Appoche production.

This podcast includes references to drug use, youth suicide, and violent crime.

It's not recommended for younger audiences and listener discretion is advised.

Welcome to Real Crime with Adam Shand.

I'm your host, Adam Shand.

If you enjoy our content, please subscribe, like, and share to support more independent crime journalism.

Youth crime is the hot issue in Australia right now.

Victoria is cracking down on youth offenders, with children as young as fourteen facing the possibility of being jailed for life for violent crime.

Day after day, we read stories of angry, disaffected young people committing violent, senseless crimes, often while under the influence of drugs like methamphetamine or ice.

Destroying families, causing carnage on our roads, and murder in our homes.

This is a bleak story of family breakdown, alienation from education and employment, and offenders consigned to a revolving door of the criminal justice system.

Ice is ripping through rural and regional areas, devastating entire towns.

But today I'm not here to wring my hands and add to this council of despair, because I've witnessed the miraculous possibilities of hope and redemption.

I met my guest ten years ago when he was turning his life around from is addiction and crime.

Back then, I made a podcast with Tom Desuza called Meth Destruction, which detailed his descent into that hellish world.

Fortunately meth did not destroy Tom, but it did come very close.

He got his life back on track and is now making a documentary film about riding a motorcycle across Indonesia.

He's living a life of grace and possibility that he could scarcely have imagined back in the dark days of his early teens.

And it's my great pleasure to speak with you again, Tom Adam, how's it going?

Amazing?

What comes to mind is that Bob Dylan's song A Hard Range is going to fall on the line where have you been, my blue eyed son?

And it really applies to your journey.

You're living in an extraordinary life now.

Like I said, could you have imagined where you are today back in those early days.

Back in those days, I remember my drug dealer telling me if anybody made it to twenty five, you're a survivor.

There weren't many of us who made it past twenty five, So no, not at all.

You know, if you ask me back then, I'd be surprised to know that I'd even still be alive.

Because looking at you, I don't see any of the effects.

I mean, you describe yourself as a junkie before.

You don't look like that, you don't act like that.

You've really managed to get through this on the surface unscathed.

Obviously, these things do leave impacts.

But I guess you've been pretty lucky.

Yeah, for sure, I have been lucky, and I guess the version of success I've been able to achieve.

I actually went in a couple of years ago and saw a drug counselor who was my counselor when I was going through rehap and youth detox and that kind of thing, and she said, it's actually quite remarkable what's happened, because oftentimes success for a lot of people who came out of drug addiction it's just the ability to hold down a job or a relationship.

And yeah, I guess I've been able to take it to the next level and build a pretty extraordinary life, which I'm really grateful for.

Yeah, it is extraordinary.

And I think we're often sold a message that is somewhat a miracle story that life after drugs is going to be perfect if you do these things and you stay on the program.

But of course life still intervenes.

There's still the problems of life to deal with, and getting off drugs and out of crime is just one more stop on the journey.

Do you feel like that that you still sort of a work in progress?

Things are still happening, You're still sorting out life for sure.

That's life, isn't it?

You know?

That's life for everybody.

Life isn't easy.

Life is hard, and there are a lot of trials and challenges and things that everybody goes through on the way.

And I guess for me, as a child and as a teenager, drugs for my escape from that and my means of coping with that.

But I learned a lot of hard lessons at a pretty young age.

Whereas I think some of the challenges and struggles in life, I think a lot of people go through life maybe not being able to deal with those things and finding other escapes, whether that's in work, in sex, or alcoholism, or I guess everybody has their own kind of form of escape.

And I think I learned a lot of these lessons at a young age, and that's equipped me pretty well.

Yeah, I won't start on my various additions and passions and obsessions which I've used to get through nearly forty years of journalism.

And we're actually here in Balley.

So if you do hear motorbikes in the background, scooters and things, I'm not going to stop with them because there's just too many of them.

If you'll have to put up with the listeners.

But I've been giving you a hand with your film, and part of the exercise was to make an outline of all the material you have shot over nearly two years and then cut it up into bits and put it on the floor.

And I was looking at your life on the floor, which has included all the dark times, how you got into drugs and crime, and how you've got out and where your journey's taken you.

Let's go back to the beginning of that, because your story begins in a middle class family in England with all the advantages, but then things began to go wrong.

Tell us a bit about that.

I had a pretty privileged life, was one of four kids.

Dad worked a good job, Mum worked as a vet and I kind of grew up having all the modern day trappings.

I guess, you know, I had a good education.

I took French lessons and swimming lessons and tennis lessons, and as far as I knew, it was part of a happy, unified family.

But then things began to go wrong.

Dad was working in the financial industry.

The stock market crash came and you guys, return to your family's native home, Perth, and you struggled to fit in.

You've never found Perth was home even to this day, and cracks began to appear in that middle class facade.

What happened, Well, I think, you know, it's a pretty difficult thing to mobilize a family of six people and move them across to the other side of the world.

And I think Mum and Dad had this idea of how things might look on the reality turned out to be really different.

Dad struggled to find work, I struggled to fit in, and I guess I felt different from everybody else, and I found myself in a place where that difference wasn't really celebrated or encouraged, and as a result, I started to hate myself and be unhappy with who I was and to feel uncomfortable in my own skin.

So I set about trying to destroy myself literally.

And you're a gifted student, You've got a scholarship to a prestigious school.

You didn't fit in.

You saw your name up on the on a board in gold letters, and that was a source of bullying for you.

Your response was to try to burn the school down.

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

That was how much I hated that place.

You know, I went to the school on the weekend.

I was just skateboarding with a friend.

I didn't go there with that specific intention, but I was there at the school, and you know, I guess all these visceral feelings just I saw a pile of leaves on the veranda outside the headmaster's office, and yeah, all these feelings just compelled me to go and hold a cannadioda and a lighter up to the leaves.

And yeah, luckily the grounds keeper saw us and chased us away before anything went up in flames.

But I wasn't happy at that place.

I didn't like it.

And I guess, like I said, I was uncomfortable in my own skin, and I sought solitude out on the margins of society.

Yeah, and you went a good crook because you didn't look for the CCTV camera, which gave you up straight away, so you were immediately turned in And that was the beginning of the end for you at that school.

I think you were expelled went it.

Yeah, Yeah, I was expelled and I went to eight or nine different schools in total, so I moved around a lot, and there was definitely a feeling of dislocation, and I think, you know, there was a sense of instability at school, and there was a sense of instability at home as well.

Mum and Dad's relationship was starting to get pretty rocky.

Dad had gone to work in Hong Kong and then come back, and we also weren't really sure of our future in Perth.

We'd just moved from London.

We'd been back in Perth through about three years, and there was talk of moving again to Sydney or Melbourne or somewhere else.

And I didn't really feel a sense of stability.

And I moved through all these schools and it started to think, well, what's the point of making friends and investing in this place when we might just move again.

Yeah, and you're looking for a sense of ease and comfort within yourself.

You discover marijuana, You smoke a bit that for a while, and then you decided to go on to caffeine pills, of all things, and you and your mate steal from the supermarket a whole bunch of cap I don't if caffeine pills are still available, don't go looking for them if you listen to this podcast.

But see you crush all these pills up.

You know, white powder, I don't know didn't have any effect on m Sure it would have.

But and your mother finds the bag of white powder hidden in a drum kit at home.

And I don't blame any parent for being alarmed when they think their kids falling into drug addiction or hard drugs and so forth.

But she did make a telling decision because rather than deal with it within the family, what did she do?

Yeah, she called the police.

This was sort of two thousand and eight.

It was kind of around the time when ice was just starting to sort of become prolific in Perth and in Australia.

And I'd heard on the radio that ice was being made from these cold and flu pills which kind of had pseudoeffortrine as a base ingredient.

You know, I sort of thought, oh, well, you know, if I crushed them up and put them in with the caffeine pills, maybe that'll have some effect as well.

And so yeah, she called the police, and the police came and did a kind of preliminary test on them, and obviously, because it had the base ingredient of methamphetamine, it responded to the test.

And so they charged me with dealing ice and sent me to juvenile attention.

And my parents were at their wits end.

They didn't know what to do.

They sought the guidance of the police, who they figured were experienced in these kinds of things.

But I think juvenile at tension had the complete opposite effect to what was intended.

It instilled in me this hatred of authority.

It made me even more angry, and it told me that society rejected me and didn't accept me.

And your parents had given you up, lagged you to the cops, and there you are, and you go on from scholarship student to juvenile detention in Range View in Perth.

That first night is burned in your memory.

Yeah, yeah, it is.

It was a pretty horrific place.

You know, I was putting this observation cell.

It's about eight or nine cells in a semicircle around this kind of central control room or with kind of like a fishbowl, I guess, or with this you know, big floor to ceiling perspex window.

And there was blood and graffiti and kind of dried toilet paper all over the wall.

Lights were on twenty four hours a day, and the aircom was turned up full bast and just the screaming and the yelling and the shouting coming from the other cells, and there was a girl in the cell next to me who's just smashing her head against the wall until she cracked the glass.

And the next morning we was sort of woken up and strip searched and showered and got prepared to go to court.

And I remember sitting in this little two by three meters sell with about ten other people that I think I was one of only two white kids in that cell.

All of these other guys in there were quite a bit older and violent criminals as well, carthieves and robbers, and you know, they were sitting there telling these stories.

I could hardly even understand the whether that they spoke and how well were you I was thirteen thirteen.

Yeah, little Lord Fauntleroy.

Yeah, thrown in with the hardened criminals at thirteen.

Well, yeah, you know, all of a sudden, I had to try and adapt myself to this environment and this is a place that I'd found myself and I had to try and fit in.

And how long was that stint?

That was only one night.

I was bailed.

I was bowed to my parents.

I think they thought that by working with the court they might be able to try and take back some kind of semblance of control that they hadn't before.

But going to juvenile attention had the complete opposite effect to what was intended.

And they were certainly working hard they were doing with them.

And that's the thing.

I don't blame it.

Like I said before, I don't blame any parent going through the for the first time looking at the range of solutions open to them and realizing it's beyond their understanding, and they look for institutional solutions.

The next one was drug rehab, which ironically was a window to hard drugs and criminal connections which would sustain you over the next several years.

Yeah.

No, that's right.

I've breached my boil conditions and was sent back to juvenile's attention sort of two or three more times in the couple of months after that first night, and eventually there was no one in my family who could really be responsible for me or take care of me.

Everybody just thought I was too out of control, and so I was sent to go and stand this drug rehab.

For three months, I lived in this house in one of the outer suburbs of Perth.

I was surrounded by older, more experienced drug users, and you know, they became like my family in a sense.

Had to try and adapt myself, to make myself fit into that place and try and find a sense of belonging there.

And I did that by listening to their stories and the things that they'd been through and trying to copy them and repo them and pretend that I was one of them as well.

And you pretend for long enough to try and be someone, eventually you become that person.

And that's what happened.

And these are your formative years.

I mean, you've got no other example.

You're trying to make your way.

What happened next I got out of drug rehab I think just after my fourteenth birthday.

My parents were divorced not long after, so.

They're busy with their own issues now, and they've got this troublesome child, Tommy.

We've also got the three other children to look after and to deal with.

Yeah, so a lot was going on.

Yeah, I went looking for drugs.

I had the means to go and find them now, and you know, I'd heard all these stories about them.

I was curious about them, and I wanted to know what it was all about.

You know, I'd spent three months in there listening to these kids tell stories about getting high on ice and going out and stealing cars and all these kinds of things that they made sound really exciting, and Sanator Hall a lot better than what I was going back to where I was.

So I was curious and I went looking for it.

And you found it how I found it.

I started with drugs like heroin, an oxyconton and these things.

I didn't really like it.

It made me sick, it made me its year.

It wasn't really what I was looking for.

I enjoyed the rush that I got from it, but not really the high.

You know, I kind of enjoyed the first five minutes after injecting the drug, but then afterwards when you sort of started to feel a bit stoned.

I didn't really like that.

I didn't really want to go to sleep and numb myself.

I wanted to kind of bring myself up out of myself.

And then through a friend of a friend, I was introduced to another drug dealer who was twenty years older than me, and he introduced me to ice and started schooling me in crime.

And he was like your fagin to your all over twist.

Yeah, and he was an odd character.

He was obviously been right through the mill of criminality and drugs and mental disorder as well.

He had.

He'd been injecting ice for twenty years.

He was obsessed with stal wars figures and skulls which used to swap for ice.

And he schooled me in crime and this criminal mentality and taught me how to deal drugs and also how to survive in this world.

Like I guess he took me under his wing in a sense, and maybe, you know, I thought he had the kind of sense of duty to protect me or help me in this world of violence and crime.

And yeah, he scored me and showed me the ropes.

I in no way condone this sort of drug use, but I think it's true to say that individuals find the drug that best suits their needs and for whatever reason, ice was that for you?

Why?

Yeah, people definitely go looking for particular drugs for particular reasons.

And I definitely suffered from a lack of self confidence.

I didn't like the person that I was, and I brought me up and out of that, and it kind of instilled this false kind of confidence in me and made me feel on top of the world, and it made me feel good about myself.

That that was really the addiction for me.

That was what I was really looking for.

And you were injecting it, which is not usually the way that young people are introduced to it.

They tend to smoke it and so forth.

But what was the difference with injecting it?

Things escalated pretty quickly.

Things escalated really quickly with me.

And that's I think the sensation that you get from injecting the drug is far more potent and powerful.

I've never experienced anything else in my life like that.

That's so instant and just you know, I think smoking it, that sensation is definitely more addictive.

But I think the actual ritual of smoking ice is a more repetitive kind of ritual.

You know, you continue smoking it and smoking and smoking it, and you know, you almost get addicted to just the smoking of it, whereas injecting it, you have one shot and that's it and you're good for another eight hours, and you know, you spend that other eight hours sort of chasing enough money to go and get more.

And that, for me, that was a real part of the addiction, That whole ritual and the chase, the thrill of the chase, you know, the ice, the drug itself was just something that kind of kept that whole show going.

And Madow, as you said, was now showing you how to get money and the crimes that would achieve that.

For you, what were you up to in terms of your criminal pursuits.

I was selling drugs and you know, using the profits to buy ice.

I was stealing a lot.

I was just basically getting money however I could.

And I didn't really care who I stole it off, or where it came from, or what I was doing.

I just all I really thought about was that next shot from your family.

Yeah, I stole from people I loved and who were close to me.

How do you feel about that now?

Pretty ashamed?

That's not something I'm proud of.

It's something I regret because.

This is the process that occurs where people fall to this addiction and steal from family, and that creates more distance and mistrust between the family, which actually accentuates all the issues going on.

Well that's right, Yeah, it just kind of perpetuates the problem, you know, you know, it makes you feel even worse about yourself.

And because you feel worse about yourself, I would go and try and block those feelings out in the only way in which I knew how to deal with them, which is by taking more drugs.

And it's just this kind of cycle that kept going around and round and round and faster and faster, and you know, there's no real way of stopping it.

Things became violent as well.

You ripped off some guys with some drugs that weren't drugs.

Yeah.

I was exposed to violence from a pretty young age, and at first time I was in juvenile attension, I was exposed to a lot of violence, and I guess that became something that informed the way that I behave and the way that I reacted to things.

That world is a pretty violent world as well.

The first time I really got bashed was in a range of Juvenile Detention Center.

I was thirteen years old.

I've got a ping pong table smashed over my head for not really any reason at all, just because I was on the oval laughing with the mate and this other guy had broken the rules and lost his power for the evening and he sort of took it out on me.

You know, he had to go at me on the oval and said I'll wait until we get back to the unit, and I kind of didn't think anything of it.

And you know, a couple of hours later, I'm sitting there in the unit waiting to play ping pong and him and three of his cousins come running around the corner and just picked me up and threw me on top of this ping pong table and smashed it over my head for no reason at all.

Really, I'm just sitting there laughing with a mate, having a good time, and you know, suddenly I was exposed to this world of violence.

And violence, I guess, is a language that knows no logic or no reason.

There's no real way to respond to it other than with that language of violence itself.

And that was something that I had to learn and adopt.

And you were involved in violent incidents that you initiated.

Yeah, yeah, there are a few robberies.

And yeah, I think, like a lot of young men, I had a lot of things confused.

Kindness could be easily confused for weakness, and I had fear confused with respect as well.

And I think, you know, that was how that world worked.

If people were afraid of you, that was kind of considered as respect.

It's, oh, you know, this guy's so and so, and nobody wants to go near him, and he's you know, he's a big figure.

And yeah, that was that was something that I had confused, Like a lot of young misguided men.

You're moving down this path and you're not happy about it.

You're not happy in any sense.

You're becoming more depressed and anxious.

You know, the more drugs you have, the more you have to have.

And you thall me were quite of steep depression.

Yeah, I mean, I've got to admit it's deep within.

I wasn't happy, I wasn't content, I wasn't fulfilled.

But this life was also exciting as well, and it kind of presented, I guess, something of an antidote to that depression.

I mean, it definitely perpetuated as well because of the drugs that I was taking, the things that they were doing.

That was no solution for the way I felt.

But it was also exciting.

It was an adventure and it took me away from the way that I felt.

And it wasn't just the drugs that I did that.

It was the lifestyle that went along with that too.

You know.

It was going out and stealing things and staying out late and seeing what kinds of trouble we could get ourselves into and how we could source money to go and get our next shot of ice or Yeah, in a way, it was.

It was its own kind of sordid adventure, I guess.

And you're becoming a better crook because you weren't getting caught as much and you weren't doing more juvenile attention.

Yeah, I was being schooled in that, so I understood how to be a better criminal.

And you know, things had happened and I'd learned from that experience.

Is one example where I ripped these guys off for an amount of drugs and a week later they set me up in the park and bashed me and stripped me of everything and broke my jaw with bricks and star pickets and ride and pushed back over my face.

And I spent the next six weeks eating out of a straw, and Madaw kind of tried to school me in a way that taught me how to be better.

He taught me how to be different and how to avoid those things from happening, and what I could do next time.

And yeah, I started, Yeah, I started learning from those things, and I guess becoming a better criminal one soon.

Rain's falling now outside, it's certainly a steamy, wet day here in Bali.

How did you see the future.

If you did see the future, were you just living day to day in a kind of almost an animalistic survival mode.

Yeah, I was just reacting to urges and instincts.

Really, I didn't think about the future.

I didn't have any goals or ambitions or long term plans or you know.

All I cared about was that particular moment and what I could get in my lungs or in my arm or Yeah, the future wasn't really a prospect for me at all.

And what was happening with your relationship with family through this?

It completely fallen apart.

My mum and dad both had pretty different ways of responding to it.

Mum's I guess, always been a pretty determined person and someone who's tried to grab the problem and sort of try and steer it in the right direction, whereas my dad was a bit more hands off.

You know.

He knew that there wasn't a lot that he could do, and I guess he tried to keep me close and maybe try and guide me back down, try and guide me down to rock bottom so it'd be there to help me push back up once I was there.

But I guess deep in this hole and just kept digging this hole deeper, and no matter how much people tried to reach down and help pull me out, didn't want the help.

I wouldn't accept their help.

I was stuck.

I remember your father telling me that he dreamt or imagined himself standing at the edge of your grave.

Yeah, her dad did say that to me once, and I think Mum said that she kind of always knew that I would be okay, And Dad said he felt a similar way as well, up until that point where I had that dream.

And I think he got to a point where he started to become really afraid.

And you were becoming afraid or depressed to the point where the adventure was souring, and you also tried to take your own life.

Yeah, yeah, I did.

I guess three incidents I can remember that were really pivotal moments in this I guess that made me understand that I needed to change my life.

The first was a psychotic episode.

I'd been awake for ten days on ice and went running around the streets with a meat cleaver, chasing somebody who wasn't there.

And the second, Yeah, I was trying to change but couldn't do it.

It was all too hard, and so I tried to hang myself off the beam in my mum's garage, and the beam snapped out of the wall as I was hanging.

We talked about this this morning, and I could see that it came back to you in a very visceral way.

And I guess, as we reflect here about what you've achieved, since you think this wouldn't have occurred had that beam not snapped.

How close you were to snuffing at you all your potential.

How do you reflect on that now?

Well, it's true, it's a difficult thing to go back and revisit all this.

You know, I've come a long way since a lot of that, and yeah, it's a part of me.

It's an experience that I've lived that I guess has shaped my outlook on the world and the person that I am.

But also I tried it to let that define me as well.

And there are many other things that I've done and many other things that I'm doing that contribute to the person that I am and the person I've become.

It is hard to go back and revisit these things and pull myself back into that particular moment.

It's not a pleasant one and it's a difficult place to go, for sure.

It is.

It really isn't for me When I when we talked about this morning, it was real for me in a way that it wasn't before.

When I see what you've done since, and I'm so grateful that fortune was in your favor at that moment and you have moved on.

But there's still some legacies of those choices and the relationships you had, in particular your best mate Sam, who's still in jail to this day serving a life sentence for murder.

Yeah, I guess you know, there were definitely a handful of fork in the road kind of moments along the way, and I don't know if you've ever seen that movie The Butterfly Effect, where all these different potential outcomes for the way that a life can look based on different decisions in one particular moment.

And I guess in the past I've looked back at some of those moments and gone, well, what if this had happened or what if that had happened?

But you know, I also believe that everything happens the way that it should, and that you know, our lives are destined to a particular course.

To some extent, that murder that Sam committed was definitely one of those moments where I had started to turn the corner.

Sam was my best friend.

He was still kind of stuck in that world, and just after he committed the murdery he called me and asked for my help.

You know, I waited for him to come and help, and eventually he decided that no, he didn't want to drag me into that.

And you know, he was eventually arrested and convicted and received a life sentence.

Whereas you know, one really vivid moment that this up, I guess was I remember just after he had been arrested and was on remand in Haykia prison, and I just got my driver's license, and I was driving down the coast to you on the first weekend surfing trip away with my mates, and we drove past a turn off to where Sam had gone and buried the body and kept driving and went surfing and had a good weekend away.

And I want to go into the circumstances of the mentor of book.

If you want to go back to meth destruction, you can hear more about that.

I don't think it's worth going back over detail of that, but there was a critical moment where Sam decided not to involve you, not to come and get you, which would have made you an accessory to that murder while disposing of the body.

You owe a lot, I guess I do in a sense, you know, I don't know if I owe him a lot, as in I feel indebted to him in a way, but I have a lot to thank him for and I'm grateful for the decision that he made for choosing not to drag me into that.

Yeah, there was a moment where when he were talking to Sam over a video call, and he was sitting there in his green T shirt classic in mat garb and you're sitting there in your green rip curl T shirt.

Balley, I said to you, circumstances were different, there'd be no rip curl BALLEI on that green.

It just be a green T shirt and haking a prison.

Yeah, both wearing very different shades of greener.

And he's had to confront the consequences of his decisions.

I feel like you've been living some of his life for him, and you've kept your relationship.

And I think one thing that really really touched my heart was when he said that a lot of his friends and family have dropped off and you've stuck with him.

So I think there is a debt of gratitude at least.

Well, I think there was a connection and there was something that we share, and I guess, you know, we both lived experiences that not a lot of other people can relate to, and since that murder, we've both been on our own journeys and I think both of those journeys have played out in similar ways, albeit in very different circumstances.

And you know, there are not a lot of other people I find who can relate to those experiences.

You know, people can listen to them and be enthralled by them.

But you know how many people can actually understands There's very few.

You know, my younger brother's one and Sam's another.

And yeah, it's just he gets it.

He understands.

And I think we've both been on our own journeys in uncovered similar wisdoms and insights into ourselves and the world around us, but just in our own different ways.

Because he said to you that he feels like he's in the place that he needs to be, which sounds perverse to people from the outside who'd want to be in prison, but that has been He's ten years older than you, by the way, he's just turned forty.

Yeah, and a big chunk of his life has been spenting there.

He's found a way to retain hope.

I remember saying that to him.

I remember saying, oh, you know that I was proud of him and despite the circumstances, I was proud of the person who had become in the journey that he'd been on.

And he responded to that pretty abruptly.

He said, you need to change that way of thinking.

You know.

It's these circumstances are not necessarily bad, he said to me, this is exactly where I need to be.

This is what was supposed to happen, and this is life exactly it was as it was planned out for me, and I'm exactly in the place that I need to be, where I was able to uncover the lessons which I needed to uncover, you know.

And he said that as a prisoner he often goes through that same experience of he's got a lot of time to think, and he thinks a lot about what would have happened if I did this differently or did that differently.

And I think he's made peace with that and come to terms with it, you know, he's asked himself, well, you know, you can't think like that, because who knows if he would even still be here if that murder hadn't have happened and he hadn't been arrested and gone to prison.

Who knows if he would even still be alive.

Because that is certainly a feature of some people's prison experiences.

Once they're behind bars and they come down off the drugs, they get sober, they get the insight.

And I've dealt with this many times with prisoners I've corresponded with, and they have great clarity and they can articulate things that they never could before while they're in that animalistic survival mode that you know all so well.

And also I reflect on the fact that those fourteen years that he's spent inside, you've been turning your life around and making a successive things.

All those waves you've caught, all those places you've been, the insights you've had.

As you say, you've come to a similar place, but through very different circumstances.

Sam is now hopefully will be released in the coming years.

What will be your relationship with him from here on and what will you share with him?

How do you see the future with him?

I think of that world of drugs that I was involved in.

Sam as the only person that I've kept in contact with.

I think him and I shared something that went far deeper than just the drugs.

I think a lot of other friends I had that was all we really had in common, that was all we had to connect over, whereas Sam and I shared something much deeper.

And I know for Sam that the real struggle will come when he gets out of prison.

You know, he's spent almost a whole lifetime in there.

You know he's going to come out and find a very different world, and I wonder how some of the hopes and dreams that he has us.

You know, I think he's also going to find some disappointment as well.

I do worry for him when he'll get out, and what will come of his life, and what he'll be able to make of his life, and what kind of future awaits him outside of those prison walls.

Yeah, what I did like about your dialogue with him was that he's not trying to wish away what he did.

He feels genuine remorse for what happened, and the victim, even though the victim himself was not a good person, was going to do some terrible things.

We won't go into what he was going to do, but this was not a random murder.

But he has the capacity to forgive himself for what he did, so he doesn't just go back into that negative image of himself.

And I think you've done the same thing to a large extent.

His example maybe has helped you bolt that door which was previously a revolving door drugs and crime.

Well, I think we've both been through that journey of self forgiveness.

You know, I think we've both done things that we're not proud of.

To different extents.

And yeah, that journey of self forgiveness is something that anybody who's experienced drug addiction has to go through, and that's a difficult thing.

It's not an easy thing to do, you know.

I think it's easy to forgive other people for the mistakes that they've made, you know, through a of understanding and empathy.

But how do you forgive yourself?

You know, how do you forgive yourself for these things that you've done?

And there might be certain things that they triggering you and that you perpetuate, and how do you let go of all that and start again?

How do you almost reprogram yourself in a way, how do you wipe the slate clean and start again.

That's not an easy thing to do for me, and I know for Sam as well.

That's been a long journey that we've both had to go through.

And I guess the way in which I've done that is by acts of kindness towards myself, by being kind towards myself, looking after myself, taking care of myself, and learning to love myself again and let go of some of the things that I've done, and also to redefine myself in a way to move away from that and to become a different person, to shape myself away from those experiences that have defined me, and maybe even you know, physically going away from a place that defined me as well.

Yeah, I think you really have redefined yourself.

And I look at the ten years I've known you, and I think it's an isis often through hard work.

You went back to school, you completed year twelve, you went to university, you became a journalist.

One of the proudest moments for me was sitting there with your dad when you were named as WA's Young Journalist of the Year.

You're smiling.

I remember that was a beautiful day.

And so you've made every post to win it, and you've gone onto a career in journalism.

You've come up to Indonesia, you're still on a quest.

And this film you're making, The Long Road Home, is about the road forward as much as it is the road you've come along.

Yeah, I mean it's like, well, I guess we're all.

You know, all young people are looking for something and searching for something, aren't they.

And I think, you know, the past couple of years, I've spent sort of riding a motorbike across Indonesia, and you know, I guess I set out looking for empty waves and you know, adventure, and I think that might have been something that helped me move away from drugs, but I think within that I was also looking for something that wasn't possible to find there as well.

I think I was looking for a sense of home within myself, and I was maybe running, you know, moving away from these things and trying to seek something just beyond, when what I was actually looking for was probably right there all along.

I just had to, I guess, unlock the way inside.

Really, one of the themes that we've talked about a lot over ten years is rediscovering joy after the artificial chemical highs and those superficial relationships you have with other drug users.

And I've seen it so many times over the years.

Oh my brother, I love you, my brother.

You know, we'll die for each other, and then pretty much you always see that kid in the dock on his own and the friends have given him up, and so those superficial relationships, and I think you've been You've found a way to do that.

And I think that's such an object lesson for anyone listening who's going through the groups of drug addiction now and crime and things.

Is to reassure oneself that through hard work there is a capacity for joy after that.

What's been your process towards that.

It's not been easy, and they've been setbacks and turnings on this journey.

You know, I think.

After taking drugs there's a chemical imbalance in your brain where it's difficult for your brain to actually produce dopamine.

And you know, you've kind of been living on this plane of really high eighs and low lows, and it's hard to kind of go back to living on a steady plane again and to appreciate the simple things in life.

And I think for me that took a long time.

I think a big part of that was leaving Perth and moving down to Margaret River and learning to appreciate simple things like growing my own food and going surfing and you know, living in a caravan in the bush and living in a really simple way, learning to appreciate the beauty and the joy of life around me.

And I think that was something that took a good few years just to accomplish.

Sure.

And I think you've said many times in this process of making the film that you do feel like you're running.

You were going around Australia with your land drover and your little tiny boat.

You were going around the circles.

But you know that wasn't going to contain you.

And you literally had to learn a new language in your life.

And it's literally a new language, Indonesian.

You now speak fluent into Indonesian, which is equipped to you for this journey right outside yourself in other cultures and to interpret those lives.

And I think that's just wonderful, and I think people can learn new skills, and I think that's the key, a new way of looking at your own life.

It's true, and I guess, you know, I think coming to another country and experiencing another country and other people than a different way of thinking and viewing and understanding the world.

That's helped to change my own perspective as well and my own understanding of myself.

It's also had an influence on my own view and my own understanding of myself and the person that I am.

You know, it's also allowed me to redefine myself in a way away from a place that had defined me to an extent, and yeah, to move away from that and become a new and different person.

People often want to transform themselves, and I think as a bit of a falsity that one can have these parts that you despise of yourself and you're going to rub those out and everything's going to be fine.

And I think the process has been one of accepting oneself.

And I invited you to listen to one of my favorite philosophers, Alan Watts, who a British philosopher, is unfortunately late, but he talks about the fact that this constant desire to change oneself, to erase those things you don't like about oneself, is actually the problem.

You know, that's the quaking mess, and thinking that this process of transformation is going to be the great virtue when in fact that's the problem.

And I think you've come to that understanding that accepting oneself, all your flaws and all your history, has been a way of moving forward, carrying less of the burden.

Well, I think, you know, maybe that's what I was looking for through all this running, and you know, searching for something is maybe just this contentment with who I am and where I'm at and the person that I am, and accepting that person for all of his flaws and mistakes and regrets, and that's formed a big part of who I am.

And I think, you know, life is exactly the way it's supposed to be, and you know, all of these things were supposed to happen.

I've arrived now exactly in the place where I'm meant to be, and it's through that journey I've been able to arrive at an understanding and acceptance of myself that I didn't have before.

You know, I am different, and I am the person that I am, and I'm okay with that person.

You kind of played in getting your first tattoo.

We've talked about this and it's come from a Javanese expression.

What is it?

It's a difficult one to translate.

It's I guess it's a phrase that's unique to a particular people, but it translates roughly to be patient.

Your destiny is already determined or your fortune's already determined.

And so all that negative stuff was just part of that that was already ordained.

You had to go through that to get to the next phase of your life, which you're in now.

Yeah, and I think that phrase kind of sums it up.

You know, everything has happened the way that it's supposed to happen.

And I guess it sums up that idea year of acceptance, of accepting that this is the way that I am, and this is the way that things were supposed to happen, and exactly as it was supposed to be, and it always exactly as it's supposed to be.

And there are probably hopefully thousands of people listening to this podcast, A certain percentage will be saying, that's me or that's my son.

What does your experience offer those people?

I guess hope, you know, I guess hope that there is a future and there is a way forward, and there is life beyond drugs, and you know, it might not seem like it.

Sometimes it might seem that things might often look pretty bleak and dark, but you know, with hard work and persistence and determination that there is a way forward and there is a way through this, and with some intent and determination, the future does look pretty bright and.

There is a place that you can call home.

And this is still a focus on this film.

By the way, you're preparing to go back to Perth.

Now you don't know what the future holds, Maybe you go back there.

I means since i've known you.

You've been threatening to go back to Perth to find that home that you never really felt.

I'm not sure it's there, and I don't think you can adequately answer that question yet, but you're still there's still another chapter of that restoration and that sense of home, which I think a lot of young people who get involved in crime and drugs, I don't really like that, and they've destroyed their families and there's not much to go back to.

Fortunately, you have rebuilt the bridges with your family, but that may not be your ultimate destination.

Well, I think what this journey's really been about is finding a sense of home within myself, you know, understanding and accepting that this is the person that I am and this is where I belong.

You know.

Home might not be back in that particular place, but for a long time I didn't feel at home within myself.

And I think that's really what I've been running around and looking for and chasing, is that sense of acceptance within myself.

You know.

I think going back to a place that fits the traditional idea of home, the traditional context of home is I guess a reference point for that.

You know, my family are there and it's a place where I spent a good chunk of time growing up, and it might for a lot of people that might be home.

But I think you know the understanding that there's no sense of home within that, but there's a sense, you know, maybe I've discovered a sense of home within myself, and I think that'll be a big reference point for that and a big understanding of sure.

I think one of the achievements has been to free yourself of all that past, to give yourself options that people in the criminal justice system simply don't have their choices narrow down.

But now at age thirty, it's trying to make some decisions about what happens in the future.

And I'm just fascinated to see what happens.

I've got an inkling and I've watched you over these ten years, and I'm just so proud of you.

Now, Thanks Adam, And I'm really grateful for all the help and advice and guidance and support that you've given me along the way.

You know, you've made a big impact on my life.

Yeah, there have been some moments while we've clashed.

Yeah, and I've seen that defiance and I've seen that kid that was in that terrible spotshep.

But you just you've done it on You've pulled yourself up by your bootstraps.

And I think that's just incredibly admirable that I've never said to this to any other person I've been given on this podcast with grumbing Adam shand I do love you.

I love you too, Adam.

Thanks, Matte, we'll leave it there.

Thanks so much for your time, mate.

Yeah, I can't wait to see this film.

The Long Road at Home will be in cinemas at a date to be fixed in the future, still in progress, but it's going to be a fantastic journey.

And I think it's just it offers so much, and Tom's story offers so much to all those people out there who are battling with this.

Don't give up on your children.

Try your best.

You're going to make mistakes, you will, and they'll continue to disappoint you and cause your dramas.

But I think what I love about Tom experiences they have stuck the journey.

There have been moments where they it's been very tough, but they're still there.

They're still in this corner even though the thicket sometimes and I'm really proud of them as well.

But so you know, I love your kids as best you can give them second chance, third chance, as many chances as they need, because the potential is there.

If love is there, What can I say?

What can I say?

Oh?

I think I think what this is really about is not so much about drugs, And you know, I think it's about finding a way as a young man.

And that's the thing that all young men struggle through, you know, with the lack of guidance and rituals, and you know, I guess male role models to some extent as well, and it's it's not an easy thing to find you as a young man in a modern day and age.

You know, that's something that led me down this pretty dark path.

But yeah, I mean I guess I've been able to find my way forward and find a path.

Well said, as Tom says, stay patient, your fortune is already ordained.

Thank you for listening.

If you have a crime you want to commit, don't do it.

If you have a crime you want to report, call crime Stoppers one need to hundred, triple three, triple zero.

I do take the very seriously.

Police will attend to your information.

But if you don't trust the coppers please send me an email Adam Shanner writer at gmail dot com.

Thank you for listening.

This has been real crime with Adam shann