MATTHEW CARNEY: It's more destructive than any other drug Australia has ever seen. It's cheap and it's highly addictive. It's not heroin, but 'ice' or crystal methamphetamine, the most potent amphetamine ever to hit our streets. Its powerful high can last for days or weeks. In Australia, there are now more ice addicts than heroin addicts. It's been a hidden epidemic. Little is known about the long-term effects of the drug or even how to treat its addiction. Health services and governments are not prepared for the chaos ice has just started to unleash.
Some may find this program deeply disturbing as hardcore ice addicts take us into their world.

Tonight on Four Corners, a journey into the dark heart of the 'ice age' that has hit Australia. It's Thursday, pension day. Matty and many ice addicts have been waiting anxiously for today. It means they have money to score and get high.

MATTY: Oi! Turn around here! Are you interested in drugs?

BYSTANDER: Hey, come on, mate.

MATTY: No, I'm just saying. 'Cause most people around here are.

BYSTANDER: Fortunately, you're not.

MATTY: Don't look at me pin number, mate! What the fuck?! Are you trippin' or what?

MATTHEW CARNEY: Matty has just taken out most of his payment.

MATTHEW CARNEY: So, how much did you get, Matty?

MATTY: $300.

MATTHEW CARNEY: So, what will that buy?

MATTY: Three days.

USER: Three fucking, three days of fucking 150 mile an hour, no fucking room for gear changes, nought to a hundred in fucking one second.

MATTHEW CARNEY: So everyone will go today and they'll, like, burn it up in three days, their dole money...

MATTY: (Sings) Burn it up for your love.

MATTHEW CARNEY: For the next several weeks, Matty will take me inside his community, the hardcore ice addicts that roam the inner city of Sydney. An itinerant group who don't use their real names and never show us how they source their drugs. They call themselves 'skaters'.

MATTY: They're either figure skaters or fucking speed skaters, mate. They either go through rubbish and pick at cracks or just wander around in a fucking daze, wondering why they went to places they're going.

MATTHEW CARNEY: So, speed skater, what's a speed skater?

MATTY: Someone who goes in a straight line. It doesn't vary. Figure skater, they go round and round in circles. And the ice is crackin' below 'em, mate.

MATTHEW CARNEY: According to the only study done on methamphetamine use, there are 73,000 dependent users in Australia. Many of them were heroin addicts that jumped to ice several years ago because it was cheaper and more powerful.

MATTY: I like it 'cause it's the only drug that gets me off. All the rest are shit. Crap. The coppers have fucked it. They keep cutting it too much.

MATTHEW CARNEY: So that's the only drug that's pure?

MATTY: Well, it is a pure form of goey. Purest form of goey. Ice. 'Cause it's the best bit. But really, who knows what's gonna happen in 10 years time, mate.

USER: No doubt you'll be awake.

MATTY: No, we could all be spastics in a fucking mental health wing, mate, or something, you know. 'Cause the ice might fucking, 'cause who knows the long-term effects of ice? No-one, mate, 'cause it's only been around for fucking eight, nine years.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Does that worry you at all or not?

MATTY: Ah, if it worried me, do you think I'd keep doing it? No, really, you know what it is? I like stickin' needles in me vein. Right? And I'll put drugs in there that'll get me off. So, the only drug that gets me off is ice. Heroin...I'm allergic to it or something, I don't know. I used to love it. And now I hate it.

MATTY: Mate, if you don't like it, right, I don't give a fuck.

USER: I like you, man.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Matty believes he's an authority in the ice world. In his group, people come and go. They live in a drug cycle of about two weeks. For the first week, they take ice and barely sleep or eat. The following week, they crash and sleep until the next welfare cheque. Then the cycle starts again.

MATTY: Classic. Here, bro. Oh, yeah. I really love it. Mate, no woman could ever love me as much as I love my fucking self.

USER: I like that. Because it's true.

MATTY: It is true.

MATTHEW CARNEY: The next morning, Matty is still up. He's smoking large amounts of marijuana. He believes it calms him down so he can then inject more ice. Matty goes harder than most. Even before this cycle, he's been awake for several days.

MATTHEW CARNEY: So, how many days has it been now?

MATTY: Since I've been, like, sticking ice in my arm? Eight, nine days.

MATTHEW CARNEY: And you haven't slept at all?

MATTY: Nah, I've been skating away.

USER: Cackling, cackling.

MATTY: With fucking... I slept for an hour. This morning, I think. I haven't slept since then.

MATTHEW CARNEY: And you just lose it all, you lose sense of time, do you? Just kind of all comes together, or?

MATTY: Nah, you got a heightened sense of time. You're ultimately aware of time. Time passes very fast on ice.

MATTHEW CARNEY: In the afternoon, Mick, an old friend of Matty's, comes around for a shot.

MATTY: That's pretty good piss, too, man. Fuck. Eh? Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely got me fucking, tightened my fucking skates up, man.

MATTHEW CARNEY: It can be 20 times stronger than speed, the old-style powder version of amphetamine. Mick was one of the first to use ice when batches of it came to Sydney from Thailand in the late '90s. As the addiction advances, users need more and more of the drug. Mick now uses two to three grams a day, about 10 times more than the normal addict.

MICK: What can I say? It's, it makes you feel good. Reality doesn't disappear but it sort of, it sort of brightens up. You know what I mean?

MATTY: Warps your sense of perception. That's what it does.

MICK: Yeah. Like, put it this way. My girl died five months ago, heroin overdose. I turned up home, and she was dead. The reality of it is all still there. But as long as I'm, you know, I mean, daily, on the ice and that, it's like, yeah, it's like...

MATTY: Then you control your emotions.

MICK: Yeah, I can deal with it better, you know what I mean? That's why it's probably a cop out, you know what I mean? I wouldn't say it's not.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Mick's organs are not coping with his chronic usage, and parts of his vascular system have collapsed.

MICK: Look at that. Blood everywhere. Don't worry, I'm not, I'm not infected yet. Yet.

MATTHEW CARNEY: So, are you having trouble getting into your veins? Why is that?

MICK: 'Cause, um, basically, the ice has crushed them. Like...

MATTHEW CARNEY: The ice has crushed your veins?

MICK: Yeah. Only because it's like, unlike heroin, where you can only have so much, you know what I mean, before you just go under. Or even pot's the same, you know what I mean? Most drugs I know are the same. When it comes to ice and that, it's like you can just keep going and going and going. Know what I mean? Boom, boom, boom, you just keep going.

MATTY: I don't think about anything.

MATTHEW CARNEY: It's taken Mick 20 minutes to inject ice into his bloodstream. He's had to inject in five different places to hit the smaller veins in his calf. There is only one other place he can shoot up.

MICK: I do me blue vein as well.

MATTHEW CARNEY: What do you mean?

MICK: In me dick.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Why?

MICK: Because it's better than sittin' there stabbing yourself for hours. 'Cause I got this thing about the more blood you get in that fit, the less effective the shot is, you know what I mean? Why I don't know, but to me I just know that when I get a shot straight away, bang, it hits me a hell of a lot better, you know what I mean, than when I don't. So every now and then, I do my dick. It's a bit of a worry because there's been a couple of times where it hasn't been functional, you know what I mean? But that's what I used to say, you know what I mean? It's like with me neck, you know what I mean? I remember when I used to say, like, all these young people, "Soon as I can't do me arm, I'll give up, I’ll give up." Yeah, rightio, rightio. Arms, wrists, hands, you know what I mean? Under here. I mean, the neck went, the groin went. Like, the legs, you just don't, you get in that sort of mode, you know. You just don't realise.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Mick knows ice is a dangerous drug. He says most of his friends are dead, mad or in jail.

MICK: I love ice. I love it. 'Cause it's a drug, I need it, I need it, I need to, whatever it is, alter me state of reality, whatever, you know what I mean? I'm just a junkie, basically. But I wouldn't recommend it to anybody. Like, 'cause...

MATTHEW CARNEY: This is the only life Mick has ever known. He started his addiction with heroin when he was just 13. Now 36, he's been in and out of jail for the last 13 years. For Mick and Matty, drugs have created and completely defined their identities.

MICK: You come off the drug, that's the easy part, it's like, you know, it's not so much about the drug and the needle, it's right out there is the void. So many hours of your day have been dedicated to getting the money, getting the drug, finding the fuckin' vein. You know what I mean? Or something. And then all of a sudden, bang. What do you do?

MATTY: You've got nothing to focus on.

MICK: You got all this time on your hands, there's 24 hours in a day that, you know what I mean, you spend, you know, 20 hours of, you know what I mean?

MATTY: Fuckin' around trying to find the drugs. Everybody you talk to, it becomes “We're the fringe-dwellers, we're not part of the mainstream community any more. We're the fringe-dwellers.”

MATTY: Show us your bag, just put your bag out straight, so I can fuckin' see how much is in there.

LENORE: Show me yours and we'll compare.

MATTY: That'll do!

LENORE: You got...

MATTY: You got the bigger half.

LENORE: Yeah, well, that's all right. I'm going out in the lounge room now. I got to get a spoon.

MATTY: Look, mate, what's wrong with her?

MATTHEW CARNEY: Matty shares his last hit of the day with one his girlfriends, 'Lenore'.

LENORE: Bingo!

MATTY: The bingo's on!

MATTHEW CARNEY: So, tell us what's happening. What are you feeling?

LENORE: A bit of a rush.

MATTHEW CARNEY: How does it feel?

LENORE: You get a rush, you know, like when you been for a good jog? And you get home and you open up the door, and you sit back and your endorphins have kicked in. And you're fuckin' hot...

MATTY: When you go for a run!

LENORE: I need to get some fresh air!

MATTHEW CARNEY: Ice, or crystal methamphetamine, triggers the release of huge amounts of dopamine, the feel-good chemical the brain releases naturally.

PROFESSOR IAIN MCGREGOR: Methamphetamine, in my experience, looking at both animal studies, studies of laboratory animals and addict populations, it's one of the most addictive drugs that we know, and it's by virtue of its ability to produce this huge surge in dopamine levels.

USER: Do you want a shot of ice, or not?

MATTY: Are you gonna be good?

USER: Yeah, I will be good.

IAIN MCGREGOR: So, if dopamine's constantly being over-produced and over-released, then the brain will down-regulate the receptors that dopamine binds to, so you'll alter the function of the brain. So, you end up with a bit of an abnormal brain as a result of methamphetamine.

MATTHEW CARNEY: So, you have, what, you have 23 different personalities?

LENORE: Yep, all have got different names.

MATTHEW CARNEY: When do they, kind of, like...

LENORE: I've got them under control now. This is shit, mate, it's so shit. I haven't eaten in a day, I had a shot.

MATTHEW CARNEY: When people take ice, they usually experience psychotic symptoms - like paranoia or delusions - at the end of their cycle, when they are coming down from the drug. This is the price users pay for the powerful high. In the ice world, this down-time is known as 'scattering'.

LENORE: I haven't phoned up since I was pregnant.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Lenore is different. She scatters immediately after she has ice, and becomes obsessed with rubbish. Lenore can pick though bins like this until the drug wears off, and that could be for days.

LENORE: This is for people who cycle. I'll get 10 bucks in the shop, or more. They put that on, then put their helmet on top. So, I know some people that do cycle...

MATTHEW CARNEY: But why are you doing this? To look for things, or what?

LENORE: Well, one, to make money. And the money I make, I don't pay tax on. But I use it as a charity, I suppose, thing. I go and buy food for people, or give them money to buy food at the soup kitchen, 'cause it costs a dollar or two. And if you give them a dollar or two, it's soup and bread. Piece of shit...

MATTHEW CARNEY: So, how many, like, how many hours can you do this for?

LENORE: I've been doing it since 1996-7.

MATTHEW CARNEY: What, going through bins like this?

LENORE: Mmm-hmm.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Can you do it for days?

LENORE: See that? Clothes. I will do this until the day the Lord takes me back to Him... And if I take birth again, when I grow up, I'll probably do it again. There's a pair of shorts to take home, disinfect and wash them twice. There's a nice baby's blanket or a picnic blanket or something.

USER: Leonie, do you like these sort of things?

LENORE: Yeah, I do.

USER: They'd be all right for you. I like that. I could make that into a miniskirt, eh? I can make that into a miniskirt.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Prolonged repetitive motor activity like this is a clinically recognised trait of ice users. It's known as 'punding'.

LENORE: Oh, they're all right. Actually, they're nice.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Lenore believes she's doing good, and creating order in this world. But her actions are probably more to do with relieving the chaos in her head.

USER: It's not what I want. Some bedroom fuckin' music.

LENORE: I haven't got what I want.

USER: What do you want, darl?

LENORE: Peace, love and harmony for the planet, and fuckin’, uh, equality. There's drinkies, drinkies.

MATTHEW CARNEY: I left Lenore to the night and the rubbish. Long-term users like Lenore can develop "amphetamine psychosis" - a mental condition that mimics paranoid schizophrenia. Scientists are still uncertain, but early research suggests that ice can shrink the brain.

IAIN MCGREGOR: If we put ice users in a brain scanner and look at the state of their brains, then the heavy users seem to have a reduced brain volume, which means, you know, death of the neurons within the brain, and that's something to worry about. It means that your cognitive function won't be as good, it means that basically, you have had brain damage.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Matty wanted me to meet 'John', a user whose brain has also been altered by ice. John rarely leaves this room. He believes he's dying. John is convinced that he is infected with ice bugs, parasites that he believes were living in a bad batch of ice he injected years ago.

JOHN: As you can see, there's something under the skin and it's coming through. All up here, my leg. I've been using that wash, and as you can see, they come up. This, when it was at its worst, was real pussey in the centre. And you used to be able to squeeze it, and little spores would come out. And they had this red stuff around them, which was very sticky...

MATTHEW CARNEY: John is suffering from Ekbom's Syndrome, a psychological condition associated with chronic ice and cocaine use. He's having tactile hallucinations, and he'll obsessively pick at his body for days and weeks to pull out the imaginary ice bugs.

MATTHEW CARNEY: So, basically, where do they exist?

JOHN: About three layers of skin down.

MATTHEW CARNEY: John believes all his surroundings are infected. He wants help, and went to see his local doctor.

MATTHEW CARNEY: What did he say to you?

JOHN: He put it down to psychosis. But I said to him, I said, "Look, I understand what psychosis is, a psychosis would be, you've got to have the table set a certain way. You've always got to get up and shut the door, turn the light switch; I know what a psychosis is."

MATTHEW CARNEY: But the physical evidence is too much.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Do you think they can kill you?

JOHN: In the long run, they will. I mean, if they're feeding on the fat layer as they are. I mean, I've lost, over the last few months, I've lost a fair bit of weight.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Are you still using ice?

JOHN: Yeah, yeah.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Should you stop taking ice?

JOHN: Probably, I probably should. But, I mean, if I can't get rid of them, I'm, you know, it's probably too late for me.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Australia's only serious study of the ice community says that almost one in four users will have a debilitating psychotic episode. That's something Dr. Gordian Fulde understands well.

DR GORDIAN FULDE: Guys, somebody left those there.

MATTHEW CARNEY: He's Head of Emergency at St. Vincent's hospital in the inner-city of Sydney.

GORDIAN FULDE: David?

MATTHEW CARNEY: Since 2000, he's seen a five-fold increase in patients admitted with methamphetamine or ice psychosis.

GORDIAN FULDE: We've had some really bad ones, you know?

MATTHEW CARNEY: They've built this special security cell for psychotic ice patients. It can take six staff members to contain them.

GORDIAN FULDE: We hold the patient down safely by their limbs. We don't sit on them, we don't do any of that, because it's obviously dangerous. And then we inject in a vein, preferably, very powerful chemicals. It's like a tranquilliser for elephants, it just brings them down instantly, because these people are so stimulated, so high, so out of control, that a dose of, basically, like a Valium derivative that would put you to sleep for ages, won't even touch them.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Dr. Fulde says he knew from reports coming from America and South-East Asia that ice was on its way. He says neither he, nor the medical community, were prepared for the onslaught.

GORDIAN FULDE: No, these are the most out of control, most violent human beings I've seen in my life, and I've been around for a long time.

MATTHEW CARNEY: In your entire career?

GORDIAN FULDE: Absolutely. Nothing like it. Normal amphetamines, the good old amphetamines, the old Ritalins, whatever people used to use, it's nothing, completely different genre.

MATTHEW CARNEY: The emergency department here has been pushed to the limit by the ice epidemic.

MATTHEW CARNEY: What have we got in here?

MATTHEW CARNEY: Many of its resources are being diverted to deal with it. Ice is also pushing mental health services to crisis point.

DR GORDIAN FULDE: It makes heroin seem like the good old days. I mean, heroin was so easy. People would come in drowsy, maybe not breathing that much. It'd be easy to save their life, you just help them breathe, and you give them a shot of Naloxone, right? And they'd wake up, and everything would be hunky dory, right? It was just, like, all over. And they'd, probably they're not happy and they'll swear at you, and that's all right, that was fun, looking in retrospect. These ones, it's a completely different issue. There are just so many issues here, and as I say, heroin didn't make people, I believe, give long-term psychiatric effects, which is the thing that really worries me. It's acute, but the other thing is it's just very bad for the head.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Ice diminishes inhibitions, and makes some people 'hypersexual', increasing the chances of spreading sexually transmitted diseases. Research in America suggests a link between ice usage and an increase in HIV rates. One patient at the St Vincent's security cell masturbated non-stop for 16 hours.

MATTHEW CARNEY: So, he's literally just there masturbating for 16 hours in front of everyone?

DR GORDIAN FULDE: Yeah. And obviously, we all, everybody hated it. And I've got a responsibility to the staff. I've got a responsibility to other patients. It's terrible, but I've got a responsibility to that individual patient, to make sure.

MATTHEW CARNEY: So you can't close the blind?

DR GORDIAN FULDE: No. Because that's the whole reason of having it, because we can make sure that something doesn't unpredictably happen. He's under observation, right? But that was in a very extreme case.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Three days later, I caught up with Lenore again. She collected rubbish for two days. And now she's returning to some normality.

MATTHEW CARNEY: So you're getting your appetite back?

LENORE: Oh, yeah. I'm starving. Mate, I've had about 10 meals yesterday and today.

MATTHEW CARNEY: How many days before that didn't you eat?

LENORE: I think, three. 89 cents! Nowhere else is cheaper.

MATTHEW CARNEY: The only friends hardcore ice addicts have are each other. They've usually left their family and friends far behind.

MATTY: Yeah. They're doing a documentary on scumbags! And we're the leaders of them! Fucking hell, mate. Eh?

MATTHEW CARNEY: Lenore shares this Housing Department flat with another addict.

MATTY: Oh, you've cleaned up!

LENORE: Come in.

MATTY: Well done!

LENORE: Come on.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Much of the rubbish she collects ends up here.

MATTY: This is clean, really. Cleaned up your act.

LENORE: Turn the fan on.

MATTY: Usually, you can't get in the door.

MATTHEW CARNEY: What would make you stop it? What kind of thing would make you stop taking ice?

LENORE: Death.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Only death?

LENORE: Probably. At the moment. As my future...

MATTHEW CARNEY: So nothing else would stop you? Nothing else would stop you taking ice?

LENORE: Only lack of money and lack of fucking substance being available.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Matty's about to crash. He hasn't had any ice for about a day and he can't get the money for more.

MATTY: I see things. And I see trees, think they're people. They're shadow people. I see, I hear people singing my name out. I hear people whispering about me.

MATTHEW CARNEY: So how do you deal with that?

MATTY: I don't. I hide. I just, until I actually get home, and then I’ll think, "Oh, yeah. It's the ice."

LENORE: You ignore it.

MATTY: Yeah, I do. A lot of people don't, but. 'Cause I, you gotta have a, just, I don't know. You've got to have a strong brain, I think. Just let yourself ignore it, 'cause it's a hard thing to ignore. If you see something on the ground, right, and you definitely can see it, it's definitely there, but you don't bend down and pick it up, that's a hard thing to do. You know what I mean?

MATTHEW CARNEY: So, Lenore, how many kids have you got?

LENORE: Two.

MATTHEW CARNEY: How old are they?

LENORE: 17 and 9.

MATTHEW CARNEY: How long is it since you've seen them?

LENORE: Oh, I seen the eldest one, Christmas Day. We text each other every night. And last year sometime, I seen my youngest one. She lives up in the mountains. I had to go up to sign passport papers up in Brisbane. So I went up. I said I'd stay a week, but... You know, having a habit at the time... Like, going 24 hours was enough, so...

MATTHEW CARNEY: So you had to go back and score?

LENORE: Yeah, I wouldn't go up there and shoot up on their property or ice around the town.

MATTHEW CARNEY: And Matty, what about your kids, how old are they?

MATTY: Don't know. No, I don't know.

MATTHEW CARNEY: You must know.

MATTY: 13, no, 14 and 13, I think. Something like that.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Do you miss them at all?

MATTY: What do you reckon? Of course.

MATTHEW CARNEY: I mean, do you want them to have the same lifestyle as you?

MATTY: Definitely not. That's why I don't go around with them. I wouldn't want them to have a fucking… all I want them to have is a life.

MATTHEW CARNEY: And what's that? What do you mean by that?

LENORE: A job they're satisfied with.

MATTY: A job.

MATTHEW CARNEY: But it's not just hardcore addicts who take ice. On the party circuit, it's the drug of the moment. It's affordable, sociable and smokeable. And it doesn't have the stigma of heroin. It's used at all levels of society, in the gay community, among students and nightclubbers, shiftworkers and the career-minded. Jason lives in Sydney's inner west. He started out as a recreational ice user, but quickly found himself with a habit. Using ice prevents saliva production and can cause the teeth to crumble.

JASON: It feels like in the last, sort of, year I've had the equivalent of 10 years of normal tooth erosion. Nasty.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Is there anything you can do to stop it?

JASON: Brushing my teeth a lot. Like, five times a day.

JASON: So we've got to get you the ring and the puppy. Yeah. All right.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Recreational users tend to smoke ice. But doctors say this still makes the drug just as addictive as injecting it. This is how an increasing number of casual users are becoming entrapped.

JASON: Oh, OK. I'm pinching your inspiration here, aren't I?

MATTHEW CARNEY: Jason wants to start on the long road to recovery.

JASON: Certainly after a year or two, it then becomes apparent that really it's just created a narrow-mindedness, or a self-absorption, is probably a better description. And suddenly these years have slipped by and little real progress in life has been achieved.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Before he became a chronic user, Jason was a computer engineer on a good income. Life was on the up.

JASON: It's going to be hard, but it has to be done. And even if it doesn't work first go, I sort of need to persist in that.

SUSIE: I need for you to fix the shower for me.

JASON: Yeah. No trouble.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Jason has just set up a new house with his girlfriend, Susie. She's heavily pregnant, and although the baby is not his, it's one of the reasons why Jason wants to go straight.

SUSIE: I know he loves me, and he knows I love him. I said to him at the very beginning of this relationship, that I'd be here till the end. And I'm here till the end. I'm here to help him through this and hopefully, hopefully, we'll get through it together.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Jason also has to go into rehabilitation because he is facing a minor criminal charge before the courts. This is his first day on the Buprenorphine program at the local hospital clinic. In a few hours, he'll get his first dose. Buprenorphine is an opiate blocker designed to stop cravings.

JASON: I feel a bit crappy at the moment 'cause I've had to abstain from gear before going in and getting dosed. And also I expect to feel even crappier after I've been dosed.

MATTHEW CARNEY: While on ice, Jason has also developed a heroin habit, as many ice addicts do. For the last three years, he's been on the rollercoaster of drug interdependence. Jason needs ice to get going and heroin to relax him, but Buprenorphine is only for his heroin habit.

MATTHEW CARNEY: So how do you think it's going to react with the ice?

JASON: I don't think there'll be too big a clash there.

MATTHEW CARNEY: In Australia, there are no dedicated treatment programs or legal replacement drugs for ice or crystal meth addicts. Jason hopes that by taking out the heroin he can break his drug cycle, and begin to deal with his ice addiction.

JASON: I got dosed fairly quickly. Got a tablet to put under the tongue. I sort of feel it a bit already.

MATTHEW CARNEY: What does it feel like?

JASON: It's picked up my energy and taken away the yuckiness.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Jason will have to deal with the ice component of his addiction without any substitute. And the problem is that he hasn't removed himself from the ice scene of Sydney's inner west. So far in Australia, there has only been one trial of the replacement drug dexamphetamine for meth addicts. The results were encouraging, but the Federal Government never provided the funds to continue the research.

DR ALEX WODAK: I would like to have an effective pharmacological agent to treat these people. And I'd like to be able to do what my counterparts can do in the United Kingdom, and treat those people who unfortunately have not benefited from every conventional health approach. I'd like to treat some of them by prescribing amphetamines to them. And in 2006 in Australia, that's hard to do.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Dr Wodak says he and his colleagues anticipated the ice epidemic. But governments did not. Early this decade, Asian drug syndicates switched to methamphetamine because it can be manufactured cheaply. And unlike cocaine and heroin, it does not depend on crop cycles. While the Federal Police were busy cracking down on heroin supply to Australia, ice was flooding into our markets. The net result is that we now have nearly twice as many ice and methamphetamine addicts as heroin addicts.

JASON: The toxic ones.

USER: Yeah, you have one toke, and it's really strong, basically. You have one toke and it hits you in the guts. Throw up.

JASON: Yeah, the first toke was like poison, yeah.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Jason's rehab failed. He continued to smoke ice during his two-week program.

USER: This stuff, man, was like, from Andrew, a fucking shard like that. Still swelling up, still hot, still cooking. For $20, man. And I'm just like, "Fuck off."

JASON: Soon after this was filmed, Jason was arrested by police in his local McDonald's car park and charged with possession of ice. With that charge, Jason had breached his bail from a previous conviction and was jailed at Silverwater prison.

SUSIE: I'm not good at ironing. I'm not domestic.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Three weeks later, Susie prepared to visit Jason in jail for the second time. Prison has forced Jason to dry out.

SUSIE: In jail it's like he's really clingy. You know what I mean? And people, everyone's been saying that's because he's coming off all the drugs and stuff. And he can feel emotion again. Whereas before he couldn't feel any emotion. Yeah, I dunno, 'cause I've never been that much into drugs or anything like that. So I don't know the full effects of what it does to people. I know the full effects, but not to the extent where all of them do. They're all fucked up on drugs.

MATTHEW CARNEY: By default, jails are the biggest rehabilitation centres in our country. In prison, ice addicts like Jason have the chance to become clean. With his court cases approaching, Susie hopes he'll be released. She believes they'll be able to start a new life.

SUSIE: He wants to go to the movies. And that's pretty cool. I'd be excited just to go to the movies with him. Like, movies is nothing, but just to sit there to watch a normal movie and, like, not porn or anything like that.

MATTHEW CARNEY: So, do you reckon it really could be the start of a new life?

SUSIE: Yeah. I'm pretty stoked. Can you tell?

MATTHEW CARNEY: But it's not going to be that simple. While pregnant, Susie has been smoking ice. She and Jason have been enjoying their habit together.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Were you smoking when you were pregnant at all?

SUSIE: Mm-hm. Yeah, of course. I'm pregnant. So, a couple of weeks ago.

MATTHEW CARNEY: And what effect do you think that has on your baby?

SUSIE: A lot of people have asked me this, actually. I didn't do a study myself, but someone I know has done a study at RPA and they said, well, basically the findings were that the placenta cops it. Because I've never injected it, if I injected it that would have gone straight into the bloodstream obviously, but because I was smoking it, or I did smoke it, it was filtered through and what not. So, doubly filtered. I still, sort of, sometimes think maybe something's wrong or maybe, I don't know. But I suppose every pregnant person, they sort of think maybe something happened or whatever.

MATTHEW CARNEY: But it couldn't be good for the foetus, surely?

SUSIE: No. OK. That's it. I won't answer any more of those stupid questions. Make me feel bad. But no, obviously not. But I really, I don't think I was thinking about the foetus or the baby at that stage anyway.

MATTHEW CARNEY: It is known that using ice when pregnant can lead to underweight babies and stillbirth. It's also possible that Susie's baby will be born affected by ice and suffer withdrawal. Susie says once the baby is born she'll adopt it out.

SUSIE: Look, I didn't think I was going to become attached to my child. Like, I thought that I would be really, really detached, knowing what I was deciding to do. But, yeah, I wrote him a letter, I wrote my son a letter, so when he's older and he asks his adoptive parents "who my real mother was" and stuff like that, they could give him this letter from me. Basically, I wanted to come across as, "I didn't just give you away" kind of thing. That I did, that I do love him and that I would love to have raised him myself and all this stuff. But I don't think that I'm in a position really to do that.

MATTY: Hey, excuse me, buddy, do you have any spare change so I can buy some heroin, would ya?

MATTHEW CARNEY: I found Matty again on the streets and homeless. He's been thrown out of the Housing Department flat he was squatting in.

MATTY: You know the worst thing about living on the streets? Boredom. Boredom, mate. 'Cause, you know, there's only so many bricks, so many footpaths.

MATTHEW CARNEY: He's spent the last three days sleeping off his ice binge.

MATTHEW CARNEY: So, do you ever think about getting off it?

MATTY: Mate, I get off it every day, mate. Usually takes about two, three points and I'm off it.

MATTHEW CARNEY: No, I mean, like giving it up. Do you think about giving it up?

MATTY: Yeah. I do.

LENORE: He doesn't. He doesn't.

MATTY: Definitely. 'Cause, you know, but I've got to want to give it up myself. I can't give it up for anyone else.

MATTHEW CARNEY: And you tried that?

MATTY: I tried that.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Do you think you're getting to that stage? Or not really?

MATTY: Yeah, definitely.

MATTHEW CARNEY: How would you get off it, though? How would you start to get off it, do you think?

MATTY: I don't know. 'Cause it seems to find me. It's, like, everywhere I go. You know, it's there. It's fuckin' around. You know, fuckin', I dunno what it is. But it's around everywhere. Seems to be. I can't get away from it.

MATTHEW CARNEY: It's Wednesday. In two weeks, Matty and his group have shot up, skated, scattered and slept. Tomorrow is welfare pay day. And in a friend's squat, Matty starts his cycle again.

MATTHEW CARNEY: So what time do you get, did the money come in this morning?

MATTY: It came in at exactly, right, 4:47.

MATTHEW CARNEY: So, you were up waiting for it?

MATTY: I reckon.

MATTHEW CARNEY: And so then what happened?

MATTY: Someone held my horse while I got on.

MATTHEW CARNEY: How long did it take? Once you got your money, how long did it take you to get on?

MATTY: Seven minutes. No, I don't know. I had a shot by fuckin' five o'clock.

MATTY: Look at that.

PETE: Fuck, that's good ice.

MATTY: Do you want to do it? 'Cause, fuck, I'm scattered.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Today's a special day for Matty. It's the first time he's seen his best mate, Pete, in four years. Pete is fresh out of prison. To celebrate, they mix together ice and another drug in the same shot. It will give them an extra high.

PETE: Mate, this is going to fuckin' rock our socks off.

MATTY: OK.

PETE: Oh, Matty.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Once high, Matty and Pete boast about an ice-fuelled crime they committed together five years earlier. They claim they stole a car and led the police on a manic high-speed chase through the streets of Bondi in Sydney.

MATTY: I tell you what happened in the fuckin' chase, mate. Boom, I took off in this car, mate. I'm going to go out, cops come towards us.

PETE: And he's rammed up the arse.

MATTY: "Stop changing gears."

PETE: “Bang.”

MATTY: "Left. Right. Shut the fuck up."

PETE: “Keep fuckin' laughing and leave me.”

MATTY: "I'm bailin'. See ya."

MATTHEW CARNEY: They call their crime an 'ice-capade'. But what they explain is incredibly dangerous as they careered onto footpaths and the wrong side of roads.

PETE: And basically, there’s that much commotion, stereo's blaring. ”Pull over. You're gonna kill us.” (Makes siren sound) "Let me drive. Let me drive."
MATTY: No, I had to reverse. “Bang. Crash. Smash. Boom.” “Quick, we're going to jail for life”, that's what I was thinking.

MATTHEW CARNEY: No-one was hurt. But Matty says he got two and a half years in jail, and Pete, four years. Police say ice and violence go hand in hand. And according to recent research, a third of all ice addicts have served time in jail.

PETE: If we weren't on ice, it wouldn't have happened.

MATTY: Yeah, wouldn't have happened at all.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Why?

MATTY: Well, because ice...

MATTY: Wouldn't have put ourselves in that predicament. Because we, you know, 'cause I'm not thinking what's gonna happen in five minutes or whatever. I'm thinking what's happening now. You know what I mean? And I'm not worried about the consequences to me actions because I'm living the actions at that time.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Later that day, Matty can't find his drugs.

MATTY: Fuckin' oath, mate. You know ice is a mad drug, eh? Mate, if I don't find them soon, everyone's strippin'. No, I'm not scared of that fuckin' ice-headed freak. I'm gonna have to stop or I'll start smashing things.

MATTHEW CARNEY: While Matty looks for the drugs, what Australia needs to find is a way of coping with the beginning of the ice age.

MATTY: I reckon in 10 years, mate, the long-term effects of ice are not known because it hasn't been around that long. We're all gonna be gibbering fuckin' idiots in a mental home, mate.

LENORE: Yeah, I know.

MATTY: All right. I'm telling you. No-one knows the long-term effects of ice.

POLICE: What you’ve got to do, mate, is sign a bit of paperwork.

MATTHEW CARNEY: On the day of Jason's expected release, he was refused bail by the magistrate.

SUSIE: At least he'll be off the drugs. And, yeah, that is a good thing.

MATTHEW CARNEY: And in the meantime, you'll just wait.

SUSIE: Yeah. Like, you know, I'll have a child. And I'll work and whatever. Whatever I have to do, and I'll wait for him. Simple as that.

JASON: We've got one more bail to get from the Burwood Court. Got to get...

MATTHEW CARNEY: The following week, Jason was released. He was reunited with Susie and is still dealing with his addiction.