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I acquired a brain injury from a motorcycle accident I had when I was 20. I hit a tree pretty hard, and I split the motorbike helmet into two pieces and knocked myself out. I ended up in Brisbane hospital, and they said I had a shade over one side of my brain and that I had a minor brain injury.
From then on it’s been a bit of a struggle, but I make sure that I just don’t give up. I always keep going. One thing that I’ll never do is give up.
It does affect a few things. There’s only so much I can concentrate on. My memory is really shot, it takes a while for things to register in my brain. My reading and writing has gone downhill, and it takes me a while to understand things. I need things put into layman’s terms now, whereas I was pretty okay with a lot of words back in the day.
Emotionally it was really hard. I didn’t understand what it meant and how it was going to affect me. It was pretty upsetting to find that I’d slowed down quite a fair bit.
I was involved with the criminal justice system when I was 17, and that was a bit of a shock to the system.
After having the Acquired Brain Injury (ABI), I was so angry, I was just out of control and I just hit it, and I couldn’t continue – I hated it. I hated life after that – I hit the drugs really hard.
Having an ABI and using drugs and alcohol, it does not mix. It doesn’t work well, but you try to shut things out and that way I could escape the fact that my brain injury was affecting me and it’d make it even worse.
While I was on drugs and alcohol, I was not a good person. I ended up fighting all the time, really I was just not a good person to be around. And it’s so hard to get off as well. So trying to get off the drugs and the alcohol, because you’ve done it so much, trying to block out everything, was not an easy task.
Having an ABI in the courts and listening to their jargon was so hard, I never understood it most of the time. I was pleading guilty to things that I couldn’t have done. Nobody explained half the charges I was going up for.
I acquired a brain injury from a motorcycle accident I had when I was 20. I hit a tree pretty hard, and I split the motorbike helmet into two pieces and knocked myself out. I ended up in Brisbane hospital, and they said I had a shade over one side of my brain and that I had a minor brain injury.
From then on it’s been a bit of a struggle, but I make sure that I just don’t give up. I always keep going. One thing that I’ll never do is give up.
It does affect a few things. There’s only so much I can concentrate on. My memory is really shot, it takes a while for things to register in my brain. My reading and writing has gone downhill, and it takes me a while to understand things. I need things put into layman’s terms now, whereas I was pretty okay with a lot of words back in the day.
Emotionally it was really hard. I didn’t understand what it meant and how it was going to affect me. It was pretty upsetting to find that I’d slowed down quite a fair bit.
I was involved with the criminal justice system when I was 17, and that was a bit of a shock to the system.
After having the Acquired Brain Injury (ABI), I was so angry, I was just out of control and I just hit it, and I couldn’t continue – I hated it. I hated life after that – I hit the drugs really hard.
Having an ABI and using drugs and alcohol, it does not mix. It doesn’t work well, but you try to shut things out and that way I could escape the fact that my brain injury was affecting me and it’d make it even worse.
While I was on drugs and alcohol, I was not a good person. I ended up fighting all the time, really I was just not a good person to be around. And it’s so hard to get off as well. So trying to get off the drugs and the alcohol, because you’ve done it so much, trying to block out everything, was not an easy task.
Having an ABI in the courts and listening to their jargon was so hard, I never understood it most of the time. I was pleading guilty to things that I couldn’t have done. Nobody explained half the charges I was going up for.
I hit my late 30s and that’s when I became clean and stopped using.
I got clean because I had a really bad episode. I found out that I was diabetic.
I woke up one morning and I was really, really sick. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t talk. It was like I had a mini-stroke.
The withdrawal coming in the hospital was really, really good. They said to me, you’ve got a choice: “you want to see your kids grow up or you want to die.” The withdrawal process in the hospital was so good because they did it slowly. They didn’t pressure me to do things really fast.
Now I have been sober for four years, nearly five years off alcohol, heroin.
I was paroled through the Access and Referral Court (ARC). When I completed that, it was probably one of the best things I’d ever done because I’d never completed anything before. The judge gave me encouragement, he goes “mate, you can do this. Not many people do but I can see that you really want to quit this and you want to do it. So keep going, make yourself proud.” And that’s what I did. I was so happy.
When he said to me “well done, you’ve done it.” I was so happy, because I’d never, ever completed anything before, and the opportunity that he gave me, I’d never had that before. When I got that certificate at the end to say that I completed it, it was amazing.
I want people to know it’s really doable – you can stop, you can get yourself back to square one. You can get back to yourself. You’re always going to have your ABI, you’re going to have to understand that that’s okay, it’s not a bad thing. I want people to understand that you can stay clean, you can focus on other things.
As an Indigenous man and having full custody of my kids – I’m doing something right. It’s doable – you can have your kids. You can have your licence. I ended up succeeding in a lot of ways that I didn’t think that I was able to do.
Understand that in today’s society, a lot of people are willing to help you, and all you need to do is ask, and I’m pretty sure a lot of people will take that time to help you now.”
The work that I do with Voices of Change, I advocate for myself and for others that are out there that have an ABI, to help themselves and to know that there are people out there that are the same, and have an ABI, and to let them know that we can do these things, we can achieve these things.
I hit my late 30s and that’s when I became clean and stopped using.
I got clean because I had a really bad episode. I found out that I was diabetic.
I woke up one morning and I was really, really sick. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t talk. It was like I had a mini-stroke.
The withdrawal coming in the hospital was really, really good. They said to me, you’ve got a choice: “you want to see your kids grow up or you want to die.” The withdrawal process in the hospital was so good because they did it slowly. They didn’t pressure me to do things really fast.
Now I have been sober for four years, nearly five years off alcohol, heroin.
I was paroled through the Access and Referral Court (ARC). When I completed that, it was probably one of the best things I’d ever done because I’d never completed anything before. The judge gave me encouragement, he goes “mate, you can do this. Not many people do but I can see that you really want to quit this and you want to do it. So keep going, make yourself proud.” And that’s what I did. I was so happy.
When he said to me “well done, you’ve done it.” I was so happy, because I’d never, ever completed anything before, and the opportunity that he gave me, I’d never had that before. When I got that certificate at the end to say that I completed it, it was amazing.
I want people to know it’s really doable – you can stop, you can get yourself back to square one. You can get back to yourself. You’re always going to have your ABI, you’re going to have to understand that that’s okay, it’s not a bad thing. I want people to understand that you can stay clean, you can focus on other things.
As an Indigenous man and having full custody of my kids – I’m doing something right. It’s doable – you can have your kids. You can have your licence. I ended up succeeding in a lot of ways that I didn’t think that I was able to do.
Understand that in today’s society, a lot of people are willing to help you, and all you need to do is ask, and I’m pretty sure a lot of people will take that time to help you now.”
The work that I do with Voices of Change, I advocate for myself and for others that are out there that have an ABI, to help themselves and to know that there are people out there that are the same, and have an ABI, and to let them know that we can do these things, we can achieve these things.
Voices for Change is a self-advocacy group for people with acquired brain injury and experience of the criminal justice system. Somewhere between 40–90 per cent of people incarcerated in Australia’s prisons have an acquired brain injury – compared to only 17 per cent of men and 9 per cent of women among the general population. We use our lived experience to advocate for this to change.
If you think you might have an acquired brain injury and would like more information, we encourage you to raise it with your support worker or a nurse in your prison. You can also write to Voices for Change at:
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