“Your honour, hand on heart, if you bail me today, I will go and live with my mum and won’t use. I will sign on every day, I will work wonders and poo cucumbers, your honour,” I plead.

“Michael, two days ago, I bailed you from this very court, and you went straight down to the fines enforcement office and reached over the counter and emptied the till,” the magistrate states bluntly.

Michael Kalaf is trying to turn his life around after years in and out of prison while battling a heroin addiction.

“OK, you got me, I’ll just shut up.” My mind searched for an out, but it seems like this is where heroin has taken me. Jail.

Now, at the age of 52, I am haunted by all the times that heroin nearly killed me. It has only been the past three years where I truly feel that I have put my addiction behind me, and have gained some perspective on the mistakes I made, the traps that I fell into, and the people I hurt.

Were any of my overdose experiences shocking enough to snap me out of my addiction? Are you kidding? It would take more than the very real risk of dying to beat the ridiculous nature of addiction. The very essence of addiction is that there is no common sense to it.

One morning almost eight years ago, I was scrolling through my phone, as we all do, only to stop stone-cold. WTF! Looking through the front passenger door, it showed me in the driver’s seat of my car, USB cord wrapped around my arm as an ad hoc tourniquet.........

© WA Today