Franz Oliver Lindsay says men don't talk about their issues enough, and he plans to change that as he walks the length of New Zealand.
Franz Oliver Lindsay says recovery from addiction is achievable one step at a time, and he’s about to share that message with the country - one step along SH1 at a time.
Franz (38) is a former meth addict who wants others to know recovery is just one step away.
“When I got clean, it started with just one step. I procrastinated. When I felt that urge for a hit I told myself just wait a minute, wait an hour, wait a day, until then it was another day, then another, one step at a time, I took myself away from meth, from craving it.”
Franz is taking his message of recovery onto the road this month, setting off on what he terms “my great adventure”, a plan to walk the length of Aotearoa.
He will be charting his journey on social media, on his Facebook page (also called My Great Adventure) as well as TikTok and YouTube channels.
Franz will stop in towns and cities along SH1 to talk to anyone who wants.
“My friend Snipe, aka Mike Watkinson, will be with me, he’s driving a support van with a couch in it. We are going to set the couch up in the places we stop for people to come sit beside me and have a chat. It’s about sharing experiences and listening.”
Mike has also struggled with addiction in the past, says Franz.
“He is a big support to me, he is coming on the road with me for a year, because he believes in this message and this idea of getting men to talk about stuff.”
Franz and Mike will reach out to mental health and addiction service providers in the towns they will visit, says Franz.
“So we will have people around that we can connect others with, if they are struggling and after sitting on the couch chatting with me, maybe they do want to reach out, we will be able to do that for them, get them talking to people and organisations in their community who can help them.”
Anyone is welcome to have a chat, says Franz, but his focus is on getting men talking, as he knows from his own experience how men can hide their emotions and feelings.
“It’s about talking, bringing this stuff into the open, not hiding it away or staying silent.”
It was silence that led Franz to his meth addiction in the first place.
“I was sexually assaulted by a man when I was 20. Something like that happening, it gets in your head, and meth was a way to forget it, to not think, not to talk about it. Meth filled the silence.”
Over the next 15 years Franz went through cycles of addiction, recovery and relapse.
“I started using meth, then I got clean when I was 26, but relapsed six years later before finally getting clean for good in September 2020. Before then, while I was spending time clean I wasn’t actually in recovery because I wasn’t fixing the trauma that had led me down that path in the first instance.”
Franz went through a series of highs and lows over those years, with a good job, being in long term relationships, and having two children over that time, but says the lows were outweighing the highs.
“At one point I was suicidal. It was only when I started writing that letter, that goodbye to my kids, I realised what I was doing to my kids. My unresolved trauma would become inter-generational. I couldn’t do that to them. So I didn’t. I got clean but then I relapsed again because I hadn’t actually fixed the problem.”
The death of a friend in a motorcycle accident hit Franz hard.
“Again it made me think about my kids, and what their memories of me would be if I was gone. I had to make changes.”
Franz started talking, beginning with breaking his silence about his assault.
“I told my mum. She cried, I cried. I had never told her before, because I didn’t want her to think it was her fault, that she had failed me in some way for that to have happened.”
He kept talking, kept telling people, realising if he talked about it, any sense of shame, fear or guilt was removed. A question from a friend challenged him.
“He said, how come you didn’t want your mum to know about that, but you are okay with her knowing her son is a meth addict?’
Franz realised not only was he actually not okay with his mum having a meth addict as a son, he wasn’t okay with being one either.
He was almost, he says, ready to get clean for good. The final tipping point came soon after, when a friend then stole from him for drug money.
Normally when at a low point, Franz would turn to meth to forget. This time he decided not to, and using his procrastination method took himself out of his addiction, one step, one day, one procrastination at a time.
He charted his recovery journey on Facebook, on his My Great Adventure page, making himself accountable to others as well as giving a voice to his experience.
“I broke my silence, and talked. I shared what I was doing and what had happened to me, and people responded. They began to share back. It became a community, and it’s community that keeps you going, that supports you. I got asked to talk at a youth prison, and to other groups, and I began to realise my experience was helping others too.”
One person who Franz’s experience helped was Emma Corlett. Caught in her own meth addiction, Emma was encouraged by his story to begin her own recovery journey. Emma and Franz ended up meeting and now are both not only in recovery, but are also parents to their baby son, Wolf.
When Emma got pregnant, the couple moved to Emma’s home town of Stratford in Taranaki.
However, says Emma, she always knew Franz wouldn’t be staying in Stratford permanently.
“As long as I have known Franz, I have known he has this big dream, to walk the length of New Zealand to raise awareness about men’s mental health, meth addiction and male sexual assault and, to me, being someone’s partner means supporting them in their dreams so I never asked or expected him to give that dream up.”
Franz says the idea of the walk came to him a couple of years ago.
“I thought, what if I offer people a business card in exchange for a $1.”
While Emma was still pregnant, Franz and Mike headed south to the bottom of the South Island and began the walk, getting as far as Palmerston.
“We covered 277km before I needed to put the walk on pause and get back to Taranaki because Wolf was going to be born. I wanted that bonding time with him. But now I need to keep that promise to myself, to walk the talk and to build a future for Emma and I.”
That future, says Franz, is for him and Emma to continue sharing their story of recovery and to help others caught up in addiction.
“I know our message reaches people and makes a difference. My Facebook page had got to over 75 thousand followers at the start of this year. We were making a living from it, as with that many followers we actually made money through Facebook. We were saving up for a house bus so we could keep on travelling and talking to people.”
A couple of weeks ago, Franz’s Facebook page was deleted.
“It was just gone. It has happened to a few pages I know of, they get deactivated. It was devastating, I was so broken. All those people who had followed my journey from the start, I didn’t want them to think the page was gone because I had relapsed or given up on my dream.”
Franz and Emma started a new page, with a name close enough to the original one Franz is hopeful people will still be able to find it if they get a business card from him during his walk.
“The new page, it’s got about 8000 people now, but that’s a long way off 75 thousand. It’s going to take a while to rebuild, and until it gets bigger, I can’t earn money through it any more, so now the walk is even more important, because any koha I receive, it will go to helping pay for Mike and I to complete the walk. We need to pay for gas, food and everything. At the moment Emma and I are using our savings and we can’t keep on doing that.”
Emma has set up a Givealittle page for people to support Franz’s journey from anywhere in the world.
The loss of the page, and therefore his income, meant Franz has also had to ask Work and Income for help.
“I never wanted to be in that place. I’ve been honest and said I can’t go on job seekers because I am not seeking a job, I am working on trying to get my own job, which was running my page, back. I know people might wonder why I don’t put the walk off, but unlike when I was coming off meth, procrastination isn’t the right way. I need to do it now, because every day there are people who will maybe benefit from seeing me walk, hearing me talk, and hopefully feeling able to share their story. This can’t wait.”
Emma however can wait, she says.
“Franz and I, we are in a good place, so while Wolf and I will miss him every day, we can wait for him to come back, because I know he is doing such an important thing. Not just because it’s been his dream, but also because I know exactly how his message can change lives. Somewhere there may be another person like me who just needs to hear recovery is possible, or to be encouraged by Franz to talk, to seek help. I do plan to join him for parts of his walk over the next year, so people might see me and even Wolf out on that couch at times.”
Ilona Hanne is a regional news reporter based in Taranaki. She joined NZME in 2012 and is editor of the Stratford Press, one of NZME’s community newspapers.
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