IT’S twilight on a Monday night and a jogger – face lathered in sweat and feet in a metronomic rhythm – shuffles down a quiet suburban street.
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Suddenly, he stops.
His face contorts into an expression of stunned horror.
A naked woman stumbles towards him, hissing, growling and snapping her teeth.
The jogger backs away and runs as the deranged woman sets chase.
He looks around to see the woman stop, throw herself on the road and begin performing lewd sex acts on herself.
It could have been ripped straight from the script of TV series The Walking Dead.
But this is a real-life horror movie and it’s a scene that will sit in the jogger’s mind like a shard of glass.
It takes up to five police to subdue the hysterical woman, who is taken to hospital and treated for drug-related issues.
There could scarcely be a more powerful example of how entrenched the tentacles of drug addiction are in our community.
As harrowing as it seems, this drug-fuelled psychotic attack is not an isolated incident in Wagga.
Those on the drug frontline are confronted by out-of-their-mind addicts with alarming regularity.
What drug prompted this woman to act so maniacally is unclear. But there’s a good chance it was ice, a highly potent and highly addictive form of amphetamine.
Make no mistake, the Riverina is in the grip of a torrid ice storm.
Such is the nature of this vile drug, users lose their teeth, dignity and mind before even considering going cold turkey.
The prohibitive power of that addiction presents a serious problem for authorities, addicts and loved ones.
Not since the heroin boom of the 1990s have we seen a drug that grabs users by the scruff of the neck so violently.
You may think ice addiction is a problem that exists on the “other side of the tracks”. You’re wrong.
Ice addiction is indiscriminate and real.
Even if you don’t know somebody personally affected, chances are you’ve been touched by it.
If your house has been broken into or your car stolen, there’s a likelihood it was done by a drug addict. You could be confronted by the hidden cost of drug addiction in your rising insurance premiums.
You could even be confronted by it when you’re jogging down the street.
