Speakers kick off National Addictions Week

"My name is Dan and I'm an alcoholic."

“My name is Dan and I’m an alcoholic.”

Both Dan and Jim (who preferred not to have their last names published) know the losses that come with an addiction. While each suffers from a different addiction and has taken a different approach to recovery, they both know the losses that come with the disease.

The pair was among the speakers this morning at a press conference to kick off the National Addictions Awareness Week activities in Whitehorse.

While Dan discussed his addiction to alcohol and his past 14 years of sobriety, Jim told those gathered at the Many Rivers Counselling Office about his cocaine addiction and his recovery.

“Addiction is a complex disease,” Patricia Bacon, chair of the local National Addictions Week Committee, said after noting the week of activities aims to raise public awareness of addictions and get people thinking about the issue.

As an alcoholic though, Dan said he has to be constantly vigilant of his addiction.

It was about 14 years ago that he was forced into a position where he had to seek recovery or face living on the streets.

“People stopped taking responsibility for me,” he said, speaking candidly about his past.

The one thing he discovered about his drinking is that though “booze was a big part of it,” his addiction was more about where he was in his life than the alcohol itself. He suspects it was likely there even before he started drinking.

Looking back, he’s also discovered that he was always blaming his drinking on something else other than himself.

“You always have to be a victim,” he said.

As others stopped taking responsibility for him and he lost friends and, eventually, his job, Dan found himself seeking treatment through a program that showed him how to accept responsibility for his actions.

“I was never looking on the inside,” he said.

The 12-step program he’s in now has also taught him how to handle what life brings without drinking.

Even 14 years after his last drink, Dan continues to take it one day at a time, knowing that otherwise he’d be living six months down the road or looking 10 years in the past.

While it’s the 12-step program that’s worked well for him, Dan stressed he wasn’t speaking as a representative for that and that there’s a variety of ways addicts can recover.

Jim, who’s been clean for about seven months most recently, hasn’t gone through any formal programs, but gets his strength in recovery from his higher power.

“It’s been a pretty long road,” he said as he recalled his struggle with cocaine addiction.

Initially having some trouble talking about his past, he finally recalled how he started using.

At the time, he was dealing, and one night, a customer put a needle in his hand and told him to give it a try.

“That was it,” Jim said.

Overnight, his life changed and would never be what it once was. For 16 years, he used, contracting HIV and Hep C along the way. It’s something he’s accepted he will now have to live with for the rest of his life.

For the past seven years, Jim’s recovery has been on and off. While he knows he can’t guarantee that he won’t relapse again, he said this time seems different with his acceptance of a higher power.

With his partner, Jolene, at his side this morning, Jim recalled his last relapse when she threw him out of the house.

For about two or three months, he lived on the street and continued using, selling whatever he could to pay for his drugs.

At times, he would even clean the clothes he had, fold them up neatly to make it look like they were new and try to sell those.

He eventually hit bottom and told a friend he was going to kill himself.

“In a way, I did,” Jim said, recalling that though he never physically committed suicide, he came to accept his higher power and his old self was gone.

He woke up the next day at Jolene’s and hasn’t used since.

Jolene, who’s been dealing with her own alcoholism recovery, recalled a time when she couldn’t trust her partner because of his addiction.

“You lose every sense of security when you live with an addict,” she said.

These days, she’s able to go to work and leave Jim at home, knowing he’ll likely be OK there.

When she took him back in, she said he was like a “sick puppy” who needed help though it didn’t come without certain rules she set down.

“That was his last chance,” she said, noting the “total turnaround” she’s seen.

Where Jim used to do anything for his addiction, he now does everything to stay clean and enjoy life.

“You have to do it together,” Jim said of his and Jolene’s recovery.

While Jolene said her life is good right now, free of substance abuse, it’s not always easy.

Having a partner who is HIV- positive and has Hep C means she is often tagged as having both too, even though she doesn’t.

“It’s really hard to live with that,” Jolene said.

While Dan, Jim and Jolene focused on their experiences that come from years of substance abuse, much of the week’s activities are set to focus on youth and preventing substance abuse.

As local youth, Jannel Robertson told the press conference, she has found drug and alcohol use among the territory’s young people is high, which means there’s more pressure to use substances.

“I avoid it by keeping busy,” she said, pointing to her involvement in sports, music and other activities as a way of saying away from alcohol and drugs.

Rachel Parks, Bringing Youth Towards Equality Society’s executive director, noted a recent survey echoed Robertson’s comments.

It’s important to provide youth with those activities that can keep them busy, she said, noting Whitehorse is fortunate to have a number of groups operating youth programs most nights of the week.

National Addictions Week will see a number of youth events, including B.Y.T.E.‘s annual conference next weekend, mocktail hours at Yukon College, a re-launch of the Stop Pushing program and the opportunity to try out the SIDNE Car, which demonstrates what it’s like to drive drunk.

There was also a free skate held yesterday at the Canada Games Centre, a showing of the From Grief to Action film tomorrow at noon at the local visitors’ information centre, a barbecue lunch on Wednesday and a free swim at the Games centre next Saturday.