There were two prison officers standing there as the door opened.
The woman looked straight at me, and she said...
"I'm not fucking touching her."
Growing up, a junkie was somebody who had
no morals, no values.
A junkie would steal from their grandma
and would do all the awful, awful things that
normal people did not do.
As it happens, it wasn't until I crossed paths with illicit drugs
and other people were looking at me and calling me a junkie
that I realised that a junkie is a person.
I was born in Sydney, in the inner west of Sydney.
And my father was and still is a hard-working truck driver.
And my mum was always the stay at home mum.
This is the room I like to come to when I don't want to know
that anyone else exists.
Take me back to when Lana was 10 years old.
If somebody had said to your parents, to your family that
Lana would end up using quite a hard drug
would end up entering a prison
Would anybody have expected that of you as a 10 year old?
Absolutely not.
I was pretty anti-drugs, for the most part, growing up.
I started drinking at quite a young age.
And then I started recreationally using drugs.
Not dissimilar at all to the trajectory of a lot of young people.
Most of them, 95% of them, will not end up in a cell
at any point, they will not have to be rehabilitated.
But, Miss Addictive Personality over here took it way too far
one step at a time, and one thing led to another.
So it was esctasy, then it was cocaine, and then
bam, it was heroin.
There's a certain scale of drugs
that sit pretty clearly within recreational use
people talk about as recreational.
So weed, cocaine.
But heroin lives in a slightly separate space.
Did you view it as a new doorway
or was it all just a spectrum of stuff you would try?
I knew that heroin was a whole different ball game.
Right.
Then the next question which you'll probably ask me is
why then did you do it?
I was on a path of self-destruction.
And I almost welcomed the fact
that this was going to be something extreme.
I sat in the car that night
and I told myself, and then I said it out loud
that I would be the one person that tries heroin
and has it once, and once only.
And truly, with everything within me I believed that.
I did.
Why do you think you believed that?
Because of the association
because of what a heroin addict is.
I'm ashamed to admit this but I was highly educated
and I knew that it was not going to bring great things.
I had issues and I needed to deal with those issues
and my head was telling me
this is not the way to deal with your issues
by trying heroin and ticking that one off the list.
That's not the answer, my head knew that.
But my physical state, was just consumed by the urge of:
"I want to do this. I want to know what it feels like."
I was with one person who had been addicted to heroin
for over 20 years.
How quickly did things spiral?
Ridiculously, insanely fast.
So I tried it, I enjoyed it
I was almost overwhelmed with the magic of it.
Everything was okay
for six to 10 hours.
Everything was beautiful and peaceful.
So I went back for more, and then I was pretty much
every day or every second day for about a fortnight.
Still thinking that, this is just a very short chapter of life
that I'm enjoying right now, but this is not forever.
And then, two weeks later
I woke up one morning and I was feeling sick
I had a runny nose, and I just wasn't feeling right,
And so I rang the person whom I used to meet up with
and we used to go and get it together.
And I rang and I said, I'm not coming to meet you today
I'm coming down with the flu.
And I can still hear it.
He just laughed, like an evil, evil laugh
he said, "You don't have the flu."
"You're going through withdrawals, and you need to go and get more."
And it was just this, boom. This moment of 'what?'
Five or six hours later
my runny nose transformed itself into me
vomiting, head in the toilet
sweating, shivering, and I just went, no he's right.
This is what it is.
And that's when I jumped in my car and I went and
met up with him to fix the problem.
How were you paying for all this?
Back then, my dirty little secret was just that.
It was a secret.
I was able to show up to my part-time job
parents who did not know that I had issues.
They didn't know that I had a problem.
And so if I asked them for some money, they gave it.
Maybe psychlogically I didn't want to see it or believe it or catch on to it.
I was on an $800-a-day heroin habit.
And I was homeless.
It was like, any moment I'm going to hear that Lana has died.
I kept expecting the worst at all times
I kept thinking the next phone call is going to be that
because I want my daughter home in her bedroom
where she belongs, where she's always been.
Where I know she's safe.
She's out there in that world with those people that are ruthless.
No one can physically worry this long, this much.
Sorry, darling, can I just get a tissue?
(That's alright, do you want to take a break?)
Sorry.
It took, I think it was approaching four years. Four, five years
before Lana did well and truly disappear.
and I started stealing to feed my habit.
I had been arrested, but I was granted bail.
That happened quite a few times
because it was considered petty theft.
And then it was one time too many.
And I was sent to Silverwater.
I was handcuffed
I was sweating
I was three days into a withdrawal because I'd been in holding cells prior.
And I had vomited all over myself in that truck.
I had vomit all through my hair.
There were two prisoner officers standing there as the door opened.
There was a man, there was a woman.
The woman looked straight at me, and she said
"I'm not fucking touching her."
That really, really, really frightened me.
Really frightened me.
Because that's when I thought, I've lost her.
I had accepted the fact mentally that I was going to be in prison for a very long time
There were a number of charges and I was waiting to be sentenced on all of them
And then, I crossed paths with a legal aid solicitor.
And he had said to me
"Listen, I've read your file."
"You tick all the boxes."
"Would you like to re-apply for bail via video link
and we can see if we can get you out today
and you'll be doing a court-ordered diversionary program
we're piloting it at the moment."
I was one of two women in NSW
at that time who were chosen for the pilot.
One of just two women.
I knew even in the early days of that program
that there were others who should've been
on that program with me who were not.
But it was at that moment immediately
that I said, I'm going to do this. I'm going to get my act together.
And I am going to dedicate my entire life, personally and professionally
to affording people the opportunity that I was afforded.
So I'm the lead on anything relating to rehabilitation
and reintegration.
You know we're talking homelessness, mental health
disability, substance abuse, poverty, you know loss of culture.
What were the issues, what were the reasons that made her do that.
That's what we need to start addressing.
My son is not even five years old yet
and if you ask him, who goes to jail?
He'll tell you, people who've made mistakes
but they're not neccessarily bad people.
That's my son's response.
That's pretty much the only lesson
that is mandated in this house.
Is that: absolutely anything can happen to absolutely anybody.
Lana, thanks so much for talking to us.
Thank you! Thank you very much.