The Human Side of Addiction, Mental Health and Crime

We need to be better, but it starts with me.

Mar 02, 2023

Last Sunday, the 26th of February, a detainee in the Alexander Maconoochie Centre in Canberra took his own life. Reports online say the incident is still under investigation (read here). Days earlier, it was reported that the same man went on a rampage through the southern suburbs of Canberra (read here), where he assaulted people, including his partner. He used his car to ram a police car and broke into someone’s house to steal a knife.

I don’t want to talk about the intricacies of what transpired last Sunday or the details of the events in the days leading up to it. I have a lot of questions, though. A report suggested that the detainee was to have regular welfare checks, and I can’t help but wonder how, in this day and age, does a detainee find the resources to take their own life? Particularly one identified as someone who was a potentital risk to their welfare?

Usually, when I read a story like this, I catch myself having thoughts I’m not entirely comfortable with. Things like, “it’s probably a good thing. Clearly, he was a danger to society”. After all, he did try to ram a police car, which shows a complete disregard for the safety and well-being of others.

But I like to think of myself as a reasonably empathetic person, particularly around drugs, alcohol and mental health. I firmly believe addiction is a mental health issue, not a criminal one. So when I have thoughts like the one above, I feel like a hypocrite, and that makes me uncomfortable.

This time though, I didn’t feel like this. I didn’t think it was good that this man took his own life. I didn’t think it was good he was detained in jail. I just thought it was really, fucking, sad. Here’s why…

I was probably nine or ten years old when I first met Justin. We were the same age, and our older brothers played on the same football team. So naturally, we would hang out when we were with our parents watching our brothers play football. We both played football, but Justin played for a different club which I always struggled to understand. I remember him telling me that he had just started at that club as a kid and wanted to stay there because he was mates with everyone in his team. He was a friendly kid. We weren’t close friends. We just occasionally hung out while watching our brothers play.

A few years later, we both started at the same high school. Over time we would develop a lot of mutual friends, but again, we were never close friends but would always say g’day to one another and sometimes, by circumstance, find ourselves hanging around in the same circles.

I knew Justin did some shit that I was too scared to do. Nothing too crazy. Just regular teenage shit. He was wagging classes to smoke weed etc. He was one of those guys only at school because he had to be and wasn’t particularly interested in learning in the traditional, educational format. But he was always a good person. He would always say hello, and if we were hanging around the same people at any given time, he’d make sure to ask how I was going and have a chat.

He was a funny bastard. He always seemed calm, in control and sure of himself. But he had this steeliness about him. I never once felt intimidated by him, he wasn’t that kind of guy, but you just knew that he was one of those guys that would be good to you if you were good to him, don’t fuck with him.

Justin was there the first night I ever got drunk. I was 13 years old, and we were drinking warm cans of Woodstock bourbon at the Gordon Adventure Playground. Even when drinking, he had this aura of calm about him. He was the kind of guy that made you feel more comfortable and safe when doing naughty teenage shit like everything would be okay.

After high school, Justin and I went in different directions. He started an apprenticeship, and I went to college. After turning 18, I would bump into him at the pub now and then, and we’d always have a friendly chat. Often he’d remind me of that night at the playground and something funny I had said. Even years later, he would crack up about it.

I heard Justin moved to Sydney with his partner, and they had started a family. From what I could gather, they were doing well. Years later, I heard they relocated back to Canberra. I remember thinking it was odd, given I had heard they were doing so well in Sydney. Again, I bumped into him and his partner at a pub, and they both seemed to be doing well.

Later I heard his relationship had broken down, and he had been in a bit of trouble with the law. It was mostly petty shit, nothing too serious.

I hadn’t heard much about Justin until I read the article above last week. I don’t know enough, but what had gone on in his life in the years leading up to it, but after reading it, I felt a mixture of surprise and sadness. I knew Justin had been into some minor, petty shit, but I never imagined he would be capable of something so serious.

I know that Justin faced significant challenges in his childhood, but I always thought he seemed to have a pretty good handle on everything. I don’t know why I was surprised, given that my mental health and emotional challenges didn’t boil over until I was 33. I also don’t know enough about what’s happened in his adult life to make any judgement or assessment.

Despite the challenges Justin had faced throughout his life and the fact that we didn’t follow identical paths, to me, he was always a fucking good bloke. I can’t help but wonder what happened to Justin in more recent years and what caused his spiral out of control. I don’t have a right to know. It just seems like such a waste of a life. I understand my experience with Justin will give me an unconscious bias where I want to see the good in him. I know that his actions in recent years are unacceptable in any society. What I’m struggling with is how did he get to this point? It’s something I’ll probably never get the answer to; frankly, it’s none of my business. I guess, in a way, I’m writing about this because I’m struggling a little to process it all, and maybe this will help.

I know enough about Justin to choose to remember him only based on my experiences with him. He was a good person. He was a father, a son and a brother. People loved him, and he loved people. He made mistakes, some inexcusable. But I can’t help but feel he was somewhat a product of his environment. I can’t imagine he ever considered admitting he was having mental health struggles. Perhaps he didn’t even know he had them. He couldn’t rationalise the thought, maybe because of his upbringing. Perhaps he turned to drugs because he didn’t know any other way. I may well be wrong too.

Knowing Justin, even the little bit I did, I can’t help but feel like this resulted from something that happened to him that he didn’t know how to manage healthily. It can be a slippery slope. And although Justin’s friends and family will probably never get all the answers they are after or ever see him again, I think we can learn a lot from Justin’s short life.

Not enough is being done to educate people about why they feel how they feel and what to do about it. Not enough is being done to ensure that people know from childhood that it’s imperative to identify and understand how we feel, why we feel that way, that it’s okay to feel that way, and then educate people on what healthy coping mechanisms can be used and what coping mechanisms are extraordinarily temporary and will only make things worse in the long run.

There’s a fair chance it’s a generational thing, and sadly there could have a lot of people out there who believe what they believe, and it’s too late to reeducate or get through to them. As always, I don’t have all the answers. In fact, I have fuck all answers, but I think we have to keep talking about it. Discussion provokes thought: more discussion means more people thinking about the problem. More people thinking about the problem, the more potential we have to find answers.

Sure, dismissing cases like this as someone too far gone is fine. It’s easy to think that it must have been what he wanted. That he was a coward or a no-hoper. But he wasn’t. I know he wasn’t. Justin’s passing doesn’t just mean that the people he hurt are now safe from him. It also means more people are hurting, and when we dismiss cases like this and don’t try to learn from them, we expose ourselves to the risks of things like this happening again to other people.

I learned a lot about myself by reading over these articles. When I think, “maybe it’s a good thing” or “he was a criminal anyway,” it’s not because I believe it. It’s because I am being emotionally lazy. It’s much easier to draw these conclusions and dismiss them than to actually consider what might be happening. What is the psychological root cause of behaviour like this? Those are complex and challenging thoughts and conversations. One’s that often are easier not to have.

I know that moving forward, I will try to be less dismissive, less generalising and have more empathy for people in situations like this. There is ALWAYS more to someone’s story than we know, and I think we need to be more compassionate towards that.

My thoughts are with anyone who Justin hurt through his actions. I hope you are okay. My thoughts are with Justin’s family and friends. These are the people that we need to try to be better for. So much pain, sadness and grief that I genuinely believe could’ve been avoided.

RIP Justin Cordy

The Human Side of Addiction, Mental Health and Crime

We need to be better, but it starts with me.

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