Antonio grew up in out-of-home-care and by his 18th birthday had lived in 22 'homes'. He doesn't talk much about what happened there except to say, “Heroin chose me. It looked up at me when I was 13 and said, I'll make your pain go away Tony. I'll make you forget...”
He arrived at First Step three years ago. At that stage, he had been out of prison for two weeks and was squatting in St Kilda. He had nowhere to go, was scared to reach out to his family, couldn't see how he could ever get a job, and in those two weeks, overdosed twice. The woman squatting in the same building told him about First Step.
“I remember the advice she gave me: ‘They’re tough but fair. Don’t bullshit them and they won’t bullshit you.’ So, I drank about a bottle of whisky because it made me so nervous to even think about talking to a counsellor or anyone, and I stumbled in the front door.'
Within a few days, Dr Quiery had stabilised Antonio, and the mental health team supported him to reconnect with his family. “Of course, my family took me in. It was rocky as hell - a lot of anger, a lot of tears, but a lot of hugs too. Turns out they did still love me; they just couldn’t bear the rollercoaster anymore. I promised them I’d do better because I had the support I needed.”
After a few months on methadone, Antonio went onto the Long Acting Injectable Buprenorphine: “It’s bloody great. I only have to go once a month, no more waiting at the pharmacy, and I feel stable, not up and down and round and round.” And now, three years later, he's completed the ResetLife abstinence-based program.
“Rape, pain, drugs, pain, drugs, crime, prison, pain, drugs, crime, prison, drugs, First Step. They didn’t fix me straight away, but straight away they listened and said ‘Okay, we hear you. How can we help?'”
