Chasing Recovery Part One

Chasing Recovery:

A Story of Aroha

PART1

Billy Mihinui describes his experience of how he got into the drug world and details the carnage of a daily methamphetamine user.

Chasing Recovery: A

Story of Aroha

is what we have been waiting for. For so long many of our whānau experiences with addiction has been kept out of sight, swept under the rug and hidden in the shadows. But why aren’t we talking about it when so many of our whānau are affected by it? Mainstream support services often speak of confidentiality, anonymity and privacy.

But we say that is not our way of healing. We say let’s move this thing from the dark into the light - bring back our own method of mainstream - shine a light on it and sort out the true issues within our whānau and communities. Supporting each other - our rough, rugged, and raw hero’s. The realist ones that aren’t afraid to make a change, the ones that are ready to heal - the one’s making a real difference in our communities.

Billy Mihinui and Edith Te Papa are just two of those hero’s.

Over the next few days we will be releasing their story in three parts, so give the page a follow to make sure you don’t miss out on their incredible story!

Billy Mihinui says there are only three ways you can get hooked on meth. Those ways include coping from trauma, peer-pressure, or having a tutu. Billy was just having a tutu, but that turned into 16 years of active addiction and destruction. He said his journey started with smoking cabbage with the bro’s at school.

“I started bumping into drugs at school. Some of my bro’s that’s what our whānau’s only know aye – grow dope and that’s their bread and butter. The kids just take it out of the bucket and bring it to school and that’s how we all started.”

The cabbage he says led to buds, which then led to LSD and pills. His marks at school started to drop because he stopped paying attention in class. Then he started dodging school altogether. He got expelled for throwing a desk and a chair at his teacher.

“I was just playing right up. I was a mean league player too, mean rugby player, just the drugs did it in aye.”

Billy reveals he had no trauma growing up, and his parents taught him dignity and integrity and they often went to church. When their whānau moved to Tāneatua he began learning about his dad’s background in the gangs. He looked up to his dad because he taught him how to work hard and stand on his own two feet.

Naturally he wanted to be just like him.

“He was hard as, he was tough as, that’s every son’s dream to be just like their dad. He’s a lifetime member of the mongrel mob, so I pursued that. I wanted to be a mobster, so when I was 15 I joined the mongrel mob.”

Billy fought for his patch, and had to rumble three of his bro’s in the ring to get it. He got knocked out, and when he woke up in the pad he remembers how he saw one of the rangatira’s of the mongrel mob sitting there smoking a light bulb.

“I had my patch on me and I looked at him and says what the hell are you smoking! And he goes ‘oh it’s the new in drug!’ In my head I thought it was oil, spots so I said to him gizza turn bro!

And from there, boom. One puff.

I was gone bro. It owned me. The feeling you get is a feeling like no other. Then we just sat there and I smoked it and smoked it until I lost everything.”

A few years deep into that and Billy earned himself a reputation for always fighting and always smoking drugs. He said he always wanted to be the best at what he was doing, all the time and said he was the best gangster ever.

He stopped when he met Edith.

“I met this beautiful woman and I started going back to mahi and doing normal things, then one day she said I’ve got a son on the way. I didn’t like kids. As soon as I knew I was having a kid I was depressed, coz why bring them into this world? I can’t look after kids, I can’t look after myself. I can’t even look after this woman.

But she wanted to keep him” Right at that point is when Billy fell right back into using methamphetamine, and said it’s only easy when you’ve got a bad reputation.

“The baddest of bad come to see you, it’s like they know when to visit you, like you’re magnetizing them to come. I lost many jobs through meth. Heaps of talent, heaps of skill I just wasted it. I just wanted to get high all the time, every day.”

When Edith was in labour Billy turned up to the annexe coming down off methamphetamine, spending the time sleeping on the annexe chairs, coming down. He also admits that he cheated on Edith a lot with other women, and says that it is something that comes with the territory.

“I don’t really know how my babe felt, I didn’t really care how she actually felt, I was just all about me and how I was feeling. It starts with the smoking, but that starts to leave because you can never get back up there. Then you change your addiction to the money and you start attracting a lot of women. Those are the things that come with it.

Not long after baby was born, the crime started kicking in. Putting balaclavas on and kicking doors in, robbing things, whacking people over and selling women.

“I’ve done it, I’ve sold women – you smoke my shit you get on that corner bro and you give my money back. You start to treat women really, really ugly.”

His behavior from that world started spilling over into his life at home, and although Billy said he never hit Edith, he mentally messed with her mind to the point where he didn’t even have to say a word, it was just a look, and she would bow her head and she would just sit.

“She knew not to touch men, not to go around and even hug her own cousins otherwise I’ll hang them all. She knew I was a very jealous person so she walked around on bombshells, not eggshells. Time bombs. That’s how I made her, I moulded her like that. Don’t go anywhere, don’t do anything. Put your head down, don’t look at anyone.”

Billy admits it was because of his own behavior - the guilt and shame from all the cheating, stealing, and damage from the dark underbelly of the drug world – is why he began transferring and treating his whānau so badly. By then he was standing on guard with a gun watching the cooks cook meth.

“The burglaries stopped because I thought why rob shops to get the money to buy P when you can get a shotgun and go to the P shop itself.

They’re not going to ring the police! So I thought I was cool, until one day I went into a gun fight with an axe!”

Out of 52 weeks in the year Billy said he might have only slept 10 of those, and the longest he’s been up is one month and two weeks with no sleep.

“Time is not a factor to the brothers and sisters who are on meth. Time don’t mean shit. You start to see things and you start to lose it. One day I came home, had a talk to my babe told her ‘Bro I’m gunna die. I just wanna sleep. Forever.

I don’t wanna wake up if this is what it’s gunna be.”

For the next few years Billy clocked up a couple of three month stints in rehab where he learned all about his baffling behaviours with the help of one-on-one couselling, group therapy, and support groups. Although it helped identify his issues, he said three months is just not long enough.

“I did a lot of mahi and graduated. I started to find myself again but it was not long enough.

Three months is not long enough, straight up coz for the first month you are still coming down, the second month you start to deal with your demons, and on that last month you are just starting to find that goodness then you gotta go and it’s like woah where to from here?”

After rehab, Billy had a difficult time trying to navigate his recovery in the real world. He tried to stick it out in Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings, but he couldn’t resonate with their ways.

“There’s no whakawhānaungatanga there’s no māori concepts. 12 steps shit I’d rather listen to the 12 heavens, lets change those 12 steps to 12 heavens. We got 12 heavens, we got kete’s. I tried to gravitate to them, but I fell. I fell back in and I fell hard.”