A DISTURBING new app is turning people into ice addicts, covering faces with meth sores and wrinkles.
Ice Effex was designed to shock people with the harsh reality of consuming the drug, showing the deterioration of your physical appearance when ice takes hold after three, six and 12 months.
You can almost feel the ice mites niggling away under your skin, just by looking at yourself.
Benalla drug and alcohol worker Haydn Cooke and advocate for the homeless Trinity Lonel, have designed the app as a warning to young people.
“Ice use has just increased dramatically over the last couple of years,” Mr Cooke, who works at Odyssey House, said.
“There is 10 times the amount of ice addicts calling us now than there was three years ago — maybe even more.
“The number hasn’t doubled, it has at least quadrupled.”
He said it was hard for addicts to get out of the trap of addiction.
Odyssey House is a 15-bed rehab centre with a waiting list of 150 addicts.
It may take an addict six to eight months to get help — a time frame in which a lot of devastation can occur.
What Benedict Brook would look like if he used ice for 12 months.
It may take an addict six to eight months to get help — a time frame in which a lot of devastation can occur.
News.com.au reporter Benedict Brook before using app.
Mr Cooke, who also has three young children with Ms Lonel, knows how impressionable teenagers can be.
“We just tried to think about how we could prevent it,” he said.
“Being around our kids we know young people love selfies and appearance is so important so we thought about how we could combine that.
“If you just see a picture of somebody else it’s easy to disassociate from it, but when you see a picture of yourself, that can be the difference from you picking it up in the first place.”
Feedback on the app has so far been positive, with one Wangaratta school student telling Mr Cooke it would stop her from being peer pressured.
“She said if she is at a party she’ll just pull out her phone and say ‘I don’t want to look like this’,” he said.
Megan Palin after using the app.
“She said if she is at a party she’ll just pull out her phone and say ‘I don’t want to look like this’,” he said.
Through Mr Cooke’s work, he has seen how easy it is for people to get hooked on ice.
The community service worker often sees men who used to have it all — cars, houses, girlfriends, jobs and strong family ties.
But after just six months they’ve lost everything and only gained mental, physical and legal problems.
“It’s a vicious cycle too because once a person gets hooked they start dealing because they need the drug but don’t have any money,” Mr Cooke said.
“It’s devastating seeing how quickly things go from being good to just total devastation.
“They destroy all their relationships and they’ve cheated, lied to and stolen from all their friends and family.
“You even see good kids in the community from decent families bashing up people, kidnapping people and holding up people — it’s nasty stuff.”
Mr Cooke and Ms Lonel wanted to make the app, which works similarly to Fat Booth and Old Booth, as realistic as possible.
“When people are on ice they hallucinate,” he said.
“If they have a pimple they might pick at it and then imagine they have pimples all over their face and once they start they can’t stop.
“Other people report feeling things under their skin like ice mites.
“It just spreads like a disease.
“It’s evil — pure evil.”
The app gives you greyish skin under your eyes to show the impact of not sleeping, it aims to age you by about 10 years and will rot your teeth.
Mr Cooke hopes parents would also embrace the app and download it with their children to open up the conversation about the dangers of taking the drug.
It also helps parents recognise an ice addict and whether their children have been involved in it.
“We definitely need more education about ice and this has to be turned from a criminal problem into a health problem,” Mr Cooke said.
“Making it a criminal issue just gives people with problems, more problems.
“If they finally get off the drug and try to find a job then they have a criminal record and that starts to add problems again.
“If you’re caught up with ice you shouldn’t be sent to jail, you should be sent to a GP with no conviction.”
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