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or the past 27 years, a one-time millionaire entrepreneur turned bank robber and drug dealer has been drug and alcohol free.

At 58 years of age, Australian Richard Smith is a fit and happy recovering addict who has taken the lessons learned in his previous dark and dangerous lifestyle and flipped them into drug and rehabilitation centers in Australia and Bali.

So common is addiction globally that Apple has an app that tracks clean days — Smith is nearing the 9,999 straight days mark and is clearly delighted that he will very soon land a gold star on his iPhone app.

Three decades ago, this man was an alcoholic living under a bridge in a Melbourne suburb after being released from the infamous Pentridge prison for armed robbery committed to feed his heroin habit. The habit cost him his business, UltraTune, and turned him from an enterprising motor mechanic into a gangland thug selling drugs to a former Australian prime minister’s daughter, among others.

“I came out of Pentridge quite violent, but I had grown up with the philosophy that if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime and I didn’t want to ever do the time again. So my last residence was a cave in Merry Creek — it was a wet winter and my cave was flooding. I was 31 years of age and had been living rough since I got out of prison. I went home to Mum. She took me in on the condition that I got clean. A shrink said to me you have tried it all except AA [Alcoholics Anonymous]. I got clean and realized there was nothing like what I run today available to help people get clean,” says Smith at his Denpasar rehabilitation center, Yayasan Bali Suara Hati (YBS), which had first been established as Yayasan Bali Nurani (YBN) by Indonesian activist Andre.

Calling on his entrepreneurial skills and his hard-won understanding of what it is to be an addict, Smith established a range of rehabilitation groups and organizations and was instrumental in setting up the first needle exchange program with professor Pennington when in the mid 1980s the AIDs epidemic was raging among addict populations around the world.

Today he continues to share his rehabilitation knowledge with Indonesian and Australian addicts at YBS in Denpasar, which by June 2011 was in danger of closing.

“I had set up The Raymond Hader Clinic in Melbourne and when I was here in Bali I met Andre of YBN. He said YBN was looking to close due to lack of funding. There was great work being done by YBN for Indonesians so I committed the Rp 70 million [US$7,205] a month needed and made [YBS] a sister program to my Melbourne rehab center,” says Smith, who developed a model in which Australian addicts and alcoholics can pay a small amount to go through the YBS rehab program with their fees offsetting the cost of Indonesian addicts’ rehab at the center.

For Australians following the program, the benefits of being far from home are a key factor in their success, says Errol (not his real name). Tall and tanned with bright brown eyes, Errol looks the picture of health. He is now in his 17th day of rehab and doing well. He says being in Bali — in another country — makes it impossible to walk away from the program, as he has done in the past when trying to get clean in his home city of Melbourne.

James (not his real name) has been at the center just four days; he is looking stressed as his body goes through the process of detoxing from heroin, but like Errol is determined to get clean.

“I have my medication from Australia to help and I was met at the airport and brought straight here. It helps being far away from temptation,” says James.

Larry (not his real name) is also a new kid on this rehab block at just a week in, but already the whites of his eyes are clear and he has a tan. Larry says he needs to get clean and stay out of the crime scene that is such an integral part of drug addiction.

Recovering alcoholic Andrew (not his real name) has completed the program, but is back at the Denpasar center because “I am happy here. It feels like home.”

With the funding available from these foreign clients, young women like the extraordinarily brave 27-year-old Emi (not her real name) have access to rehabilitation. Emi has been addicted to a cocktail of drugs for many years, been in and out of jail and has gone through rehab in the past.

“I came to the center because I am so tired of my addiction. I don’t want to keep going to jail or the hospital because of overdoses,” she says after completing three months with YBS. Emi has stared death in the face time and again. She says the greatest wake-up call was when she slipped into a coma lasting three months.

“I woke up and couldn’t use my left hand — I’d had a stroke,” says Emi, who has just completed her ninth rehabilitation and is finally off the methadone that left her sleepless for weeks.

Before slipping into addiction, Emi studied law and is highly fluent in English, but a childhood in a drug- and alcohol-riddled area of Jakarta and parents that fought constantly perhaps denied her the solid ground she needed to halt that slide.

Today, with the help of YBS, Emi is building a new life, and she is planning on going back to school to study art and wants to find a job soon.

“But my immune system is still very poor, doctors are still adjusting my medication. So I want to rebuild my immune system — and I want to live.”

For information on the YBS program, call Cath at 081 2467 44019.

— Photos By J.B. Djwan