“I’ve been on a journey … still on a journey of recovery now. I was just … actually two weeks ago I finished my mental health order, which I had for six months. I got a certificate, which I haven’t had for years. My mental health’s a thousand times better than what it was. I was suicidal two times. I was fucked. I do find a little bit like … if I get depressed, I feel like the same way as back along, but nothing ever like I was.
My ADHD tablets, I think they help me. They keep me focused. Like today, I haven’t had them today so I’ve still gotta pick ‘em up. I haven’t had my medication today. Every day I’ve gotta take dexamphetamine. Like earlier on today I just thought oh, I’ve gotta stop that because I’m getting bored of it, I wanna do something different. But if I have my medication, I’ll just go down there, and I don’t wanna come up for my lunch. I’m just zoned in, and it keeps me busy. But yeah, I think that’s where my choices go wrong, where I haven’t taken ‘em and relapsing and stuff like that. Today, I probably was gonna leave here and go and get ‘em. They were ready yesterday, but I didn’t get there in time.
Coming here is so good for me. I’m trying other work. I haven’t worked and my ADHD, I’m constantly on the go, so it’s good. I feel like it’s a bit of a routine. My drug thing’s over. My mental health’s over. It’s one less thing I’ve gotta worry about, but then it gives me time in the day, so then what am I gonna do in that time, so coming here really like does it. It’s gives me a mindset … routine, structure.
I come here years ago before all … yeah, when I got done for the drug driving, I come here. I can’t remember how many hours I had. Come here then and then obviously I got done for the dangerous driving and then gave me hours. Because of my ADHD, I can’t really be out in the public and that. If I see people I know, I start talking, walk off, smoke, do what I like. I just don’t listen to rules very well. I do listen to ‘em, but it goes zero and then I deal with the consequences at the end of it. So, I asked if I could sort of have another position here and Chris said yeah. So yes, thank God.
I had my own thing going over Covid, doing gardening and landscaping. I was flying with work. Mental health took over me, so it didn’t really pan out as I wanted it to pan out. It would be good to get back into that, sign back into work sort of thing because I’m not … I feel like a benefits scrounger sort of thing. […] I used to do fishing. When I come here the first time, I was on the fishing boats … long hours, early morning starts. Gardening, I wouldn’t mind getting back into it.
When I was 13/14, coming up to that age, fell into the weed and drugs and stuff like that. I stopped taking my medication. I was like I don’t need it. My mum was gonna go private because it was taking so long. Basically, I stopped taking the medication and obviously with everything going on, I knew that it was ADHD, I just couldn’t keep still. It’s only diagnosed now I’m an adult I’ve got ADHD, I was suicidal and things like that.
Normally when you go to work, you get an hour to go off in their vans and stuff, like separate yourself from work, but here you all eat together, you end up talking with people. Like you find out what they’re here for, their problems, why they’ve come here. The actual workers, they’re all … when they see you’re not talking or anything, you’re just being quiet, they’ll put a conversation in to get you talking and then straightaway the whole vibe, if you’re sat at the table, just completely changes and then you find you’re talking to everybody. There’s conversations all around the table all the time. I really enjoy it and the roast dinner.
I have changed it a lot here, to be honest. Yeah, it was quite overgrown when I first come. Yeah, they’re like how have you done that? The first day, the batteries … I used it that much, the charger wasn’t charging ‘em quick enough so I had to stop. They’re like We’ve never had anybody here that’s used all the batteries up. Yeah, too fast, just getting on with it. When they stopped for breaks, they’d ring the bell, I’ll wait 10 minutes, still carry on doing what I’m doing and then someone would come down … lads, come on, come in … yeah, right, ok. I love it here.
If you could get family law in. That would be amazing. I don’t know, LandWorks cover everything, they literally generally do. I don’t actually know. You have your set smoking areas where all the guys go. You have your lunches, everything’s eaten together. They give you all different areas that you can decide on what you wanna do. If you don’t feel like doing that today, you can do something different. I don’t know what I can come up with. I don’t think so anyway. I think they’re on it like. They’ve really thought about everything…”
A window into LandWorks 