On the Record: Pat Buckley

Drugs almost killed him three times but life had other plans. In 2002, Pat Buckley founded Amped4Life Trust in Tauranga and now speaks to workplaces and school students about the danger of drugs. His story is a no-holds-barred, fast-paced, tough address and it's changing lives.

Some time soon a young kid in uniform will walk into assembly, sit down, and lay eyes on a guy with tattoos crawling up his arms.
He'll be right in thinking he looks like an ex-criminal but he'll be wrong in thinking he's just another messenger.
This is Pat Buckley and he's as real as they get.
In jeans and a T-shirt and with little glamour or glory, he'll walk up to the microphone. If he's lucky, his life story will change their life story.
Let us begin.
When Pat Buckley was 8 years old his mother broke his heart.
She came into his bedroom, sat on the end of the bed, and told Buckley, his twin Mike and eldest brother, Ian: "Your father's leaving us."
With his little legs dangling over the bed, Buckley fell apart.
He was being bullied at school for third-degree burns he'd got as a 2-year-old from spilt hot water, and now this. His world was closing in.
"I really just went into victim mode after that. I functioned out of that hurt. In a sense, I blamed myself," he says.
Buckley believed if he'd behaved better, maybe his dad, an alcoholic, would have stayed.
After his father left, Buckley, who grew up in Howick, saw his dad only once while growing up. He picked Buckley and his brothers up and they went to see the production Snow White. On the way home they stopped at Kentucky Fried Chicken.
"He promised the world and didn't give us nothing. I don't remember him hugging me, kissing me. [Later in life] I saw him at the pub. He'd stay in his corner, I'd stay in mine."
By the time Buckley was 12, he had started to smoke marijuana. The year was 1977 and the drug helped take Buckley's pain away. It also connected him with his peers.
At age 14, he started using injected narcotics and was hanging out with kids five to 10 years older than himself.
"I'd go into my room, put my foot up against the door so my mother wouldn't walk in on my shooting up." He'd then go to school, high as a kite.
He spent 18 years in the drug world, hopelessly addicted and looking for answers.
Over the years, Buckley's buried 49 of his friends as a result of drug abuse and Buckley has flat lined (clinically died) three times. He's also survived a car crash. Drunk, he fell asleep at the wheel and smashed a lamp post in half.
"My mum's prayers are working overtime and I know it."
Buckley's story is truly one that could be made into a movie. What makes it so fascinating - apart from the fact he's still alive - is he's metamorphosed into a completely different person.
I meet Buckley on a cold Monday night in his rented home in Welcome Bay. He asks me before our interview if I'd like a drink. I say no. He says he feels like a herbal tea and settles on green.
His wife of 11 years, Karen, is making a chicken pie in the kitchen. The kids are doing their homework at the dining table and when I sit down on a leather chair in the lounge, the first thing I notice beside me is the Holy Bible.
This is definitely going to make an interesting profile, I decide.
Buckley, who is stirring his drink with a clinking teaspoon, says at the height of his love affair with drugs he was consuming a "couple of thousand bucks" worth a day.
He was using several different types of prescription narcotics, illegal methadone, his own methadone, 20 to 30 depressants a day, tranquillisers, plus drinking. "I'd be banging on the [pub] door at quarter to 10 saying, 'Open the f'n door'. Then I stay there all day and do my business at the pub, selling drugs."
Buckley also spent a lot of time "doctor shopping".
He'd go to a doctor with an empty pill bottle, give false credentials and walk out with a prescription. He also forged prescriptions.
"I'd be going up and matching the pen colour, adding a zero. If there was a 10, I'd turn it into 100. So I'd use this, my wits to survive," he says tapping his temple.
Buckley talks fast and with precision. He's definitely no fool. He wears two rings, one on each hand, each decorated with a cross.
He became a Christian at age 30 after almost dying three times. He claims he saw an angel as his life was ebbing away from an overdose in a pub toilet.
I try not to be cynical but I question whether it wasn't a hallucination.
"No, I'm telling you it wasn't."
Then the third time, in 1995, he heard the voice of God.
Buckley claims God told him that if he didn't surrender his life to him, he was going to be dead in three weeks.
But at that point, did he care if he lived or died?
"Well, that's the irony," Buckley says with a nod. "Part of me longed to die and have an end to it, but part of me inside, deep down, knew I was a really good person. I'd just made bad choices along the way. I knew I was playing a game of Russian roulette and I knew I was about to lose."
So that was kind of like his epiphany then? "It was."
Buckley says he disappeared over-night .
"I didn't tell anyone except my mum and brothers.
"Unless I gave myself a good fighting chance, I would not be strong enough to give into temptation."
He had two minor seizures as he came off drugs on a three-month gradual reduction programme. He went to counselling. He gave into God.
Buckley, the former drug dealer and user, enrolled at Faith Bible College.
In 1997 he met dark-haired Karen, the Christian woman who would become his wife in 2002. Together they set up Amped4Life Trust in Tauranga and Buckley now gives talks around New Zealand educating and shocking teens about the dangers of drugs.
Mike Williams, chief executive officer of Stella Trust, which contracts Buckley to speak at schools, says he'll never forget one of the country's wealthiest girls' schools reporting 52 appointments with the school counsellor the day after Buckley visited.
"Pat, he's one out of the box. He's absolutely authentic.
"He encourages the kids to text him and I'm telling you, some of the things they send would break your heart."
Buckley has come full circle. Once a user, he's now a giver.
He attends Tauranga City Elim Church and is a volunteer ambulance officer. He's also a stepdad to Karen's three kids, Josh, 19, Chloe, 17, Bianca, 14, and he's a biological dad to Seth, 7, and Ella, 6.
I ask his wife, who admits having tried marijuana, if she was ever worried he might revert back to his old ways.
"It never crossed my mind," is her answer.
"It hasn't been easy but I think that's any marriage."
Karen, 40, says taking on three kids who weren't his own was a "massive learning curve for Pat", but they love him.
"They never judged him for his past," she says.
Buckley regrets his former life.
"Totally. But you live life 'if only'. You can't change it."
His dad died in 2001 but not before Buckley had a chance to make amends.
"He said, 'Why would you?' I said, 'Because I choose to'."
It was a completion of his journey?
"It was, really."
Some of Buckley's friends are still on drugs. Some have managed to get off. But very few are still alive.
Now aged 45, Buckley drinks wine with his wife - "two glasses max" - but doesn't touch any other mind-altering substances.
He speaks openly and honestly about his past mistakes. His kids are still in the room with us while we talk and Buckley doesn't sugar coat anything or whisper any answers.
"I think if we're not ourselves then who are we? I think we're living a lie. If nothing else when I die, I want people to know I was authentic, not perfect.
"Hopefully what I leave behind is a legacy of lives that have been impacted."
And he does impact people. He has formed a close friendship with broadcaster and columnist Paul Holmes, whose daughter Millie Elder has battled with a methamphetamine addiction. On his iPhone there are text messages from kids. He has a folder of thousands of messages. Buckley's story is for anyone who has ever had to choose.
"I tell you, I would never want to repeat what I've walked through but everything that I've walked through has shaped me to be the man that I am today with that understanding, the experience, the knowledge, the empathy, the heart, the grace, to deal with young kids."
Buckley is passionate about protecting them and he's peeved at how readily accessible drugs are. He sees it all the time while working as an ambulance officer.
"I had a 13-year-old die under my hands four months ago. It's horrible.
"I looked at this kid and thought, 'Why boy? Why was your life so bad you had to do this to yourself?' And it just grieves me because we give this PC crap message; this harm-minimisation notion that we know kids are going to take drugs so we want them to use them safely. Well, that's offensive. To infer there is such a thing as safe drug use is just lining them up for disaster.
"Mate, I've seen more death than these kids will ever see.
"I am the message - every choice you make has consequences."
Buckley is particularly angry at the sale of Kronic, a smoking product that mimics the effects of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active ingredient in cannabis. Buckley says he's had half a dozen kids in the ambulance over the last six months "crawling the walls" from taking it.
As we end our interview, 7-year-old Seth, who looks a lot like Buckley, climbs up on to his knee. Buckley, who has "Amped" tattooed on his wrist, wraps his colourful arms around him. Together they sink back into the warm leather of the chair.
Buckley knows he can't protect his own kids from touching drugs either but he's sure as hell going to try.
"I've got work to do and that's to impart truth and life to this generation that so need to hear it."
- www.amped4life.net.nz