of what ended up being nine years of hell, Harry said he wasn’t willing to let himself accept that.

“So I hid my drug usage because 1. I had no real idea about addiction, how bad it could get, the damage you can do and if/what help was available if I did in fact have a problem,” Harry said.

“And 2. I have the disease of addiction, meaning if I was to admit I had a problem with drugs then the next step would have been to stop using drugs and that went against everything I was trying to escape at that stage of my life,” he said.

“Drugs were my way out of my own skin and dealing with things I was feeling internally.

“Why would I want to give that up and have to go back to dealing with my problems in a normal way?

“If only I knew what I know now it would have saved me five years of horrible experiences and daily bullshit that drugs caused me.”

IT CAN HAPPEN TO ANYONE
Harry showed no signs of a future of drug addiction growing up in the Colac district in a good family, a good student and one of the region’s most promising young athletes.

He represented Colac in basketball, played in three junior football premierships with Colac district league club Alvie, and captained the Colac Tigers’ under-18 side to a flag in 2009.

Harry was even in the state representative mix at under-15 level.

His first exposure to drugs came when he was about 18, at various music festivals in Victoria.

Soon he began to experiment with “party” drugs on a recreational basis.

But why would a young man, an apprentice carpenter and talented sportsman with so much promise, turn to drugs?

“For me it was a mixture of two things really; alcohol had become somewhat boring and too much of a regular thing on a weekend,” Harry said.

“But the second reason was what I have since learnt to be the more troubling problem later on, and that was I was struggling with my emotions, anxiety and basically my life,” he said.

“From the age of 14 to 18 I battled a pretty damaging eating disorder in the form of bulimia and what I found out around the age of 18 was that drugs offered a quick fix to the cycle of binge eating and an even easier fix to the mental battle going on within my own head.”

Harry’s drug use started with “pills and speed”, but he said the progression from that to much heavier drugs seemed to happen in the blink of an eye.

“I started using speed on a regular basis once I realised the great escape it gave me from my problems I was facing, both internally and externally,” he said.

“It became my coping mechanism for basically everything in my life.

“After six months I found myself using ice in what seemed like a split-second decision that turned out to be the most horrible decision of my life.”

THE EFFECT OF DRUGS
Harry admitted he hated how drugs changed his life.

In the end he was left with very few friends around him.

“You meet people you never thought you’d meet,” he said.

“You attracted people around you with the same common goal and that was to use drugs.

“So your friendship circle changes and your world becomes a very closed off and narrow place.

“You only make time for people who use drugs, have drugs or are able to get drugs.”

The effect on his family and the “few real friends” Harry had left was devastating.

But he said he never really felt the true effect of his actions because he was so heavily affected by drugs.

“It’s really hard for parents to sit back and watch their son just self destruct and act out in such a crap way,” Harry said.

“Not knowing if I was still alive or laying in an alley somewhere dead,” he said.

“Getting into recovery, the guilt of putting them through that was one of the hardest things to face.

“Trouble with the law, or worrying about backlash from old associates over money/drugs was easy to face, it was a way of punishing myself for all the horrible things I’d done.

“But facing my family and seeing the pain and bullshit I had caused them was a real make-or-break moment for me.

“If I could face that and not buckle/relapse then I knew I had a shot at getting a real foot in the door with recovery.”

THE RELAPSE
Harry first tried to turn his life around in 2017, a failed attempt that lasted just six months.

He attended a seven-day detox centre and was hitting the gym, and had made a stunning return to football with South Colac.

Harry was one of the Colac district league’s recruits of the season, kicking a whopping 47 goals from 19 games as the Roos made it all the way to a preliminary final.

He returned to South Colac the following pre-season, but after breaking the scaphoid bone in his hand in round three he was all of a sudden unable to do the physical activities that had helped keep him clean.

Within six days he was back in the thick of his drug addiction.

“It didn’t start off slow again, I went straight from zero to 100 overnight,” Harry said.

“And from there it not only started as bad as last time, but got worse as the months went by,” he said.

“It was like a snowball effect and I just couldn’t get out in front to stop it.

“I really enjoyed my time there (with South Colac) and everything was looking great.

“What I hadn’t understood at that stage was that I had only switched my addiction for drugs with an addiction to the gym and physical activities.

“So as soon as I broke my hand, I was back where I had left it in terms of drug use.”

SEEKING HELP
The broken scaphoid turned out to be a blessing in disguise for Harry.

A stint in hospital for surgery this year gave him enough of a break from his drug use to seek help, and he finally checked into Geelong rehabilitation clinic Habitat Therapeutics.

“I went into surgery for a broken scaphoid, which had happened about 12 months earlier,” Harry said.

“That’s how unmanageable my life had gotten.

“It took me a year to get myself organised enough to go to a simple appointment and show up for surgery.

“Once I went under the knife it gave me a quick break from drugs and enough clarity in my head to realise I didn’t want to keep this bullshit up.

“So I checked into rehab.

“I didn’t really understand the decisions I was making at that stage but I was desperate for a way out of my crap lifestyle before it sucked me back in.”

Harry concedes he had apprehensions about checking in to rehab.

At the time he thought he was going to live and die as an addict. That he was beyond help, or not worthy of a better life.

He said a combination of things held drug addicts back from seeking help.

“I think it’s a mixture of not knowing the help that’s out there, or not believing that it really works, fear and shame,” Harry said.

“I think the shame part plays a huge factor,” he said.

Harry spent three months in Habitat Therapeutics, which gave him a chance to make his life manageable again.

From then he returned home to live with his parents in Colac.

He attends regular narcotics support meetings in Geelong, and has a sponsor he can call when needed who has been through the same battles Harry is facing.

But recovery is no walk in the park.

“It’s bullshit hard sometimes,” Harry said.

“If it was easy then no-one would be addicted to drugs, but it’s rewarding beyond anything I’ve ever experienced,” he said.

“There are triggers everywhere that can get me thinking about drugs and an escape from whatever I’m feeling at the time.

“Once you have done drugs in such a full-on way for so many years, whole towns become triggers, places you have used, roads you’ve driven down, songs you’ve heard.

“Just everything really in the end.

“Some addicts get this worse than others, it’s just how it is.”

In the past these triggers would have led him to more drug use.

He couldn’t control it.

“It was like watching my life unfold from the passenger seat, like some other idiot was making my choices for me,” Harry said.

“Now I have multiple things in place to deal with it, things that rehab and the support meetings have taught me,” he said.

“Some days are still tough but all in all it gets easier the more energy I put into recovery.”

HELPING OTHERS
Harry has turned his attention to helping others during his recovery.

He has played a huge role in the introduction of narcotics support meetings in Colac, which will run every

Friday night at Colac’s Neighbourhood House, starting August 2.

A chance to help others was the reason Harry wanted to share his story.

“Socially it’s been accepted to just put the addict in the corner, or lock them up and hope that solves the problem,” he said.

“The opposite of addiction isn’t just sobriety, the opposite of addiction is connection.

“And the more addicts are felt to be shamed and pushed away by the general community then the worse it’s going to make the problem and the harder struggling addicts are going to find it to throw their hand up and say ‘I’m sick of this crap, I want and need help’.

“So the reason I speak up is to try and help smash that stigma that addicts are horrible people and they can’t be helped.

“There is a solution out there for the struggling addict and I’m hoping to raise some awareness and to make the community see that this isn’t a problem that can be just kicked under the table and forgotten about.”

Harry said country communities like Colac needed narcotics support meetings.

He encouraged people struggling with drug use to attend and reach out.

“Country towns are in the thick of it with drug problems just as much, if not worse, than larger cities, and there is no public setting here that offers help to the struggling addict,” he said.

“The meetings give addicts the chance to make healthy connections again, drug addiction is an extremely isolating disease and what meetings provide – besides just the support of other older,
more sober addicts – is a sense of connection with a community and the opportunity to talk openly, without judgement or fear of sounding like an idiot,” he said.

“One thing I’ve learnt from the ‘rooms’ is whatever I may be going through or experiencing at the time, there is another addict in the room having a shit fight with the same thing.

“And you find a sense of relief and strength from knowing that.

“People shouldn’t be ashamed of the person they think they are, they’re not a bad person, they’re just a sick person trying to get well.

“Talk to someone before it gets in a position to snowball and turn into this shit fight.

“Save yourself years of torture, it doesn’t get any better, it only gets worse.

“There are heaps of meetings in Geelong, and one in Colac, that anyone can come along too.

“My first step was rehab which got me clean and gave me the solid base that I needed.

“Meetings and a recovery program are keeping me clean after rehab.”

THE NEXT CHAPTER
Harry will be 135 days sober by the time you read this.

He is home living with the support of his parents and helping out with the family business three or four days a week.

He attends narcotics support meetings in Geelong four times a week; a number he hopes to cut back to one or two in the future, even though he expects to be attending meetings for the rest of his life.

Harry’s a regular surfer at Johanna, Apollo Bay and Torquay.

And in the past month he has returned to the football field, following a call from former Alvie and Colac teammate Joe Dare who is coaching the Swans’ senior team this year.

“Joey rang me when I finished my rehab stint and I was on a family holiday in sunny Queensland,” Harry said.

“I guess between the sunshine and pleasure of playing under Joey, he got me over the line and I signed up.

“I’m feeling really good mentally, I’ve found balance and a calmness in my life I’ve never had before.

“Physically, I feel 80 years old from playing football again.

“But getting active again was a huge positive for me, the natural endorphin rush post-workout, surf or football game is something that I look forward to.

“However I have to be really careful not to put these activities before my recovery.

“Otherwise I just substitute my drug addiction for a fitness addiction and that sets me up to fail again.”

Harry said the support of his family had been one of the biggest factors during his recovery.

“(During my drug addiction) there were times when my family had to detach themselves and shut off emotionally from me but the offer of help and support was always there if I chose it,” he said.

“After leaving rehab my family have been my biggest supports.

“Besides recovery itself they are the most important thing to me, and they

have had such a positive effect on my life in early recovery.”

Harry is in the early stages of working out what he wants to do for work, and plan the rest of his life.

And he is in no rush.

“At the moment I’m just putting a lot of energy into recovery and meetings to give myself the best chance of leaving these last nine years of shit behind me,” he said.

“Then I’ll be able to work towards a future I never thought I’d have.”