Week one was excitement and confusion in equal measure. I read everything I could find, highlighted half of it, and still had no real idea what my argument was. It felt productive, but looking back, I was just making a mess in a slightly organised way.

Week two was data. HRB spreadsheets, CSO tables, EUDA reports. I had twenty tabs open, three notebooks, and a growing suspicion that the numbers were not going to line up neatly. They didn’t. Then came cleaning and organising. 

Week three was the first real analysis. I started to see patterns: treatment demand rising, unemployment among users staying stubbornly high, homelessness creeping up. Then, I was writing. Everything I wrote sounded either obvious or wrong.

Week four was rewriting. I cut huge chunks, rearranged sections, and argued with my own sentences.

Week five was the policy section. Trying to say something useful without just describing the problem was harder than I expected. It’s one thing to show that cuts to services had consequences. It’s another to say what should happen next.

Week six was the final push. Formatting, references, word counts, last-minute panic. Then, suddenly, right now, it's done. 

The whole experience has been a grind, honestly. It’s been frustrating, humbling, and occasionally brilliant. I’ve learned that research isn’t linear; it loops, doubles back, and rarely goes to plan.

And I’ve learned that a 647% increase in cocaine treatment cases is not just a statistic. It’s people being abandoned by our state, complicit in their deaths.

Would I do it again? Ask me in a month. But yes, probably.