'I did some awful things to get my daughter out': Dad pulls daughter from ice addiction
An Aussie dad says he was so desperate to pull his daughter out of her ice addiction that he got an axe and smashed down a door to drag the 19-year-old back home and into rehab.
Wayne Butters was forced to take out a loan and sell the family's car to pay for treatment, but he refused to give up on his daughter Tiarni, and says there isn't enough being done to help other families in the same situation.
Mr Butters has told the ABC he left his job to spend nights searching the streets of Melbourne for his daughter who quit her job as a dental nurse after becoming addicted to the drug.
Tiarni says she spent eight months moving from drug home to drug home, living with dealers and other addicts - some as young as 14.
"(The drug houses) have got steel doors. They don't have to answer them if they don't want to. I just put my hoodie over my head, knocked on the door … they must have thought it was just a drug deal, so the door opened," he told the Four Corners program.
"I did some horrible things to get my daughter out. They worked, but it exhausted me."
His daughter, 19-year-old Tiarni said if it wasn't for her father's determination and a near-miss with a terrifying drive-by shooting, she would still be caught in the ice epidemic.
"I would hide under a bed in case he came in and tried to find me. I didn't want him to see me like that," she said.
Given standard treatment for ice addicts costs around $30,000, the Butters family turned to a discount clinic in a bid to help Tiarni.
Still costing $15,000, the family booked Tiarni in and were left with just $139 to their name.
Demand for treatment is skyrocketing, with some families forking out $60,000 for multiple stints in a bid to defeat the ice addiction.
In 2015, 32,000 people requested treatment for ice addiction and that figure shows no sign of slowing down this year.
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