At his lowest point, Richard Duckett was spending $300 a day on his addiction.
"People don't go and use drugs because they're thinking 'screw society, I don't care, I'm going to do what I want'," he said.
"People use drugs to kill the pain."
For Mr Duckett, that pain stemmed from a traumatic childhood event, which put him on the path to addiction.
"I've smoked pot pretty much ever since I was 14 until a year or so ago. So pot's part of my staple diet. But heroin would be my drug of choice," he says.
"I've been using [heroin] on and off since I was 18, and I'm 55 now."
Over the intervening three decades, Mr Duckett says drugs took almost everything he held dear, including his job as a community worker.
"Once I get right into the depths of it, I'm very difficult to manage. And it's difficult for me to hold a job down," he says.
"I was going through a gram a day of heroin. And that's a lot of money that you have to earn, so I did do things that were unlawful to cover that gap."
He turned to "white-collar crime" to fund his addiction, but said he never resorted to violence, though he "did fantasise about it" when he was desperate for a hit.
"When I was doing the crime to pay for the habit I had, that lasted 18 months," he said.
"It was horrible. I really hated it because there's that threat of 'I'm going to be found out sooner or later'.
"I was always looking over my shoulder, waiting to be caught.
"Nothing lasts forever and, as clever as I think I am, things come undone."
Mr Duckett says he is now on the road to recovery, and has found comfort and companionship in an unusual form: his three pet rats.
"They're my little mates," he says.
"They really are good for my mental health. Make a huge difference. Someone who's pleased to see you when you get home.
"They only last about two-and-a-half to three years, which is a bugger because the emotional investment is not unlike a dog or a cat."
'Send us to treatment, not to jail'
Mr Duckett supports a controversial ACT government plan to decriminalise some of Australia's most problematic drugs, including heroin, cocaine and methylamphetamine — or "ice".
"I don't think it's reasonable to expect police to get on top of it — people are going to do what people are going to do," he says.
He says addicts "have enough else to worry about" on top of fearing criminal charges for their habit.
"To get a criminal conviction has lifelong consequences, and that seems over the top in comparison to what the crime actually is," he says.
"Get it out of the criminal justice system and into the health system.
"Punishing people is not going to help them with their addiction at all. If anything, it's going to push them further down the road.
"Self-medication is a big term in my life history — it's what I was doing. But it was criminal and that doesn't seem right."
What is drug decriminalisation?
Under the ACT Labor government's amended proposal, hard drugs will remain illegal but be decriminalised — so small amounts will attract an infringement rather than a criminal penalty.
It's like a speeding fine: speeding is an illegal activity, but you will generally only get a fine — not a criminal charge — if you are caught.
The proposed list of drugs runs from magic mushrooms and LSD, right up to those drugs associated with the worst social harms: heroin, cocaine and ice.
The allowable amount of each drug varies according to its strength and street value — for example, five doses of LSD, 1 gram of heroin and 1.5 grams of ice.
It would still be a criminal offence to sell drugs, possess more than the law allows for "personal use", or drive with drugs in your system.
And users could still face criminal charges from any other illegal behaviour, such as theft or violence, that is related to their drug use.
The ACT has already legalised the possession of small amounts of cannabis.
The detail of this latest proposal is being debated in the ACT's Legislative Assembly.
However, as Labor and the Greens — which share government — support it, the bill is likely to pass in some form.
Overseas examples show what can go right, and very wrong
Drug reformers pointed to overseas examples like Portugal, which decriminalised illicit drugs in 2000.
Stephanie Stephens, the acting chief executive of Canberra's largest provider of addiction support, Directions Health Services, says the Portuguese results were dramatic.
"When Portugal decriminalised personal use of drugs, they didn't see an increase in drug use, they didn't see an increase in other related crime," she says.
"What they saw was a reduction in incarceration, an increase in treatment, and a reduction in overdose deaths."
More recently in the United States, the state of Oregon introduced similar measures, pledging to divert criminal justice funding into enhanced addiction treatment facilities.
But nearly two years on, Portland Police Association president Aaron Schmautz says his city's drug problems have worsened, because the promised treatment options have not materialised quickly enough.
"We've certainly seen a huge explosion in overdose deaths and overdose events," he says.
"Open-air drug use, disorder, and certainly concerns that the problem of addiction is being exacerbated by the lack of available treatment and the lack of enforcement available.
"The most important thing is anything like this requires treatment to be fully in place, requires those off-ramps to be up and running before the curtain is lifted.
"Because if we don't, we've seen in Oregon what happens: there's no treatment and there's also more drugs. And those are two bad things."
Sergeant Schmautz says liberal drug laws had made Portland a honeypot for drug dealers.
"Oregonians are being targeted by cartels or other people who intend to sell narcotics, knowing that the ability of them being apprehended is significantly limited by the laws that we have here."
Drug reforms split the church
The push to decriminalise drugs has attracted support from other, unexpected corners, including progressive Christians.
The Uniting Church in Australia has called for all Australian governments to decriminalise drug use, to reduce the stigma of drug use and give better access to health support services.
The church's ACT and NSW moderator, Reverend Simon Hansford, concedes the position is controversial and other denominations may disagree.
"We are in no way pro-drugs," he says.
"But if we want to solve the problem of drug addiction and drug use in our communities, we don't see treating it as a criminal issue actually is the way forward.
"We've found, as a general rule, that most faith traditions … won't ally themselves with us on this issue."
Reverend Hansford says compassion for drug users is his guiding concern.
"Opinions often shift and change as it becomes a more personal conversation," he says
"When we talk about it in the third person and ask 'what do you think about drug laws?' or 'what do you think about same-sex marriage?' people often pontificate and have an opinion.
"But when you say my niece, or my child, or my parents, or whoever are involved in this conversation in a way that's personally affecting them, suddenly the conversation becomes more nuanced.
"If you know your gospels, Jesus spends half his time fending off accusations of hanging with the wrong kinds of people.
"The wrong kinds of people I think, in this conversation, may well be those affected by drugs."
Jail is not breaking addiction, ACT police say
ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr admits the community debate is difficult, but he believes there is widespread support for change.
"I recognise that this is a significant cultural shift in how we deal with illicit drugs — and to some it will feel confronting," he told the Legislative Assembly early this month.
"Most Canberrans understand, whether it's a 20-year-old caught with a pill in their pocket on a night out, or someone grappling with a debilitating and harmful meth addiction, a criminal conviction is not going to positively change their behaviour. And in many cases, it's going to make their lives worse."
However, the proposal does have the support of Directions Health Services's support and its head, Ms Stephens.
She says criminal penalties only push addicts into the shadows.
"Criminal penalties create more stigma," she says.
"The amount of chaos that ensues and the harm that is caused because of criminal penalties that are not at all related to the drug use itself is huge.
"They scare people off from accessing treatment and support because they're afraid of being marked as a criminal as opposed to receiving the healthcare that they need."
Ms Stephens adds there is a growing argument that prison does little to break addiction.
"The last thing that someone needs when they're experiencing problematic substance use and the chaos that comes with that is to be more disconnected from their community … and to have less of a chance to gain employment or have financial stability.
"That's what incarceration does."
It may surprise some, but senior ACT police officers agree.
Neil Gaughan, the ACT's Chief Police Officer and a deputy commissioner in the Australian Federal Police (AFP), says the existing criminal penalties do not discourage drug use.
"The recidivism rates across the country show very clearly that what we're doing in relation to incarceration isn't working," he says.
"We need to come up with a different approach.
"Every other jurisdiction is watching what we're doing — I don't think we can lose sight of that — I think we've got to try something differently."
Reforms will lead to chaos: AFP
Not all of the AFP's top brass supports the ACT's plan.
Earlier this year, AFP Commissioner Reece Kershaw gave a Senate committee a blunt assessment of the proposed decriminalisation laws.
"It will become a more dangerous society, it wouldn't be as safe as what we are enjoying today — so, for me, it would lead to chaos," he said.
"I don't think there's ever a safe level when it comes to those particular drugs. They are destructive.
"We're always open to different strategies, but so far the evidence is not stacking up that decriminalisation necessarily leads to less crime."
There is also deep concern that methamphetamines have been included on the list, with recent wastewater analysis showing Australia's ice use topped a list of more than 20 countries.
Australian Federal Police Association president Alex Caruana says the proposed allowable amounts of ice are far too high.
"We think they're very generous to a drug user — 1.5 grams of ice equals 15 hits of ice," he says.
"On what planet is 15 hits of ice a personal use?
"If you use more than a certain amount, you're going to cook your brain, you're going to fry some brain cells.
"And I would suggest 15 hits in a day is more than personal use."
Deputy Commissioner Gaughan agrees.
"Methamphetamines, in our view, is the most dangerous drug in the community," he says.
"We see it as a violent drug. We very rarely come across people who are affected by ice who aren't involved in some other sort of criminality."
Although the AFP supports the bill in principle, it fought to have ice excluded from the list of decriminalised drugs — but lost that battle.
Deputy Commissioner Gaughan says he will work with the laws he is given.
"We did have that discussion with government, and they've made a policy decision to go in a different direction and they're entitled to do that."
