'It took my soul': Sydney ice addict's incredible transformation
A Sydney woman has undergone an incredible transformation after overcoming an addiction to methamphetamine.
Jessica Geddes, 31, was a successful real estate agent in her early 20s but admitted to 7News she had regularly smoked marijuana and drank alcohol in her mid to late teens.
Ms Geddes still managed to hold down a job and own her own home though.
But that all spiralled out of control the moment she decided to try the drug ice as a 20-year-old. Ms Geddes said it started when a friend came over to try and help her renovate her home and one thing led to another.
“It took my soul,” she recalled.
Her addiction became crippling. She began using it every day for the next five years.
Leaving Sydney to move to the Gold Coast didn’t help her either as she continued to find ways to keep the addiction alive. She thought she was going to die addicted to ice.
She wrote on Instagram, saying at one stage she was homeless on the streets of Mount Druitt.
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Ms Geddes returned to Sydney and was frequently arrested by police. She spent her 28th birthday in a jail cell.
“I was sitting in this disgusting dirty cell on my birthday and I knew I couldn’t go back here,” she told 7Life.
Ms Geddes put that down as her turning point – the moment she would overcome her “riches to rags” story and finally be free of her dependence on drugs.
She entered rehab and was ultimately able to overcome the addiction. Ms Geddes has now been clean for six years and has uses social media to share her story via Instagram and TikTok.
“I couldn’t be there for my family, friends, work, or people in general,” she wrote on Instagram last month.
“My life was consumed with when, how and where I was 'getting on' next.
“These days that is so different! I can be there for the people I love, I have nothing in my way stopping me from being the best person I can be for the people I care about.”
Ms Geddes isn’t alone in battling addiction against ice either.
According to Cracks in the Ice, which is supported by Federal health and the University of Sydney, 1.2 million Australians over the age of 14 have reported using meth, citing the 2019 National Drug Strategy Household Survey.
About 76 per cent of them said they had used ice within six months of taking the survey and about 17 per cent claimed they had taken it daily.
Between 2010 to 2019 there was a 28 per cent increase in ice usage – however, it is not clear if this is the number of people taking it or the quantity which was being taken.
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