When doctors told John Graham he couldn't be fixed, he did what most of us would, he made adjustments. He moved into a small apartment leaving his wife with a large estate and a substantial sum of money. She was young, smart and attractive enough to start over. He wanted her to go on with her life. Sparing her the agony of watching him die, he left. That was 14 years ago. They have spoken on the phone but despite her wishes, he has never allowed her to see him since. He would rather endure all the pain, physical and emotional, himself.
John Graham: When I didn't die; for the last couple of years I've attempted to keep as many people as I can at arms length. I don't want to cause anybody emotional pain. I said good-bye the only way I know, by not saying it at all.

John at pharmacy counter waiting for prescription, rubbing his head.

John Graham: Could you get me a glass of water please. I could do with a few pills about anytime, say 6 hours ago or twelve hours ago...whatever. Jesus.


Now, John Graham is a medically induced morphine addict. He has never gotten any cure out of the medical profession, only uncertainty and indignity. He has learned to survive and control his pain by relying on the only organ he can still fully use, his brain. And he won't give that up, no matter how great the pain. Keeping his mind clear from the effects of the drugs is John Graham's only means of control...dignity. He used to regularly detox himself from morphine to lower his dosage and consequently lessen the clouding of his mind. These days he is too weak for that.

His pain is getting worse while his body and mind are growing more tired. John Graham is getting weaker every day. He sees it, he knows it and it scares him, mostly through his recent increased need for morphine.

John Graham: I'm getting these early. I've been popping pills like you wouldn't believe. Because of my tolerance over the years, and the trouble is your body builds up a tolerance for morphine. So all it means is the more you take to ease the pain, the more you're going to have to take in the future. Because your body builds up a tolerance to the levels your taking. Till you come to the stage, where morphine, no matter how much you take, doesn't do any good. Then you go on the concentrate... heroin... that's why I resent the morphine in the first place. That's why it's worthless to me. I resent the effect it has on my mind when I have to take so much of it to deaden pain, I can't think straight.

Dr. Chris Wake: If you're suffering horribly, you shouldn't be. In fact, your doctor may be negligent... I've looked after hundreds of dying people. They don't suffer horribly... with access to good care, 98% of people can die comfortable. The other 2%, we sedate them to a point where they are comfortable.

That is unacceptable to John Graham


John Graham: I've seen it. I've seen to much of it after twenty-odd years of going into hospital. There is nobody home, up there. The cocktail of garbage, the heroin and other crap they're on...they're not brain dead, but whoever it is isn't there anymore. They don't recognize their family or kids, or parents in the case of young people....it is the most totally degrading thing I've ever seen. And I've been on battlefields and seen people die around me since I was seven years old... to see a human being, reduced to a mindless lump of meat being kept alive on machinery, and their incontinent, and they have no control over their bowels... it's disgusting, it's humiliating, it's degrading, to me it's bloody disgraceful... but it's profitable.

The society we live in has come to accept the degradation of the human being as normal... it disgusts me.

Many proponents of the rights of the terminally ill act, including those who wish to die using the law, argue that it restores a quality of life to the sick individual. They are able to live their final weeks at peace knowing that they and their families won't suffer through a long drawn out death. They can die where they want, when they want and with their family surrounding them. No doctors, no machines, no hospitals. When someone has a guarantee that they will get help to die when and how they choose, it allows them to live their last days worry-free. It is a freedom few will choose. Only 5% of those terminally ill consider the option of voluntary euthanasia, and far fewer actively seek it out.

Dr. Philip Nitschke: I don't see a flood of people wanting to die. It's a small group. Everyone wants the right, but few will use it. Most will hang on till the last minute but those who are suffering are not having their needs met at all.

Dr. Chris Wake: I can guarantee them no pain. I might shorten one of their lives. It takes experience to determine that fine line but it is legal and the church has accepted it.

I know what I do is good medicine, not murder. Euthanasia means good death. All my patients have a good death. I don't kill them. If I kill them and the law allows it, it rips out the cornerstone of the legal system to protect the weak. The vulnerable, the elderly and handicapped will not support it.

Dr. Philip Nitschke: The AMA who says the weak ones will suffer, actually make up the core of the supporters for this law.
Empowering patients to make their own decisions. Taking power away from the doctors, that's what's behind this. They are fighting the shift of power. Often the doctor will slip the patient the lethal injection but it has always been at the doctor's discretion.

Dr. Chris Wake: The doctor and patient are not equals in their relationship. The doctor is very powerful. He has knowledge, understanding and access to treatment. They are not equals in this process.

Dr. Philip Nitscke: One would expect the AMA to hold that patients don't have the knowledge the doctors do. That doesn't mean it's ok to use as an excuse. You need to give them information, not deprive them of it and say I'll make up your mind for you. This attitude flies in the face of what community medicine is all about. They know exactly how they feel and when they say their life is crap, you better believe them. And doctors don't. They want out as fast as and painlessly as possible. Most have tried suicide and are frightened of having that experience again.

Unlike the United States, Australia permits suicide. In John Graham's desperation to retain control over his life and death, he has attempted it twice. The first time he overdosed on morphine and sleeping tablets. When that failed, he went a step further.

John Graham: Three tablets, gulp. Another three tablets, gulp. Three more morphine tablets, gulp. I think I got up to about four or five hundred milligrams I'd taken and went to sleep... now the amount I'd taken should have been enough to kill a dozen people. Wipe out half the street. I slept for 36 hours and woke up... so when I decided to do this air bit, I went to the library and got such medical books as I could and I read up on the subject of injected air into the artery of the arm. Because I'd done plenty of that with morphine.
I had a handful of morphine and sleeping tablets, surely enough to make sure I slept. You could've started the third world war outside and I wouldn't have known about it. Just as I lay down, getting sleepy, I already had this large syringe fully extended, I eased it in to the artery. I injected the needle into the artery, drew blood out to make sure I'd gotten it in the right place and injected the whole lot... into the artery. Took the needle out, set it on the side of the bed and laid back. And that would be one o'clock on the Saturday afternoon.

The first thing I knew it was Wednesday. When to my horror I found out I wasn't dead. And I went through the roof, because I gave them written instructions not to resuscitate me.


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