Tahlia Isaac

Yeah, I moved to Brisbane City when I was 18 and I started going to festivals and I was working at a nightclub and, you know, doing coke in the bathroom at nightclubs and taking pills at festivals and just recreationally and drinking and, you know, it was not like destructive and I wasn't selling anything.

It was just like, you know, we just kind of knew people who had them and, yeah.

Never like, like never a criminality element.

It was just kind of the scene in 2008.

And then, yeah, that kind of opened, I guess my appetite for risk increased and also desensitized to like other forms of drugs.

And so, yeah, by the time I was 19, I was smoking ice every day.

Well, back then, actually, it was speed.

And then they brought in the laws about the pseudoephedrine in the cold and flu tablets.

And then instead of cooking it locally, they started importing ice.

And that's how we have ice epidemic instead of a speed issue.

Yeah, that's a good question.

It's hard to know because it's been such a long time and like so much has happened.

So it's really hard for me to kind of know if I did think, oh, this isn't good.

I don't ever remember going, I need to stop doing this.

I think for me there was no consequence yet.

I hadn't lost anything.

I also hadn't been harmed yet.

Yeah, well, I worked at the nightclubs that I partied at.

And so it was kind of, yeah, I was going to university, you know, maintaining relationship with my family, my friends.

And, you know, coke and pills didn't really seem to impact that for me at that point.