Albury's Nathan Crisfield turns life around after drug and crime addiction

That leap into crystal methamphetamine wasn't so unexpected for the Albury father, having grown up in a turbulent home where he had fallen into the world of narcotics at 15.

Mr Crisfield had begun with recreational drugs - speed, ecstasy, "anything I could get my hands on".

As his use increased, so did his progression to "ice".

"It's like you do it every weekend, then that sort of bleeds into during the week and then every day, all day," he said.

Mr Crisfield said his attitude was he could do whatever he wanted without any thought to the consequences

Now the 33-year-old is hoping his experience will provide inspiration and power to change others' lives for the better.

He went on to study fitness and nutrition and bought into a gym that his friend started in Albury called Peakshape.

Peakshape on Dean Street is a place that symbolises any person's ability to transform their life.

Five years ago he was at his lowest, "I was broken, I was depressed and I had lost everything" - now he says he can conquer anything.

"For most young people, drugs is an outlet," he said. And later in life it might become a response to trauma or a mental health issue, but it may not necessarily start out that way."

Mr Crisfield said he didn't necessarily have that issue but has spent the past decade in and out of prison.

"I've used drugs as an addict and used them to numb myself before, so I know how that works," he said.

"But it wasn't necessarily my first response to why I would take drugs. I had a behavioural issue.

"Drugs were what we did for fun. We didn't play sport. We didn't do other healthy activities. We all just took drugs together."

Mr Crisfield said he fell into the mindset that taking drugs was just the way of life.

From a young age his dad influenced him, took him under his wing; breaking the law was normal to him and his dad led the way and "that is what is needed to work harder".

"That's how he stayed up all night driving trucks, that's just what he did," he said.

"That's what I got told to do as a kid and I just did it, he and his friends were the role models I had.

Mr Crisfield said he always had a reason for the life he led.

"I couldn't explain to you what the first time was like when I hit it. When I took drugs, they were just a thing I did.

"I had my own truck detailing business and my excuse was 'well if I just go and smoke glass, I'll stay up all night and get more work done'."

Mr Crisfield was soon neck deep in crime, stealing cars, getting into fights, dealing drugs.

He said his drug use was out of control and "there was not a lot of crime I haven't committed".

In 2016, he said, he was "off the rails" and while he still had his business, his focus was on dealing.

By 2017, he was locked up for the first time.

"Jail was always in my future at some point," he said.

"Crime and drug culture was just something I wanted to do.

"I didn't fall into it, I chose to do that."

Having served time for drug and traffic-related offences, he said the day after he was let out of Metropolitan Remand Centre in Melbourne he was out on the streets selling drugs.

"I was completely rampant, and my behaviour was out of control and my drug use was probably further out of control because I lost the things that gave me status," he said.

"I've lost a lot of things just in general in life. I lost the business, lost all those things."

Mr Crisfield said the drug use became more about masking emotions, dealing with pain and shutting the world out, but he filled that void with committing crime.

"It was a roller coaster, with extreme highs and lows all in a day; the really low lows don't feel as bad because you're off your head," he said.

Mr Crisfield admitted he liked the adrenaline that came with the thrill of being on the run.

"I lasted about three months out on a corrections order," he said. "But I took none of it seriously. In fact, I was quite happy to go back in the end."

Mr Crisfield wound up back in jail in Beechworth.

"I had no one when I got shifted to Beechworth," he said.

"Exercise helped me shift those dark patterns and periods in my life.

"I remember having a light bulb moment where I'm like, 'exercise kind of gives me the same feeling that stealing cars does' and I thought maybe I could replace that adrenaline-seeking behaviour with exercise.

"I knew I had bad mental health or close enough to what you can call depression and now I understand to this day what mental health really is."

But three weeks later he was discovered missing from his cell, having escaped.

"I had a nine-month sentence but had an extra month chucked on top because of what I did," he said.

"I had to finish my sentence in Port Phillip and ended up in the punishment units and had to do it the hardest way possible."

Mr Crisfield said he did a behavioural change course in prison and that was "the life-defining moment where I realised I had a role to play in my son's life".

"And that, early on, is the ambition or motivation to not go back to drugs and crime because most of the time in jail, you're just flip flopping back between thinking 'I'm going to do it, I'm not going to do it' and I decided I'm not going to do it anymore."

For Mr Crisfield he didn't know what a normal life looked like, and didn't know what to expect after getting out of prison.

He had no idea what he was going to do with his life.

"When I got released I still had charges pending," he said.

"I wasn't even sure if I was going to get extradited to NSW or if I was going to be able to see my son again.

"In the end Albury police negotiated for me to hand myself into the station."

It meant that after less than 12 hours out of prison he had landed himself into the cells.

Over the next four months he worked on turning his life around.

"I did parenting courses and drug tests," he said.

"I still had a couple years left of a sentence hanging over my head."

Mr Crisfield knew for certain that he was done with drugs, "but still had the urge to go back to crime".

That was something he pondered for a period of time.

"It was more the status you got from doing drugs, a feeling of success," he said.

"But I had no idea how to even start again and when you're out of that, it's very lonely and dark for the first two years. I didn't have a licence and I rode a bike everywhere so I felt I had no self-confidence."

Mr Crisfield said that he knew he wanted to make sure he did something with what he had learnt from the past decade.

"I remember walking the yard one day with a burning ambition, thinking 'this whole story just can't be for nothing'."

"That's what gives me the strongest sense of why, because if I can do it, why the hell can't anyone else? I truly believe that everyone has that power to do it, and all I do is hopefully instil that inspirational power in them to be able to do it," he said.

Mr Crisfield said he hoped he could turn his experience with narcotics into helping other young people and might one day be a mentor for young kids going through similar life experiences.

"I know I'm already helping people, but in the future when and if I get out of fitness I want to do something around consulting and life coaching," he said.

"My father taught me some really bad things and he taught me some really good things.

"But what is important is that we harp on the fact that the younger kids and hopefully mums and dads who read this and they've got a kid who's disengaged that they understand there are support services out there.

"And if it's not them they reach out to that they reach out to me and I'll direct them to a person directly that I know has some ability to help them."

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