Meth in the suburbs: How high flying professionals became hooked
Saturday, 18 April 2026
They had jobs, homes, and routines – lives that by all accounts looked stable from the outside. Then methamphetamine entered the picture. Katie Ham investigates the everyday lives destroyed by New Zealand’s most prolific drug, and the system that keeps it flowing.
Warning: This story discusses themes of addiction and drug use
Anna* is sitting at the lunch table on her first day in rehab, her hands never still as she talks – fingers picking at each other, tapping lightly on the surface, shifting her mug from one hand to another and back again.
She hasn’t been sleeping, she explains. She was meant to arrive at 10.30am the day before, but didn’t make it through the doors of Red Door Recovery Centre until 8pm.
It was too hard stepping away from the life she knew and saying goodbye to her family home up for sale, but sitting here she says she’s ready – “excited” even – for recovery.
Now a mother of two in her 40s, it’s hard to reconcile this version of Anna with the life she once lived.
Read more:
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For more than a decade she worked in investment banking, moving between Sydney, London and Wellington. “I loved it. It was so exciting,” Anna recalls.
But when she became pregnant with her first daughter, Anna left the banking world behind to become a stay-at-home mother back in New Zealand.
Gone were the days of running around the trading floors of the City of London, replaced instead with a life structured around school routines, meals and the ordinary rhythms of raising two children.
And in crept alcohol.
What started as a glass of wine while cooking dinner and another during bathtime escalated into chronic alcoholism that spanned the best part of 10 years of Anna’s life.
Her family noticed the shift before she did – or perhaps before she was willing to see it – as hangovers stretched into full days spent in bed and the effort required to remain present for her two daughters became harder to sustain.
In hindsight, Anna can see that her drinking intensified following a string of deaths in her immediate family as a way of “self-medicating”: the more she drank, the less she had to feel the grief.
She tried Antabuse once – a drug designed to cause unpleasant effects to deter a person with substance abuse issues from drinking – but a severe allergic reaction left her hospitalised with a damaged liver.
And for a few months, the fear of further damaging her liver with alcohol worked.
“But then I started drinking again. Alcohol was everywhere. If you go out for a meal, I always thought that you need alcohol. You just kind of associate everything with alcohol, like birthday parties, weddings, everything.”
Cocaine came next, introduced on a girls’ weekend away in Martinborough.
Anna remembers being hesitant, conscious of her father’s early fatal heart attack and wary of what it might do to her body. But fear gave way to the promise of relief.
“I remember being scared of using drugs. I’d never touched them in London. But I felt amazing. It was just a huge rush of energy.”
Then, a year and a half ago, during a visit to a friend’s house after a period of emotional strain following her marriage breakdown, Anna was offered her first “puff” of meth.
She asked what it would do, still carrying an underlying anxiety about her heart, but was told it would make her feel like she’d had “a million coffees”.
And so, Anna’s addiction to meth had begun.
“The high [on meth] is like four times the amount as cocaine, I read once. I should have known.”
Her decline was slow at first, and then sudden. Friendships fell away, contact with family became strained, and the structures that had once given shape to her days began to dissolve until all that mattered was her next hit of meth.
Days blurred into nights, and there were times Anna would stay awake for five or six days at a time, pushing her body until it finally gave in, only to emerge into a cycle of agitation and anxiety while she saved up to buy more meth.
At home, the changes became harder to hide. Her daughters could see it even if they didn’t always have the language to describe it, noticing absences in attention, in presence, in the consistency of who she was.
On one occasion, after she had been awake for days, one of them told her she looked like a corpse, her eyes open but unresponsive, her body physically there but her attention somewhere far away.
Anna tried to stop repeatedly, making what she describes as around ten separate attempts to get clean, each one undone by the intensity of withdrawal and the ease with which the drug could be accessed again.
It was everywhere, available through networks that quickly made themselves known, delivered or picked up in ways that removed almost every barrier to relapse.
All she needed to do was order online and it could be delivered to her home, she says. A kind of Uber Eats for meth.
It was a cycle of using, withdrawing, and saving money to use again.
And the longer it went on, the more she began to see the shape of it narrowing until she could see only two possible outcomes remaining: prison or death.
When she spoke to The Post for a second time, Anna was two weeks into the programme at Red Door and had remained clean, despite the ever-present devil on her shoulder.
She has a fragile hope of something different, something that resembles the life she once had but without the substances that gradually stripped it away: a home that is stable, time with her daughters in which she is fully present, a future not dictated by the need to use.
While meth offered her a kind of numbness that felt like relief, in exchange it left her a shell of her former self.
“Never take it, never try it once,” she says. “You might think you’re in control, but you’re not. It will take hold of you before you know it.”
Confronting the myth of the meth user
But what happened to Anna isn’t unusual. It’s happening all around New Zealand in all walks of life, as thousands of lives are quietly stripped of their colour in much the same way.
Wastewater data released by NZ Police last month showed that an average of 34.7kgs of meth was consumed weekly throughout the country between October and December, equating to an estimated $36.5 million in social harm for each of those weeks.
(In comparison, 6.5kgs of MDMA and 9.4kgs of cocaine were consumed in the same time period, causing $1.4m and $3.5m in social harm respectively.)
But as former police officer and chief executive of the Drug Detection Agency Glenn Dobson says, the idea that meth belongs to the margins of society is increasingly outdated.
“The anecdotal image of the meth user as someone down and out, gaunt, non-functioning, part of a criminal fraternity isn’t representative any more. We know there are high-functioning high-level users out there too.”
Certainly, Anna doesn’t fit the picture most people carry of a meth user. She had a career working as an investment banker and lived a life that – from the outside at least – looked structured, successful and controlled.
A well-dressed mother of two from the Wellington suburbs, her spiral into addiction is confronting.
In researching this story, The Post also learnt about doctors, lawyers and real estate agents using high levels of meth, many of whom were continuing to work.
For example, former eye surgeon Philip Polkinghorne was revealed to be a heavy meth user during the investigation into the death of his wife, Pauline Hanna.
Although Polkinghorne was found not guilty of murdering Hanna, he pleaded guilty to two charges of possession of meth and a pipe, and was sentenced to 150 hours of community work.
But it wasn’t until the suspicious death of his wife that a police search of his Remuera home revealed the extent of a methamphetamine addiction he’d kept hidden from many.
In total, police found a meth pipe in his medical consultation room, 37.7g of meth and another glass pipe in his multimillion-dollar home.
The class A drug was in his bedside drawer, hidden under a towel in the bathroom and among his toiletries and medication.
According to Dobson, suppliers of drugs are becoming more sophisticated too.
“They don’t exist in an underworld any more. They wear designer clothing, present themselves as more socially acceptable and infiltrate higher society.”
But the scale of the problem among industries like healthcare or the legal system is much harder to gauge, with those workplaces less likely to engage in mandatory drug testing, Dobson says.
Rather, the Drug Detection Agency predominantly works with so-called “safety-sensitive” industries – construction, transport, manufacturing and so on. Industries where a worker under the influence of drugs poses a threat.
But even there, the shift has been stark. Meth has long been the second most commonly detected drug after cannabis, but in the past 12 to 18 months, Dobson says, there has been a noticeable increase nationwide.
Recent quarterly data shows meth present in roughly a quarter of all positive tests, with some regions far higher. In Taranaki, it has made up more than 60%.
However, the absence of testing among professions traditionally thought of as white collar shouldn’t be mistaken for absence of use, Dobson says.
The stereotype – gaunt, erratic, visibly unwell – represents only one end of the spectrum. At the other are those who continue to work and function while under the influence of meth.
P Nation: How meth took hold of modern New Zealand
The prevalence of meth in New Zealand is no accident though, the director of the National Organised Crime Group Detective Superintendent Greg Williams told The Post.
Behind stories like Anna’s sits a much larger machinery – an invisible network of supply chains, facilitators and organised criminal groups responsible for keeping meth flowing into New Zealand at scale.
It’s a business like any other with profiteers, multi-level marketing techniques, price control and competition. And it all hinges on communities becoming addicted.
“There’s no customer as loyal as one addicted to the product,” Williams says.
The dominance of meth across New Zealand can, at least in part, be traced back to a “perfect storm” of factors, Williams explained.
At its simplest level, that storm began with supply and demand. New Zealand is a small, wealthy market where meth sells for significantly higher prices than in many other countries.
For example, Mexican cartels and other transnational groups reportedly refer to New Zealand as the “golden nugget” – the country where users are willing to pay some of the highest prices in the world for meth and cocaine.
Where a point of meth (one tenth of a gram) would sell for US$5, here it sells for between $80 and $100.
The meth itself is mass produced in labs across the world, such as South East Asia, Mexico and Canada, and smuggled into the country through the “seven doors”: shipping containers, mail systems, couriers, airfreight, small craft imports, ship hides and concealed in imported goods.
With such high profit margins, overseas cartels can afford to lose products seized at the border. To them, it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
The system also relies on layers of facilitation: individuals within established supply chains who are bribed or compromised, and financial intermediaries who help convert cash into assets and obscure its origins, Williams says.
“Part of the work we’re trying to do is targeting these facilitators. Yes, you can lock away the drug dealers, but you also need to target the business entities they're exploiting.
“We’ve uncovered people in police, at the border, all over the place, who are not only willing to turn a blind eye, but actually enable organised crime to operate.”
The arrival of Australian gangs under the “501” policy also meant more experienced gang figures began arriving back in New Zealand, carrying with them international organised crime connections and more sophisticated business models of drug distribution, Williams says.
Under their influence, local gangs began to operate less chaotically and became more commercially structured. Where once cannabis had supplied them with income, meth took their profits to a whole new level and they began to compete with each other to dominate the market.
Over time, meth became more embedded in communities across the motu, particularly in areas already experiencing social and economic pressure.
“But what’s really chilling is that gangs understand this, they target those who are vulnerable and use meth to entrap and enslave them into doing what they say. If you can’t pay for meth, you’re prostituted or forced to give them your family farm, and so on.”
But that’s not to say all meth users come from impoverished communities, Williams acknowledges.
“Meth affects people across the board. It’s pervasive. It’s someone’s friend, mum, dad, brother, sister, neighbour. It’s a drug that impacts every social sphere […] It’s smashing our country.”
Even more worryingly, the 'perfect storm” is continuing to evolve, Williams says.
Increasingly, meth is arriving in New Zealand in the form of chemical precursors, where it will be combined with other substances once inside the country to form meth in its recognisable form.
For example, in 2017 police intercepted 160 litres of “t-boc” meth from Hong Kong disguised as dishwashing liquid.
“So when the product entered the country, it wasn’t meth. But they’d flown in a guy from Canada and were using chemicals to reformulate it back into meth once they were here.”
Crucially, the risks of meth disguised as consumable products can be fatal.
In 2023, 21-year-old Aiden Sagala died after sitting down for a beer after a hard day’s work, having unwittingly consumed a fatal dosage of meth disguised as a can of Honey House Beer from Canada.
In more recent years, police have also become aware of the emergence of “precursor precursors” to meth, Williams says.
“You had organised criminals who were experts in money laundering or shipping products, for example, but now you have another person in the chain – an organic chemist. They look at the structure of a chemical, and can see that if they chop an element a certain way, they can create a precursor to meth.
“It’s just like any business, which needs to be innovative to stay ahead of the curve. So they’re finding ways to access key ingredients more easily and for less money that are harder to detect.”
Add to that a chemical industry worldwide that is in the business of selling chemicals, Williams says, and you have another industry open to being exploited for nefarious purposes.
“The issue is the chemical companies can say they’re not doing anything illegal, but we’ve seen instances where investigators have been able to identify that chemical companies certainly knew. And not only did they know, they were saying things like: ‘Hey, I’ll send it to you as cat or dog food’.”
But, Williams says, to date there has been no formal engagement worldwide with the chemical industry about regulation.
Similarly, Williams hopes there can be more formal engagement with shipping companies about how to identify and protect against corruption.
“That’s another thing that transnational criminals do exceptionally well: corrupt people in the system. And that’s something we’ve seen too much of here in New Zealand, sadly, with the likes of baggage handlers at Auckland Airport being caught taking bribes.”
Where part of the solution will involve working closely with international law enforcement partners to clamp down on the chemical and shipping industries, at home Williams is working on ways of intercepting the flow of cash.
“For organised criminals and gang members, the bulk of drug dealings around the country still involve cash at the gate. That means we have an opportunity to cut off their proceeds of crime by checking large sums of money entering the financial system.
“So if we can jam the ability of cash to get into the system, we can jam the system.”
And while it might all sound abstract and high-level, across his nearly 40 years working in the drug and organised crime sector, Williams has seen thousands of lives destroyed by meth.
“The word I use is soulless. Meth strips you of you,” Williams says.
Rebuilding communities from the ground up
While Williams’ focus is on tracking and preventing the movement of meth into and around the country, the work of police’s Resilience to Organised Crime in Communities (ROCC) unit is about what happens after it has arrived.
According to manager John O'Keeffe, ROCC’s work is built on a simple premise: enforcement alone isn’t enough.
Police can disrupt supply and arrest those responsible, but without addressing the conditions that allow meth to take root, the cycle repeats. Demand remains, and communities stay vulnerable.
So, ROCC flips that approach. Instead of a top-down response driven by central government, it starts with talking to the community itself – asking what’s needed, what’s working and what isn’t.
“Communities know their own strengths, challenges and needs best,” O’Keeffe says. “It’s about listening to what matters most and building solutions that are truly fit for purpose.”
Local leaders, iwi, social services and police work together to design responses that reflect the reality on the ground.
There are common pressure points – young people on the edge of gang involvement, families already stretched thin, communities caught in meth addiction.
But how those challenges show up and how they need to be addressed differs around the country.
For example, in Porirua, ROCC works alongside the iwi-led Te Rūnanga o Toa Rangatira - Toho Noho Tahi programme, which provides 35 whānau and 25 rangatahi with harm reduction support and recovery pathways.
In Southland, peer-led support is offered by people who have lived through addiction themselves. In Northland, residential recovery programmes are built around whānau healing.
The goal isn’t just to remove meth, O’Keeffe explains. It’s to make communities stronger than the conditions that allowed it in, so that when the next wave inevitably comes, it has less to take hold of.
Also on the frontline of the meth crisis is director of residential services at Wellington City Mission, Maria Millin.
“We’re at a crisis point,” she says. “I’ve worked in this space for 24 years, and I’ve not seen this amount of meth use and associated anti-social and aggressive behaviour before.”
That change is being felt directly by staff and volunteers. What was once primarily a space of deprivation is now also a space of volatility, requiring new safety measures and de-escalation training to protect both staff and clients.
The demand itself is also changing. Services are seeing both long-term users and new faces, including people in their early 20s and older adults not previously associated with meth use.
Like Williams, she referenced a perfect storm, but of a very different kind: “There’s a perfect storm of homelessness, social challenges, unemployment, difficulty getting support and the corresponding meth use.”
Where Anna’s story is just one example of a life dismantled by meth, from where Dobson, Williams, O’Keeffe and Millin are standing, it’s a tale repeated in dozens of families every week.
Each sees a different part of the same system – the supply lines bringing it in, the communities absorbing it, and the services trying to hold people together once it takes hold.
But across them all, one thing is clear: meth doesn’t sit at the margins of New Zealand society any more. It runs through its very centre.
From clandestine labs to a lunch table
Braeden Foster, 22, works as a chef at Red Door Recovery Centre – where he was once a resident.
He’s clean now, having had his last hit of meth in December, but there’s part of him that wonders how long it will last.
“I want to say I’ll never smoke meth again, but it’s a hard drug to get away from,” Foster says. “I could get meth anywhere within five minutes. It’s always on my mind. I think about using it every day, every night. I have dreams about using meth. Part of me loves it, part of me hates it.”
Growing up in Hastings, Foster became desensitised to drug abuse through his work in professional kitchens, in which he started at 14.
“Every kitchen I’ve worked in, there’s always someone on drugs. Chefs just love getting wasted. It’s such an old-fashioned thing for chefs to do, get completely f…ed up at the end of the shift.
“The industry is notorious. It’s pretty brutal. It’s a lot of stress, a lot of pressure, and stimulants kept us going.”
First, it was weed, MDMA and cocaine. Then, aged 18, Foster tried meth in what he describes as a “pretty much inevitable” progression of his substance abuse.
“I had a lot of trauma as a kid, which is why working in kitchens appealed to me in the first place because it meant long hours away from home. Drugs were just another way of escaping my reality.”
Within a year, Foster had been fired from three jobs. During his breaks, he’d sit in his car and smoke meth.
It stripped away any sense of restraint: “Zero morals, no values. Just self-centredness and greed. I was always obsessed with getting more but more was never enough.”
Now, structure is what keeps him steady. Daily calls with a sponsor, Narcotics Anonymous meetings, and a routine he has to actively maintain.
“If I don’t have structure, I get complacent. And when I’m complacent, I use.”
Foster hopes one day he can study mental health and addiction, to work with others in recovery, or perhaps open his own substance-free kitchen. But he knows that the risk of slipping back is constant .
Asked if he regrets ever using meth, Foster is blunt: “F… yes”. And yet it still holds an appeal? “Yes”.
Red Door – a small, privately run residential programme in Wellington, operating on what staff describe as a “therapeutic whānau model” – opened its doors to The Post earlier this month.
With just a handful of residents at a time, the centre combines group therapy, structured daily programming and clinical support, alongside long-term after-care.
Around a shared lunch table with food cooked by Foster, those at the beginning of their recovery, like Anna, sit alongside those celebrating their first year of sobriety with balloons and cake.
It’s a mundane scene, but one that holds the full spectrum of the drug’s reach – its beginning, devastating aftermath and the fragile space in between.
Anna doesn’t know how much longer she’ll be at Red Door. Perhaps another two months, maybe more if she needs it, whatever is needed so that she can return to her young girls as her old self.
And somewhere far beyond this Wellington lunch table – in labs, shipping routes, encrypted messages and supply chains – the system that brought Anna and Foster together continues to move.
* The Post has given Anna a pseudonym to protect her and her young children’s privacy.
Where to get help for addiction:
Alcoholics Anonymous 0800 229 6757
Alcohol & Drug Helpline 0800 787 797 or email help@aa.org.nz
Gambling Helpline Aotearoa 0800 654 655 or text 8006 (available 24/7)
Narcotics Anonymous 0800 NA TODAY (0800 628 632)
Odyssey Trust 09 638 4957
The Salvation Army Bridge Programme 0800 53 00 00
If it is an emergency or you or someone else is in immediate danger, call 111.