1. T
his was the moment
when, at 22, my
seemingly
picture-perfect
world collapsed. It
was June 2011 and I
was in Berlin,
Germany. The last three days
had been a roller-coaster;
paranoid, confused, delusional, a
far cry from the backpacking
trip I had planned with a friend.
The police came on the final
night when I started lashing out
at people in the hostel. They
handcuffed me and walked me to
a van where a straitjacket was
waiting to restrain me.
This was not my first
experience of drug-induced
psychosis. When I was 19 I
wound up in the Alma Street
Clinic, at Fremantle Hospital,
because of a cocktail of party
drugs — ecstasy,
dexamphetamine and
marijuana. At the time I was
living a carefree life, as many
teenagers do, looking forward to
the next party, the next festival,
the next Saturday night out
clubbing. My life revolved
around dance music, summer
festivals and DJ gigs which
undeniably has a large drug
culture attached to it. But I never
thought twice about the risks
and was caught up in the
ecstasy-fuelled world.
The first scare clearly
didn’t warn me off
because three years
later I had the
much more
serious
episode in Berlin. The journey
back to health was long and
hard, one that forced me to look
back and reflect on the life I had
been living. As therapy, I started
writing about it and realised I
had an important message for
young people. This was the
reason I decided to turn it into a
book — From a Nightclub to a
Straitjacket: The Story of a Party
Girl — in the hope that it would
prevent someone else from
heading down the wrong path
and winding up like I did.
After two months in hospital,
partly in Berlin and partly in
Perth, my psychotic symptoms
had gone but I had fallen into
depression. It took almost a year
to come to terms with what had
happened. Everything in the
world made me sad, and I would
ruminate about my broken life,
the mistakes I had made, the
failures and the people I had let
down. When you’re young, you
have a picture of how your life
would be and my life was now so
far from the fairytale.
My parents were scared I
would never recover fully. For
me, it was their support,
constant encouragement and
love that brought me back. My
mum, even though struggling
with her own mental health
issues, never left my side for too
long and my father became
fiercely protective of me, begging
me to break up with the
boyfriend who I couldn’t see was
bad news. I owe my parents
everything for standing by me,
because I know it’s not the case
for many others.
I also had weekly coffee chats
with a social worker who helped
me immensely during my
recovery. Michelle didn’t treat
me like a sick person, a criminal
or a freak. She understood me
and, as an outsider, she was able
to make me understand things I
couldn’t see for myself or at the
time, didn’t want to.
The experience of being in a
chaotic mental health ward,
spending time with people in far
worse situations than me, was
quite confronting and something
I will never forget. I met people
who had substance addictions,
schizophrenia and various other
mental health issues. I met many
young people who, like me,
weren’t strangers to mental
health wards. Here I realised I
was one of the lucky ones
because so many people don’t
have the support network I
had. I was forced to confront
the dark side of drugs,
something as young
people we turn a blind
eye to. It was a huge
wake-up call for me.
Suddenly living the
party lifestyle wasn’t
cool anymore, and it
’Please don’t tell
them,’ I beggedThe last thing I remember was
being handcuffed starfish-style
to a bed in a hospital where an
Australian doctor was talking to
me. He called me Rachel. I was
so scared at that point and I
think I started crying. Maybe I
was Rachel now; maybe I was a
completely different person. I
had no idea who Clare was
anymore.
But then I got angry again
and started swearing and
wrestling with the constraints,
knowing this wasn’t right and I
hadn’t done anything wrong,
some other high power was
controlling me still. I yelled out
at them. I was so scared. I didn’t
know what was going to
happen. The handcuffs hurt my
wrists and I felt so
uncomfortable spread out, so
vulnerable and small. And then I
started crying again. The doctor
kept trying to talk to me but
nothing he said was registering.
I started to think of Mum and
Dad. “Please don’t tell them,” I
begged. I thought I could sort
myself out but I had no idea that
I was about to be committed in
a locked ward. The doctor
promised not to say anything
and said he couldn’t without my
written permission.
He shoved a pink pill down
my throat and Cory still had his
back to me, hadn’t looked at me
or said a word the whole time.
The next morning I woke up
in a concrete hell.
Don’t wait before
it’s too late to
start making
smart choices.
Lesson: Clare Kenyon has written
a book about her experiences to
warn young people about the
perils of drugs. Picture: Nic Ellis
Party drugs can have a devastating effect on your mental wellbeing, writes Clare Kenyon
....................................................
៑CONTINUED P110
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109October 11-12, 2014INSIDE P112
The tiny Kimberley community
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