A Former Meth Cook Describes How He 'Wasted Life'

Unlike heroin and cocaine, which are usually imported, most of our methamphetamine is produced right here in Australia. As the Australian Institute of Criminology explains in its 2015 fact sheet, "outlaw motorcycle gangs are believed to be heavily involved in the production," along with "ethnic based organised crime groups." And while that might be true sometimes, it isn't in my experience.

Take Cory for example. I first met Corey in the visitor's area of a rural Victorian prison yard. He's a 27-year-old beach-blonde who looks like a heartthrob from Home and Away, but his rap sheet paints a very different picture.

Armed burglaries, aggravated assault, trafficking, and manufacturing meth have cost Corey eight years in prison. Now he's on parole, and has hopes of educating youth about drug culture by using his self-described "wasted life" as an example. I sat down with the former meth cook to hear his story.

VICE: Hey man, you look more like a boho-gypsy from Byron than a meth cook. How did it all go so wrong?
Cory: Yeah, I grew up in a nice area. My parents are really lovely 9–5 types who did everything they could to give me the best possible upbringing, but I guess I was hard-wired differently. Dad was in finance and Mum worked in a nursing home. But I hated the way their lives revolved around impressing their friends at dinner parties. It seemed like all fake shit and their children were paraded around like medals.

So I guess I was a privileged middle-class kid who wanted to run amok. I grew my own hydro, studied it, and became obsessed with making my own money. I wanted to show my parents I could be just as successful by doing shit that was the polar opposite of what they were doing. Don't ask me about the morals, or the logic to it because looking back on it, it was just dumb. That's what I was—just really fucking dumb and angry about nothing.

Where did it all start?
I'd been growing for ages and that was fine, but then I broke up with my missus and got a job in Shepparton doing a bit of bricklaying. The cliché is true: you're only as bright as the dumbest bloke in your friendship group. A few boys on the job were puffing and before I knew it I went from buying a point a day to needing a few grams to get me through. It was cheap, always available, and rocked you for a good little while.

I eventually got charged with a few burglaries and wound up in a maximum-security unit. You get to know your cellmates pretty well when there's bugger all to do. All we did was talk for hours through the vents. An older bloke from Canberra who got busted with a few drums of pseudo in his truck taught me his recipe. We were slotted together for almost two years. After a certain amount of talking shit and sharing mi goreng packets everyone really trusts each other.

When I was released, I got together with a bunch of the guys, along with some other contacts from interstate who organised the supplies and we started cooking. I did interstate runs for them until I raised the money to get my own thing going, then they let me use their tools for a percentage and I got my first batch out. Then I contacted my mates in Shepparton and pumped the rural work sites.

All photos by the author

So you were fresh out of jail, and you decided to start cooking. Why not get a real job?
I guess once you've been inside, you've seen it. The scary idea of prison fades in your head so you just juggle the risk with the reward. We didn't have any goals, and our parents didn't really want anything to do with us and it was the only thing we had going at the time.

How much money were you making?
At the height of it we were making between 10 and 20 grand a week, which isn't much in comparison to some of the heavy operators at the time.

What did you do with the money?
We would get together and find the cheapest hookers in whatever area we were in. Puff our lungs out, eat Viagra, and fuck for hours with multiple girls at a time. It was either that or blow the money at the casino. Every now and again we would buy cars, bikes, and jetskis, but we always ended up selling them whenever we were short of cash or we got ripped off.

Did you get ripped off much?
Not really, but there was one time when a bunch of Turks ran in on us, all armed and coking off their heads. They stole all our phones and laptops. One of them went through our fridge and started drinking a can of Red Bull while his mate used both feet to jump on our runner's head. Another one of our boys got knocked out cold with the end of a gun as they ran in. He was groaning on the floor with his arms locked over his head. It was fucking awful.

Someone obviously sold us out but you can never point the finger unless you have proof. But that's the world. Every time I got fucked over it was by someone I considered a close friend.

Did you ever poison yourself or blow yourself up cooking?
Yeah, worst was just after getting robbed and we had to come up with the money we'd just lost. We were desperate and fucking peaking. I think I'd been up for four days, and we had no pseudo so we had to use a whole different ketone method.

We'd never done it before and the house ended up stinking like toxic cat piss. We were watching the fumes leave brown stains all over the kitchen ceiling, distracted while someone changed the temp of the Bunsen burner, overheated it and it blew all the windows out in the kitchen. The situation was so tense. Also there was something in the fumes that acted as a laxative because I almost shat myself trying to get out. It was horrible. The gear we cooked was just really wet, yellow speed.

That sounds a lot rougher than anything on Breaking Bad.

Yeah but that's an American show so you know its way more glamorous than outback Australia. We live on an island that's disconnected from the world man. We can't get half as much shit they can so we make do with what we have. It's fucking gritty, dangerous, and disgusting.

How did you finally end up in prison?
Well, I was halfway through a cook in a house I rented when the police came smashing in and arrested us. One of the guys had been caught a few weeks before for something else and he'd stitched us up.

What are your hopes and plans now?
I want to try and keep young guys away from that world. It's a horrible place and it's not what you want to waste your life on. We are only stuck in this place for a short while and you don't want to burn it all away for a puff that's going to lead you to the gutter, or behind a fence staring at a wall for 20 hours a day.

You don't see the effects when your at your mate's place having a burn and a laugh, but you'll realise what its all about when you're stuck in a psych ward or when your mum and dad stop visiting you in jail.

I know cooks who will be stuck in psych wards for life. The skin on my hands is fucked. I have trouble breathing and sleeping at night. Sometimes I'll randomly snap into an anxiety attack for no reason. I'll just start panicking and getting paranoid about the blokes in the unit. It took its toll and I probably deserve it.

*All names have been changed.

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