‘‘IT’S like playing with the devil except he’s in control of everything,’’ former ice addict Sandro Castillo told the Gazette.
From the age of 18, Sandro was addicted to ice and stabbed his brother in what he described was a result of an “ice rage”.
Now six years later, the 24-year-old is desperately trying to forget the past, build his future and completely recover.
He described his life with ice in it as ‘‘chaotic, empty and hollow’’.
‘‘It made me go crazy, I wasn’t in control of what I was doing,’’ he said.
‘‘It brought out the worst in me.”
Before he started experimenting with ice, Sandro was doing other drugs and said stress from family problems led him to the point where he started using it.
‘‘I just wanted to escape reality. My brother gave me my first hit when I was stressed. He just shoved it in my mouth.
‘‘From then, I started smoking it then eventually injecting it.’’
After years of intense ice use, the father-of-one knew he needed help after he developed serious psychosis which saw him go in and out of hospital.
‘‘It was just chaos; I was living in a distorted reality. I started selling everything in my house to afford my habit and lost everything including my job, my friends and my family.
“I just left everything behind and decided to come here [Yarramundi] to turn my life around.’’
Sandro said ice made him feel as though he was constantly ‘‘crashing and burning’’.
‘‘I guess you just learn from your mistakes. I would never turn back. Just looking back now makes me realise I was enslaved by it.
“You start using it with friends, and then you start using it by yourself. Then eventually you become trapped, it eats your soul, it eats your happiness away, it eats your energy, it eats you.”
He said he used to watch all types of shows and documentaries about ice and just laugh about it.
“You just dismiss all you see because you don’t believe it could ever happen to you.”
He said the way the media and the government portrayed ice users didn’t affect or change his thoughts about the drug.
‘‘I used to see people around me who are on ice but aren’t lashing out or violent so it made me think everything was just a lie. I stopped believing things.’’
Although he agrees that some of what is portrayed is true, they are only extreme cases which paint everyone who needs help with the same brush.
Ending with one main message, Sandro said he hoped people reading his story would think twice before experimenting with it even once.
‘‘It’s everywhere, especially at the party scenes but don’t touch it, not even a single time. You will regret it.’’
Sandro has been at the Yarramundi rehab centre for 11 months and has one month left until he completes his compulsory 12-month program.
He plans to finish, move into a house, find a job and start afresh.
‘‘I want to clean my life up, I needed the change for myself and my daughter.’’
