Kintsugi Heroes
Dean Lloyd · 49 min
A suburban teenager's curiosity about heroin spiralled into armed robbery, incarceration, and a twelve-year addiction — and then became the unlikely foundation for a fellowship-winning mission to close a prison.
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Dean Lloyd was a suburban kid good at sport, comfortable and unremarkable, until a knee injury at 17 ended his rugby league career. Bored and curious, he spent three weeks hunting for heroin, found it, and his girlfriend asked for some too when he came home that first night. What began as recreational experimentation became a 12-year addiction that pulled him through rehabs, armed robbery, and prison. On Boxing Day 1999, desperate and broke after burning through money from a previous job, he held up a corner store 100 metres from his parents' house in a car registered in his name. He was arrested two days later and sentenced to four years, with a non-parole period of two years. He proposed to his girlfriend on the escort van ride to jail. She said yes.
Prison transformed him from someone who described himself as a lover, not a fighter, into an angry, hypervigilant man. Survival inside meant armoring yourself against disrespect, and that armor didn't come off when he got out. After his release, he and his wife had a daughter while both were still using heavily. The moment the child was 18 months old, something broke open in him. He called his parents and told them he was coming home to get clean, or he would kill himself and the child. He flew to Western Australia and had naltrexone surgically implanted because no rehab would take a single father. By the time his daughter was three, he was completely drug-free.
Thirteen years out of prison, skilled and wanting to work in community services, Dean kept hitting closed doors because of his criminal record. After a job offer was rescinded because his name came up as an "unsatisfactory person" in the system, he fought Corrective Services at the Human Rights Commission for three years and won. Now he works supporting men exiting prison, has studied counseling and community services, and has been awarded a fellowship to study prison systems across America. His goal is to close Long Bay Prison and build safer communities instead. What he has learned is that how you feel right now will not be how you feel in a week. Life moves in cycles, and he had to hang in long enough to let it be different.
⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses addiction & recovery, which some listeners may find distressing.
If you need support, you're not alone. Help is available: • SMART Recovery Australia (addiction): smartrecoveryaustralia.com.au • ReachOut: au.reachout.com
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Kintsugi Heroes · Registered Australian not-for-profit · kintsugiheroes.com.au ↗