Herkt was once a meth addict, using since she was a teenager. Now, she is 11 years sober, owns her own house, has a regular job for the first time in her life, and – most importantly – has custody of her grandchildren.
We might assign billionaires, world leaders and Nobel Peace Prize winners to the lofty heights of Mt Everest, the world’s tallest mountain at 8848m.
But there’s an argument to be made that Mauna Kea in Hawaii is much more impressive. From the depths of the ocean floor – in Herkt’s case, the depths of despair – Mauna Kea reaches over 10,000m from base to peak. That is Herkt’s mountain: from absolute rock bottom to high above the clouds.
“I just love the simple life, you know – a roof over my head. Shoes on my feet. Food in the cupboard.
Deeann Herkt at her home in Kaikohe. Photo / Serena Solomon, RNZ
“I’m really blessed.”
Methamphetamine – otherwise known as meth or P – is a relatively cheap synthetic drug that leads users to a temporary state of alert euphoria.
Its use in New Zealand remains stubbornly high, after more than doubling in 2024. The use of meth is prevalent in about 1% of the population. Like other drugs, meth addiction leaves a long tail of destruction for communities, families and individuals.
It’s hard to see where the road to addiction started for Herkt. Was it the father who was in and out of prison? Was it raising her siblings in a single-parent household, dropping out of school at 13 or the pressure of becoming a mum for the first time at 15? A clear fork in the road was losing her mother at age 16 to cancer.
“I think my life started spiralling out of control after mum passed away, you know, and I started using drugs, and I started getting into trouble, and I got pregnant [a second time] at, I think, 17.”
The relationship with the baby’s father felt like true love but quickly became abusive. He was also a heavy meth user and introduced her to the drug. Before long, it was the meth pipe she reached for first thing in the morning.
Domestic violence, drugs, alcohol, methamphetamine – “it was just a cycle I couldn’t get out of, to be honest”.
She carries a special guilt for whatever role she played in her children turning to the meth pipe when they were teenagers.
Stewart Eiao is a drug and alcohol counsellor with his own lived experience of meth addiction. Photo / Serena Solomon, RNZ
Eventually, the motivation to get her grandchildren out of care became greater than the pull of meth.
“I had to do something because they had no voice.”
In 2015, she referred herself to the Salvation Army Bridge Programme in Auckland. It was there that she met an alcohol and drug counsellor with a lived experience of meth addiction, Stewart Eiao. He became a key navigator in Herkt’s road out of addiction.
“She was like a fish out of water … and shall I say, very resistant at first,” Eiao says.
“I thought that she would only last a week.”
Herkt gravitated to Eiao because they whakapapa Māori in a service that leaned towards a Western view of rehab. The two started a waiata group that would become He Waka Eke Noa, a programme that uses singing, songwriting and kapa haka to support addiction recovery.
Eiao began work at Te Hā Oranga, an iwi-led health and wellbeing service, and Herkt followed for the next stage of her recovery. She met another person who became whānau for life, Rhonda Zielinski, the clinical operations manager of the service at the time.
“She would say to us, ‘You are my future workforce. You all have potential’,” Herkt says.
“And I used to think ‘Yeah, whatever.’”
The WOW Recovery Hub in Kaikohe, Northland, where Deeann Herkt is a peer support worker. Photo / Serena Solomon, RNZ
Zielinski’s statements proved prophetic, rather than blind positivity.
Despite the lighthouse of Eiao, Zielinski and her new Christian faith, Herkt’s recovery was hard.
It essentially meant rebuilding her life from scratch – cutting off relationships that were built around meth, figuring out housing and finding a legal income that included milking cows. The steepest part of that climb was the process of getting her grandchildren back.
“I had to jump [through] hoops. I had to do whatever [was] needed, hair follicle drug tests.”
Herkt maintained her sobriety and completed a certificate in health and wellbeing. In 2022, Zielinski hired her as a peer support worker, where lived experience is used to help others in addiction. The role was at a new kaupapa-Māori service Zielinski was running in Kaikohe called the WOW Recovery hub.
Those with lived experience transitioning into the rehab and recovery workforce are growing in number, says Suzette Jackson, a registered social worker and lecturer at the Auckland University of Technology.
Jackson, a former meth addict, helps lead a newly created graduate programme for those with lived experience working in addiction recovery.
“… I think there’s more and more recognition of the benefit of people with lived experience who are doing well on their journey, helping people along who aren’t doing so well.
Working in the recovery space can help reinforce a worker’s own sobriety, Jackson says.
“…I think there is a driver in people – and I know I have this too – it’s almost a sense of making up for lost time.”
In 2021, Herkt began taking over care of her grandchildren. A windfall from the IRD in the form of back pay for the Working for Families tax credit gave Herkt an unexpected house deposit in 2023. Last year, she was given full custody of her grandchildren.
“The day I got custody of the children … was amazing.”
Eiao, Zielinski and about 15 other people including social workers, family and friends, supported Herkt.
Ann Hepi is in recovery from a meth addiction and is training to become a peer support worker. Photo / Serena Solomon, RNZ
Addiction can be generational, but recovery has its own through-line. Eiao used his lived experience to help Herkt, and now she is doing the same for others at the WOW Recovery Hub. One of the people Herkt is supporting is a school friend she used to get high with, Ann Hepi.
Hepi, 50, has been sober since last year after three decades of addiction. She is training to become a peer support worker, like Herkt.
“To see where she’s come, where she has been, to where she is now, oh my gosh, she’s a miracle.
“She’s a walking testimony that we can only follow, and we can live that same life.
“She’s the hope.”
– RNZ