In the broad landscape of Australian culture, there's a thread we often pretend isn't there - through our suburban streets, cities, and country towns. It's the story of alcohol and substance dependence.
This series of stories; 'Past Lives', aims to pull at that thread. We're not here to sugarcoat or sensationalise. These are raw, unflinching accounts that lay bare the reality of a culture where getting 'pissed' is a rite of passage, where 'she'll be right' masks a multitude of behaviours.
But these stories serve as a reminder that while the road to recovery might be long and winding, it's far from impassable.
*Please note that this content discusses substances other than alcohol and comes with a trigger warning.
Portrait one: Dave
Google ‘World's most isolated city’ and Perth, Western Australia will inevitably pop up. From space, satellites will witness Perth's lights - a lonely beacon surrounded by darkness, with Jakarta as its closest capital neighbour, not Sydney - far across the Nullarbor plain.
For those vaguely familiar with Perth, you might picture the tree-lined streets of Cottesloe bumping up against the Indian Ocean where families eat salty fish and chips under the Norfolk Pines. Or the port city of Fremantle with its eclectic culture, Victorian architecture, and Rottnest Island a short ferry ride away.
But inland Perth lies a different world - the heartland of suburbia, where Dave Russell grew up in the 80s.
Lynwood. It's not a place that makes the tourist brochures. Today’s middle-aged Australians who grew up around here might recall brick veneer homes - with a Toyota Torana in the driveway and a Hills Hoist standing sentinel in backyard.
Dave says of the area; “It was borderline dodgy. We were sort of surrounded by some fairly hectic suburbs. We had Langford, and we had Thornlie, which became pretty rough. We had Gosnells. So growing up when you were a young fella, you had heard about the gangs that were going on, which was the skinheads and the rockers and they used to have some proper, proper barnies.”
In short, the backdrop was a suburb where separated parents, footy rituals and after-school fights, were as much a part of growing up as vegemite sandwiches. Physically, the landscape of these areas in the 80s and early 90s was quintessentially Western Australian (dry, treeless, modest homes). Thornlie and Gosnells did get the occasional crime headline fodder - and Willetton was also a neighbouring area and considered the "better side of the fence." Not that Dave was aware of any hierarchy.
“West Lynwood Primary School used to back onto Lynwood High School and there was only the copper logs that separated them in between. So for entertainment, all of us little tackers.. us nine-year-olds, ten-year-olds to tell you the truth, would sit on the copper logs, and you could pretty much guarantee, at least every second lunch break, there'd be a scrap on the oval, like a proper UFC style boxing match.
“I once saw a guy's ear get bitten off. He was getting belted since he was a little fella, and just when you thought his day was really going to be a mess, well it probably still was a mess because he ended up biting someone's ear off, but, yeah, he jumped up, grabbed these big guys by the side of the face, and just chomped about a third of the top of his ear off, and we were just in hysterics. We were just absolutely blown away, all of us little spectators.
“And I remember going back and telling my mum, and that was one of many stories, like, ‘Mum, Mum, Mum, I've seen an awesome scrap on the oval today. This guy got his ear bitten off.’ And mum would just sit there with this sort of pensive look taking it all in. And she's like, ‘Well, that's not really the right thing to do.’”
When high school loomed, Dave assumed he'd make the short hop to Lynwood High, but his Mum had other ideas. With a bit of address-swapping magic involving his Aunty, Dave found himself at Willetton - the more "academic and sports-focused" public high school.
“Because my Aunty lived in Willetton and we could do the dodgy, you know, fiddle the books and go to that catchment - I went off to Willetton Senior High School, which I enjoyed. It was good fun.”
In essence, it was a lucky escape, and Dave's overall experience was positive.
“We were bogans in the sense that we were absolutely loose, but we always had this undercurrent of sport. Willetton Senior High School had basketball scholarships. They used to get rugby teams together. I'm pretty sure we were the first public school in WA to start up a surfing class. Which to us, you know, we were like, ‘What can you possibly learn in a surfing class?’”
Dave doesn’t remember much of the ‘theory’ involved in the surfing lessons but he does recall being the only inland school that surfed in one of the comps against City Beach and Scarborough. Surprisingly, they came third.
“The fourth team didn't rock up, so we claimed bronze. By default.” Dave says.
Alcohol experimentation was par for the course in his teens. But it wasn't until the 1993 High School Ball that Dave had his first brush with harder drugs. They scored what he calls ‘old school truckies speed’ and Dave drank a bottle of Jim Beam and woke up in a paddock with a cow.
It was that whole ‘rite of passage’ School Ball thing - but it sowed the seeds for the next few years.
Post-school, Dave started a mechanics apprenticeship. It was during this time that drugs became more than just a one-off distraction.
“I was adventurous. I was just up for anything. I wasn't a big fan of needles, but I just went yeah ok. Let's do it. Nervous as shit, but we sat around my Dad's kitchen while he was away and, there was three of us. We were all really good mates and then James, he had to do it because we didn't have a clue what we were doing so he put the needle in, drew the blood back and then injected us with speed, and I can still remember that feeling.
"It felt like my head was a rocket and it was lifting off my shoulders, you know it was just like boom - your heart just took off like a racehorse. Your head lifted off. There was this huge wave of energy that just went straight through you. Your fingers tingled, your toes tingled. You felt like you could just go and run through a brick wall, you know.”
Science tells us that drugs hijack the brain's reward system, flooding it with dopamine and creating a false sense of what's important for survival. For Dave, it was speed that flicked this neurological switch.
“The next chance we got, which was honestly the next weekend or at least within two weeks, we did it again and then that became the norm.
“So Thursday, you got paid and you got on. And then Friday you felt like shit by the afternoon, so then you got on. And then Saturday, you know, the money's starting to get short, but we're all starting to help each other out. There was always a serious amount of IOUs going on and, yeah. It was an accountant's dream - trying to figure out the books of who owed what.”
Looking back now, Dave's reflections are tinged with a strange mix of emotions. There's no denial, no shock at his own story. It's just another tale of circumstance, of time and place. His recollections are coloured with bittersweet humour, a quiet happiness that he's no longer trapped in that life.
The end came abruptly, sparked by an ultimatum from a new girlfriend: her or the gear. It could have ended differently, but Dave found he had no trouble walking away from the habit.
“It was really definitive with that old-school speed. I don't feel like there was a huge physical dependency. It was more habit-breaking.”
Today, you'd never guess at Dave's past. On paper, he's the picture of a successful bloke - a nearly paid-off house in a lovely area a stone's throw from the beach, a wife of over 20 years, a couple of kids. He's travelled, lived abroad, and weathered the storms of grief and loss that life inevitably brings.
These experiences have shaped Dave into something rare these days - a true individual. In a world where our identities are often constructed by external expectations and societal pressures, Dave stands apart.
He's uninhibited, free from his past, neither reserved nor self-contained. He is happy to share his truth, chuckling as he does so, a living testament to the power of resilience and the unpredictable nature of what the cadence of life can bring.
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