It was a sunny, early afternoon in late April. Nephalim and I were just about to head out to the doctor’s, having started the buprenorphine maintenance programme just a day or two before.

The quiet was shattered by the jangling of the front doorbell. ”I’ll get it,” I called, but my mother beat me to it. I walked into the living room, and all of a sudden, the entryway was awash in pale blue.

The cops had come for a visit.

“My name is Sargeant Josephine Mackenzie of the Karana Downs Police Station,” began the harsh-eyed, yet youngish, female policewoman, before introducing us to the men who were rapidly making our largish living-room feel rather small. “Are you the only two people in the house?”

No, my mother said, “My daughter’s husband is… Peri, where is he?”

“Ermmm… around the back, having a cigarette,” I replied.

“Could we have everyone in the house in here,” asked the policewoman, in a voice which meant this is a command, not a request.

I called him in, all the while thinking, cops in the house? Not good, not good. Not good at all…

“We have evidence from a source that cannot be named,” announced the policewoman, “That this house has been used for the purposes of dealing in illicit substances.” My eyes widened. Oh, for fuck’s sake, I thought, I do NOT need this. We’re going to be late for a doctor’s appointment, and for what? Because someone, somewhere, has decided to tell outright lies.

Inwardly, I was a mess. A seething, confused, but mainly just plain scared mess. I did a quick mental inventory of my room. No illicit substances, thank God, I thought. Please let there be no loose syringes I’ve forgotten about…  

“What’s this about?” my mother asked the assembled police, confusion and fear plainly evident on her face. “Drug dealing?”

“Mum, I would never…” I started to say, but she waved me quiet.

“I know, Peri. What… who made these allegations?” she turned and addressed the hard-eyed young policewoman again.

“We can’t tell you that,” she said, and the subtext was clear: I wouldn’t tell you anyway. I am the law, and you are scum.  I sighed inwardly.

Great. Some unnamed scumbag had reported us to the cops on suspicion of drug dealing, and we weren’t even allowed to know who it had been.

Drug dealing… from my parents’ house! As if!

Inwardly, I was seething with anger, and hardly even heard the policemen ask to search my room.

“Huh? Yeah, sure. It’s through here…” As I led three policemen to the room Peter and I shared, I heard my mother and Peter being interrogated by the cops.

“We run a family business from the house,” my mother was saying. “Oh yes… what sort?” ”Computers,” my mother told them, and went on to explain what, exactly, she and my father did.

“And where is Mr. ****” (my father)… “right now?”

“He’s out, seeing customers in the eastern suburbs,” I heard my mother respond, before the policemen who had followed me and I reached my room. I opened the door.

“We’ll try not to make a mess of the place,” a heavyset cop, the tallest of the three who’d followed me, said. I smiled, looking over the clutter that was the single room that Peter and I shared, clothes and papers and random lipgloss and other makeup strewn all over.

“Heh. Guys, I dare you to try,” I giggled, sounding far more lighthearted than I felt. I’m being raided, for Chrissake. RAIDED. This has never happened to me, not once in ten years of using…

I watched as they opened drawers, cupboard doors, looked under the mattress, peeked into corners. Even as I courteously answered their polite questions, I wanted to scream. I’m being raided. Fuck. The irony! I’ve just gone on bupe, the first time I’ve been on a maintenance programme in the ten years I’ve been using on and off, and this happens NOW.

After they seached not just the room Nephalim and I shared, but even my handbag as well (”What are these pills, ma’am?” “Well, there’s Xanax, and Valium, and amitryptiline, oh and those ones there are Polaramine…”), we were free to go.

Their unscheduled visit made us late for our appointment, though - which, ironically, was with the doctor who is supervising our buprenorphine program.

A few weeks later, I was walking by the front door when I saw something blue and shiny on the hallway table. “What the…?” I murmured, picking it up. It was a tape recorder.

“Oh yeah,” my mother said, passing by me that moment with a load of washing. “The police left their tape recorder here. They still haven’t been by to pick it up.”

Years, we spent in this way. Trapped, in various types of prisons, first by our parents - abusers in their own way, although they did the best they could, I’m sure… or did they?

Then, later, we were trapped by prisons of our own making. Because we didn’t know what freedom felt like, it didn’t feel like we were doing anything our of the ordinary - we became drug addicts, prostitutes, bulimics, anorexics, problem drinkers and secret bipolar battlers… and we were again locked away from the everyday world, numbed by the coccooning unreality we lived our lives inside.

Opening the prison gates takes time; holding them open takes a little more.

Walking through the gates of that prison, and truly living life on the outside of those walls… that takes time, self-belief, and a helluva lot of courage.  

To those who made it out, and are living their dream in the sun, a salute from those of us still in the shadows, working on walking out of those prison doors for the last time.