Latest news with #drugaddiction
News.com.au
a day ago
- Health
- News.com.au
Former bikie reveals what it was really like to be in the Rebels
Shannon Althouse, by his own admission, looks like a pretty scary guy. With tattoos covering much of his neck and face, he told Gary Jubelin's I Catch Killers podcast that his fascination with ink began when he started using drugs. 'I started getting 'em when I got addicted to methamphetamine,' he explained. 'I never had any face tattoos, head tattoos or anything till I started using heavy drugs. And then once I started using heavy drugs, I was just like, I want this face tattoo. I want that head tattoo, you know.' 'This is a true story, I'm not even lying about this,' he continued, when asked if he ever woke up with a new tattoo he didn't remember getting. 'I woke up in prison once, and as soon as I actually sobered up in prison, I did look in the mirror and I was thinking - wow. What happened? What have I done?,' he continued. 'I was shocked. I shocked myself.' Growing up in Darwin amid a culture of domestic violence and alcohol, Shannon says his introduction into the criminal world began slowly, with he and his group of young friends and family heading out to cause trouble as a way to escape what was going on at home when their parents would throw parties. 'We used to just jump on our push bikes and take off, especially when all the parents and all the adults were drinking,' he recalled. 'You know, that was our safe haven - we'd kill time, kill our boredom, roll around and throw rocks at taxis or police cars and try to get into a police chase.' It wasn't just the drinking and violence they were trying to escape, either. Althouse discloses he was sexually abused by a friend of the family from a young age, with the abuse often taking place at these parties. 'When the families are all drinking and having a laugh and partying and stuff like that, you know, by the end of the night there are predators.' Fast-forward a few years and Althouse found himself having served time in prison, and not only addicted to methamphetamine, but also holding the position of sergeant-at-arms in the Darwin chapter of the Rebels bikie club. 'It's just pretty much like you're the enforcer,' Althouse explained. 'You make sure that you enforce all the club policies, and protect the president. You're the president's right hand man, anything happens to him, you are the one that's getting done for it.' 'It's always seemed like a poisoned chalice, the sergeant-at-arms position,' observed Jubelin, 'you're gonna be at the forefront of anything that goes down.' 'Yeah, you're in the front of the line,' Althouse agreed. 'If anything goes down, any dramas, any wars - anything. 'It puts you in a bit of a position, like I said, the anxiety and paranoia that comes with all that too. 'When you're pulling up at the petrol station and a car pulls up and the windows are tinted, you know, like you're wondering - you don't know if you should grab a weapon or not, in case there's somebody … your enemy or an enemy of your mate. You know what I mean?' In fact, it was a lesson Althouse would learn all too well when he was attacked in the street and run over in 2016, leaving him fighting for his life. Althouse, giving context to the attack that left him in a coma, explained there had been an issue involving a member of another club. 'I knew him for years and we were mates at one stage, and he ended up owing me a bit of money, so I went there to go get the money,' he said. Althouse explained that after a few failed debt collection attempts, he 'punched him around, you know, I gave him a hiding.' After escalating conflict between the pair, Althouse says he had gone with his housemate to find the other member. 'As I've walked in to walk down to his work shed, 'cause he lived in an industrial area, he wasn't in there,' he recalled. 'I thought, oh, that's weird. But then I saw his headlights coming. I couldn't hear the car moving, but I could see headlights coming up, it was a big, big road, you know? 'And I looked, I walked down and looked down and I saw his Hilux just sitting there in the middle of the road facing me' 'I started walking towards him and did a twirl, showed him that I had no weapons, you know, and told him to get outta the car,' the former bikie continued. 'And then: first gear, second gear, third gear, and he just hit me and just ran me over, clean over.' Althouse described hitting the ground and immediately going into shock. 'I couldn't move, couldn't hear - everything was ringing, but I could see what was going on,' he continued. 'My vision slowly started coming back again, and he was looking at me through the window, you know, and I thought, no, he's gonna double back and come and run me over to finish me off.' Althouse managed to push himself up off the ground but knew immediately something was wrong. 'I just felt jelly,' he said. 'Like my whole left side of my body was just smashed. I coughed up a heap of blood on the road and I thought, wow, that's my lung, something's happened to my lung, I've punctured my lung. 'My housemate came over to me and as I started talking to him, I was spitting blood into his face. I said 'I'm dying. I gotta get to the hospital. I'm dying.'' Althouse was right. He had broken both shoulder blades and seven ribs, three of which had punctured his lung. He ended up losing over four litres of blood, and nearly dying on the operating table. Shortly after, he went back to prison for 10 years, for his involvement in a retaliatory attack (Althouse purchased the weapons used but was not present at the time of the assault). But while inside, Althouse made a decision. He began reading up on Buddhism and mindfulness, and realised he was meant for bigger things than spending his life locked up. While incarcerated in Darwin, and then Alice Springs, he began helping some of the younger inmates. There was a Royal Commission into [the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory], and all the young fellas, they started turning 18 and started coming into the maximum security prison,' he explained. 'Some of 'em couldn't read or write or anything like that. So I was grabbing their briefs and reading them for them and helping them out. 'And some of the stuff I read, it was pretty disgusting. So I thought, no, I've gotta help these young lads, and I started sitting there and helping 'em with their court proceedings helping 'em get through their compensation payouts and just guiding 'em as best as I can through the system, through the adult system. 'I knew it was different to the juvie as well. And then I just got a real passion for it.' These days, Althouse is not only clean and sober (he'll have 10 years this October), but he has stayed true to the commitment he made in prison, and hasn't returned to a life of crime. He's no longer a member of the Rebels motorcycle club, and has dedicated his life to mentoring First Nations kids in the Northern Territory through boxing and other community initiatives.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Fire in a drug rehabilitation center in violence-plagued Mexican state kills 12, authorities say
MEXICO CITY (AP) — A fire in a drug rehabilitation center in the violence-plagued Mexican state of Guanajuato killed 12 people and injured at least three others, authorities said Sunday. The fire broke out early Sunday in the town of San Jose Iturbe, where the municipal government said it was still investigating what caused the deadly blaze. 'We express our solidarity with the families of those who have been killed while they tried to overcome addictions,' the municipal government said in a statement, adding that it will help to pay for the funeral expenses of those killed. Mexican media outlets reported that the victims of the fire had been locked up inside the rehab center. Mexico's privately run drug rehabilitation centers are often abusive, clandestine, unregulated and underfunded. They have been the targets of similar attacks in the past. The industrial and agricultural state of Guanajuato has for years been the scene of a bloody turf battle between the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and a local gang, the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel. Guanajuato has the highest number of homicides of any state in Mexico. Mexican drug gangs have killed suspected street-level dealers from rival gangs sheltering at rehab facilities in the past. In 2020, gunmen shot to death 27 people at rehab center in another city in Guanajuato, Irapuato. In 2010, 19 people were killed in an attack on a rehab center in Chihuahua, a city in northern Mexico. More than a dozen other attacks on such facilities occurred in the decade between those massacres.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
My cultural awakening: A Timothée Chalamet drama made me leave my partner – and check him into rehab
Two summers ago, I met a man on a dating app who would become my boyfriend. The red flags were there from the start, but I ignored them all. When I stayed at his, he didn't have a towel to offer me, and he never changed his sheets. It became obvious that he didn't know how to look after himself. Even though, in reality, he could survive without me (similar to how a teenage boy would survive on his own, eating burgers in bed), I felt like, if I wasn't there to buy groceries, cook and clean, he might die. He would disappear for days, on a drink- or drugs-fuelled bender, and I'd assume he'd overdosed in a basement somewhere. I lived in fear that something terrible would happen to him. I became his boyfriend and his caregiver. This was a familiar role for me: I'd done it in all my previous relationships. I needed to be needed. If the person I was dating didn't need me, then what value did I have? I found safety in taking care of someone. This started as a family dynamic: as the eldest child, I had to look out for my younger brothers, and learned to overlook my own needs. Then, when I was 14, my girlfriend died in a drug-related car accident. My therapist helped me to see the connection; that because I couldn't save her, I sought romantic relationships with men or women I thought I could save instead. I hadn't seen how much I was damaging myself by trying to help him. And that I never would never be able to One evening, after being recommended it by Netflix, I began watching Beautiful Boy, a film about the breakdown of a father's relationship with his son, who is an addict. It was about halfway through that I decided to leave my relationship. When Steve Carell's character (David) hangs up on Timothée Chalamet (Nic), saying, 'I wish I could help you, but I can't do that,' I knew I couldn't either. I admired the strength it took to end the cycle of trying (and failing) to save his son. Even though he was my boyfriend and three years older, I related to the father-son dynamic in Beautiful Boy. I felt responsible for him, and he would tell me that he would die without me, threatening to take his own life. Until then, I hadn't seen how much I was damaging myself by trying to help him. And that I would never be able to, not really. He had to learn how to take care of himself. As David says: 'I don't think you can save people.' Despite deciding to end the relationship in September 2023, I didn't take action until October, when I cheated on him. I felt I had to do something irreparable that would make it impossible for us to stay together. I told him what I'd done over the phone, then I called his mum to tell her about his drug problem. I don't think she knew: she lived in another country and he hid it from her. Finally, I called a psychiatric facility and did all of the admin to make sure that he would be taken care of, and then never spoke to him again. The guilt I felt was overpowered by the feeling that this was something I had to do. That was my last codependent relationship. I have a new boyfriend, who tells me that my company alone is enough. I'm the most peaceful I've ever been, but sometimes the voice that says I'm only lovable if I'm useful comes back. If I try to cook for my boyfriend when I'm tired and he tells me I don't have to, I can spiral. But slowly, with help, I'm building a sense of self that doesn't rely on being of service. Beautiful Boy helped me see that I don't need to take care of someone else to have value. Action on Addiction is available on 0300 330 0659.
BBC News
5 days ago
- General
- BBC News
Bradford knife-wielding robber jailed for pub and shop threats
A man who threatened pub staff and a shopkeeper with a knife after taking crack cocaine has been jailed for more than four Leathem, 40, demanded money from workers at the Ginger Goose pub in Bradford after he was asked to leave the leaving with £60 from the till, he entered a nearby mobile phone shop while still holding the knife and attempted to steal a phone, Bradford Crown Court of Alcester Garth, Bradford, admitted robbery, attempted robbery, possession of bladed articles and assaulting an emergency worker and was sentenced to four years and eight months. The sentencing heard Leathem was spotted by a police officer on Sunbridge Road on 26 February, with the officer tackling him to the used an incapacitant spray to subdue him after he resisted arrest, the court heard, and he was found to be carrying two a police interview, Leathem claimed he was being "hunted" and couldn't recall brandishing the knife in the pub. Judge Sophie McKone said Leathem had taken the decision to take crack cocaine, adding: "It makes you act in a paranoid way believing things that aren't true."The court heard Leathem had experienced issues with alcohol and drug addiction from the age of him, the judge imposed a five-year restraining order banning him from both the pub and the mobile phone shop."The people that work in the city centre here in Bradford, whether serving in pubs or running their own shops, are entitled to feel safe and secure and not be the subject of violent threats with knives," she told Leathem."When the police arrived they very bravely tackled you with that knife, but you were waving it around." Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.
ABC News
5 days ago
- Health
- ABC News
Man who murdered his elderly mother with 15kg pot plant sentenced to 21 years jail
A man who murdered his elderly mother with a pot plant before selling her belongings for drug money has been jailed for at least 21 years. David Andrew Mapp, 59, killed hits 82-year-old mother Colleen Wilson when he threw a 15-kilogram pot plant at her inside her home at Tumbi Umbi on the New South Wales Central Coast in April 2022. Mapp lived at nearby Watanobbi but had been staying with his mother because he was sick with COVID-19. The jury in his trial last October reached a guilty verdict in less than a day. In the NSW Supreme Court today, Mapp was sentenced to 21 years' jail with a non-parole period of 15 years. A victim impact statement from Ms Wilson's sister Janice Fowler was read out in court detailing the difficult relationship that her sister shared with Mapp. She described the relationship as being full of "harassment, begging, pleading, promises and lies". The trial heard Mapp had a longstanding drug addiction and regularly argued with his mother, usually as a result of him asking for money. In body cam police footage tendered in court, Mapp said he threw the pot plant in self defence, claiming his mother had threatened him with a kitchen knife. A short time after the murder, Mapp was seen on surveillance footage entering a pawn shop in nearby Long Jetty where he sold Ms Wilson's television and whipper snipper for $200, which he used to buy drugs. It was not until several hours later that Mapp called triple-0 to report a death. "I'm at mums and we had a bad argument … things got pretty bad and we had an argument … fell down, and I tried to revive her," he said to the emergency operator. He also told the operator he had been conducting CPR on his mother "all day, hoping she'd come to". In handing down Mapp's sentence Justice Ian Harrison concluded that even though Ms Wilson's death was the result of an intentional act, it was an unintended consequence of what Mapp did. "It is clear Mr Mapp lost his self-control as a result of the build-up of emotional toil associated with his longstanding anxiety," Justice Harrison said. A report prepared by psychiatrist Yvonne Skinner stated Mapp's anxiety disorder was a result of suffering from institutionalised abuse in his early years and domestic violence perpetuated by his father. Dr Skinner's opinion was that Mapp's actions were a culmination of mental health issues, stating that drug withdrawal during his bout of COVID-19 and continued arguing with his mother could be described as "the straw that broke the camel's back". Justice Harrison accepted Dr Skinner's assessment that Mapp had "a very limited risk of reoffending". Mapp will be eligible for parole in July 2037.
