"I thought it was safe..." How homelessness and lack of regulation led to a synthetics addiction / A.J. Hendry

*This piece was originally published in a since discontinued publication in 2018. It is a bit dated, but also still relevant.

“I thought it was safe,” he told me. “I never would have touched the stuff if I'd realized what it would do to me.”

This was the first time I had come in contact with the drug we now know as synthetics.

It was several years ago, and I was working as Youth Worker supporting a young man who had recently become homeless. His parents had kicked him out of home, unequipped to support him through the fallout of his addiction.

Before being kicked out, the drug he had been using was cannabis. But it didn’t take long after becoming homeless for him to get snagged by something far deadlier.

Couch surfing and desperate, he’d reached out for something, anything to help him survive.

That something ended up being synthetics.

“It’s changed me.” he confessed. “I used to be happy, I used to have a life. But not anymore.”

Since meeting this young man I’ve heard the same mix of desperation and regret echoed by numerous rangatahi who have fallen victim to the drug.

The stories are all far too familiar.

A history of family breakdown, violence, and abuse. Young people, battling mental illness, resisting suicide, choosing to survive, fighting to live, grabbing on to anything to kill the pain, to help make it through.

Then the horror and rejection when they’ve turned to Synthetics, and abandonment when whanau are unable to cope. Communities label their own rangatahi as “problems,” “criminals,” “druggies”, choosing to abandon them to the streets, believing the lie that they just need to “take responsibility and quit.”

The result?

Our rangatahi are further traumatized and abused as they are left alone to brave it on the streets. Again, failed by those who should be there to protect them.

And then we ask ourselves, why is homelessness such a problem?

The truth is, homelessness – like synthetics - isn’t a problem. They are both solutions. Solutions for people struggling to cope with trauma and mental illness. Solutions for communities who are unable, and in some cases, unwilling to look after their own.

Recently, in an interview with One News, Chlöe Swarbrick, called out Simon Bridges saying it was “the height of arrogance and cowardice for politicians to continue beating a blunt and broken instrument when people are literally dying."

This was in response to Bridges comments that described the Greens therapeutic approach “as wishy-washy.”

The War on Drugs doesn’t work, she said, repeating Jacinda Ardern’s sentiments at the UN, and calling for the government's commitment to “a health-based approach”, in response to addiction.

She’s right of course.

With all the time, money and energy that has been pumped into the War on Drugs around the world, you would think that somewhere, somehow it would have worked by now.

But it hasn’t.

So, why is the government taking so long to commit to fully embracing the evidenced backed, health-based approach the Greens are advocating for?

Perhaps, because it’s not politically popular.

There is still a narrative that exists in our country that views therapeutic approaches as ‘soft’, and which demands tougher penalties for those suffering from addiction.

But tougher penalties don’t work.

And stigmatizing and criminalizing people who are addicted, only drives them further and further away from the help that they need.

When I speak with rangatahi about why they start using synthetics, the first response they make is that they didn’t know what it would do. The second, is normally something along the lines of, “I was trying to get off weed, and Synthetics sounded like a good alternative.”

By the time they find out it’s not, it’s often too late.

As a nation we need to shift the way we think about drugs and addiction. It’s time we took decriminalization seriously.

People, facing addiction are not criminals, they are people. If we keep treating addiction as a criminal matter, it will only continue to drive more people away.

The sad result of course will be more lives lost.

And as Chlöe said in that interview, "Nobody is going to put their hand up and ask for help if that looks like going away in handcuffs."

A.J. Hendry is a Laidlaw College graduate, and now a Youth Development Worker and housing advocate, working in the Youth Housing and Homelessness space. He leads a service supporting rangatahi experiencing homelessness and is also an advocate working collectively to end youth homelessness in Aotearoa. He is also the curator and creator of When Lambs Are Silent.

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