Anton with his mother Arapera Blank (nee Kaa) and his father Pius and sister Marino. (Supplied)

On Friday, Anton Blank celebrated 15 years of being clean, a term that describes addicts who aren’t currently using drugs. He looks back on his path in and out of addiction.

My father was an alcoholic. I can’t remember a day when Pius wasn’t drinking from the moment he woke up.

I’m very grateful for the incredible childhood I had, being raised by creative intellectual parents. But there was a darkness and chaos that came with Pius’s drinking, and navigating his addiction was a constant, nagging responsibility that I felt into adulthood. Many of my distorted responses to the world emerge out of my relationship with my father.

There were many crises and opportunities for Pius to address his issues. But the times were different then, and there wasn’t the regular public discussion about mental health we enjoy now. Pius was damaged by his childhood and life experiences over the decades. I will always experience a warm, loving sadness when I think about my father, who passed away a decade ago.

Other than alcohol, the first drug I would take was a pinkie, a barbiturate given to me by a slightly gangster cousin I admired (she wore fatigues). Tennessee Williams was also fond of a cocktail of pinkies and alcohol. I must have been 15 or 16 when I took the pinkie, and I knew I had crossed a threshold.

I was vaguely aware that other teens at my high school were using drugs, but they weren’t my friends. They spent their time sitting against the fence by the sports field, smoking cigarettes.

I was in an academic class and not worldly. I was intimidated by the cool kids, and my nascent homosexuality increased my social anxiety. My cousin’s boyfriend called me a spoon.

That was the late 1970s, and it wasn’t until the 1980s that I found gay films and literature, social texts that reflected my life and feelings. Growing up knowing that, at a primal level, I was different to the rest of my family was strange and discombobulating. Waking up to my sexuality necessitated the assemblage of a chosen family of queer friends and allies — and drugs was a key to a door that led me to them.

The first time I took an ecstasy was at the Hero Party in Auckland in 1991, a seminal moment when I felt that I’d found what I’d been looking for my whole life: a deep connection with others. My insecurities seemed to evaporate, and I wanted to feel that euphoria all the time.

Over 20 years, addiction progressed intermittently, then intensified. I was attracted to the lifestyle with its criminal undercurrent and in-crowd vibe. It was a complete contrast to my burgeoning corporate life, which had started to frustrate me. I was confounded by office politics and the institutional racism. I personalised everything and became belligerent and deeply unhappy.

As a result, I moved between two completely different worlds. Narcotics felt like an adult playland, an escape from the internal turmoil I’d been trying to escape since I was a child.

Abstinence as a lifestyle percolated like a long, slow epiphany as I contended with the consequences of my addiction and mental health challenges. I had worked with an addict in recovery, and, over time, met more clean addicts.

Left to their own devices, an addict can’t stop using drugs. Cleaning up is normally precipitated by a crisis: the loss of a job or partner, or an intervention by the authorities, for example.

After an emotional and psychological breakdown, I was referred to mental health services, which equipped me with coping strategies that I still use today. I’d spent a year or two in psychotherapy during the ‘90s, tilling over the pain of my childhood, and, in the end, cognitive-behavioural approaches from the mental health unit have become my preferred mode. Change the way you think and behave, and your feelings will change. All things are possible.

It took me ages to make the very obvious connection between my father’s addiction and my own. The disease has passed down through the generations, and this is true for most families I know. Addiction is everywhere.

My parents were sick and frail during the most intense periods of my drug use, and I’m glad they were largely oblivious to the drama and chaos. My sister Marino suffered, though, and being one of only two siblings, dealing with my insanity on her own must have been a torment.

Spirituality crops up more frequently these days, as the foundation of wellbeing. Mason Durie said it’s the most important dimension of his wellbeing model Te Whare Tapa Whā.

For me, spirituality is a broad and nebulous phenomenon, a sense that all things are possible. I am concerned with my position and purpose in te ao mārama, my connection to others, and the concept of life as service, manaakitanga.

Most days, I have a wide-eyed wonder and optimism, an expectation that good things will happen to me and the people I love.

Anton Blank (Ngāti Porou-Ngāti Kahungunu) is a writer, publisher and consultant living in Tāmaki Makaurau. He is a member of Narcotics Anonymous. Anton’s father, Pius Blank, was a Swiss migrant who worked as a photographer for the Māori Affairs magazine Te Ao Hou during the 1950s. He married poet Arapera (Kaa) Blank in 1958.

E-Tangata, 2025