Over the following month, the number swells to 26 then falls off again. Two hundred people a week access the Prahran office's services in person. Coghlan and Jenney are gatekeepers for the Odyssey House residential therapeutic community in Lower Plenty, where singles, couples and families embark on new, drugfree lifestyles in a safe, stable and supportive environment. They decide who to admit and who to turn away. The life and death implications of heroin addiction are constantly at the forefront of the gatekeepers' minds.
Trouble is, there are far more people clamoring to get into treatment than there are leaving.
Lee Cooney, who manages the Prahran office with great warmth, says staff inevitably take an emotional pounding. With heroin-overdose deaths competing with the road toll in Melbourne, Ben came perilously close to posing a tragic statistical conundrum, before surviving the night on a respirator. He woke to the throb of cracked ribs, the sight of his gravely concerned father and thoughts of a death foretold. Then, against the wishes of medical staff, he checked himself out of hospital and made his way to the support group meeting. Whatever it takes, because I was dead, you know.