ABOUT THIS EPISODE
There is no shortage of opinions about methamphetamine in New Zealand. Another headline. Another police operation. Another devastated family. Another community asking how things got so bad.
But there's one voice that's almost always missing from that conversation: the people who have actually lived it.
In this episode of Stretton Unfiltered, Annah sits down with Ina, who has been part of the RAW whānau for more than ten years. Through the trust built over a decade, Ina agreed to a rare, honest conversation…not to sensationalise meth, and not to seek sympathy, but to help answer a question New Zealand rarely stops to ask: why does it continue to make sense to the people whose lives have become entwined with it?
Ina takes us back to where it started. At nine years old, she spoke up about abuse within her own family. That betrayal shaped everything that followed…the running away, the drinking, and eventually, methamphetamine.
This isn't a conversation about judgement. It's a conversation about curiosity, and about listening to the people our public conversation so often talks about, but so rarely talks to.
Ina is in recovery, not recovered. She's honest about what that took…a daughter's one request, a chance reconnection, and a decision to keep choosing a different life, every single day.
A conversation about the questions New Zealand keeps asking about meth, and the answers we've been missing because we haven't been listening to the right people.
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