Former ice user Lachlan, 19, said it wasn't until he was arrested and charged with trafficking that he got help for a habit that had spiralled. "I was relieved," he said. "It was all going downhill."

The Youth Support and Advocacy Service said more young people were only getting help for ice use when they were arrested because families and the community did not know how to intervene early enough with gaps in services.

"It is about getting beyond that demonisation [of ice]. While that fear continues to happen, we won't know how to talk to our young people or intervene earlier," YSAS chief executive Paul Bird said.

"Because now, we're usually finding these people when they've hit rock bottom."

Lachlan is the eldest of a large, law-abiding family in Melbourne's south-east. He first smoked "puff", one of the many slangs for methamphetamine, last September with mates who had done it before.

He said the feeling it gave him was far removed from what he was told about ice.

"It wasn't like how society labelled it, being so dirty and dangerous. It was the exact opposite, you felt really happy and mellow," he said.

"At the beginning I thought nothing was wrong with it. You think it's so innocent, but I don't know one person that's touched it that's been able to sit back and stop after that."

His use went from just the weekends to most days and when he was made redundant from his apprentice electrician job, he began selling so he could afford to keep smoking.

"I thought it was all OK, to the extent where I was doing it at home around my family and stuff and you're not even thinking twice about it," he said.

"I thought, what they don't know doesn't hurt them. But they caught on, I was just too delusional to realise it."

YSAS, which formed 16 years ago out of a Kennett government inquiry into heroin, called for more state government funding to help young people, their parents, their schools and sporting clubs to intervene earlier.

The organisation wants to fund two workers per catchment area to educate and support families and communities, as well as pop-up withdrawal centres for regional towns.

YSAS also wants to increase the number of outreach workers in regional areas and the outer suburbs.

Lachlan started working with outreach worker Esther Benz after police found drugs in his car and arrested him last November.

Esther and Lachlan met weekly to work on his goals and navigate Centrelink before Esther helped Lachlan find work again. Most importantly, Esther was someone Lachlan could talk to.

"You felt a lot more guilty if you were to do it [smoke ice] after you see Esther because you put all this effort into it," Lachlan said.

"It wasn't like she was guilt-tripping me. It just felt better not to do it."

- YSAS funds an online portal where young people, parents and schools can get help on how to address drug problems and talk to youth workers online. Go to yodaa.org.au.