Our Stories

"I didn't come from a home that had drinking as a part of it. I had two loving parents and I grew up feeling loved, valued and cherished. In 2003, though, I had 3 major events happen, that literally left me paralyzed to cope with life.

I had some friends who drank wine from time to time, so one night I decided to drink some too. It was during this time that I discovered the wonderful numbing effects of alcohol. It quickly became the "Calgon, take me away," solution to my emotional pain.

I was a late bloomer to drinking, but I took to it like a sailor to water. If I was out with a friend who drank, they would say, why don't you just have one? "One?? Why would I bother?" I'd think to myself. I wanted to "feel it." The fact is once I had that first drink, a phenomenon of craving more would kick in. During the day, I would obsess about it and couldn't wait until after work to get some to take home. At times, I wondered if I was an alcoholic, but, I hadn't lost my job, my home or my family. I didn't live under a bridge. I had a picture in my head of what I thought an alcoholic looked like, and I didn't fit that.

Drinking wasn't a part of my married/family life, so I became very creative at planning, sneaking and hiding my drinking. It was actually quite exhausting! I didn't want my double life being exposed, so it also produced a lot of anxiety, (one of the biggest reasons I started drinking in the first place!)

Over the years, I found that my drinking increased. What use to be a solution to emotional pain, became a reward for hard work, celebrations and then, for no reason at all, except I couldn't wait to have it! Going to the liquor store was elating!! In the evenings at home, I would disguise my drinks so I thought my spouse wouldn't know what I was doing. Many mornings I would wake up with such fear and anxiety as I couldn't remember how the previous evening had ended. I would wonder how I even got to bed. I was sooo afraid to face my spouse. I'm not sure why I thought I was so clever, because most of the time, it was very obvious to my spouse and those around me, what I had been doing!

It was such insanity! Drinking...waking up in regret...vowing to stop...only to pick up again one or two days later. I ruined many holidays, times out with friends and family. I caused great insecurity and sadness with my children and spouse.

At one point, after one of these unfortunate times, I decided to go to Alcoholics Annonymous. I got a sponsor who with another person, took me through the steps. It was there I learned that I had an illness that I had no control over. Regrettably, I didn't follow the suggested 3 parts of the solution to my problem and went back out to drink.

Finally, after one of the worst of my regretful evenings, I woke up and heard bits and pieces from my spouse, about what had happened the night before with some treasured friends. I made a decision that I was too embarrassed to face them and that my family would be better off without me. I was filled with self-hatred and loathing. I couldn't seem to stop this endless cycle. I felt like the worst kind of failure. I decided right then and there that I had to end my life. It was an impulsive decision that almost worked. I ended up in the ICU for a few days because my heart was trying to stop. While there I had an amazing spiritual experience with God...the same God I came to know as a child. He surrounded me with His love and peace and the assurance that everything was going to be okay.

I left there and went to a Recovery Center. There, I was able to press the reset button on my life. When I returned AA was waiting. This was well over a year ago and my life has changed 180 degrees. Today, I am very involved in AA. I follow the program daily. I have made ammends to my family and friends. Each day, Irely heavily on my higher power, God, and am growing spiritually. The obsession to drink has been removed. I attend AA meetings on zoom, sponsor others and enjoy taking them through the steps.

Today I live with peace, serenity and joy. God, through the program, is taking the wreckage of my past and turning it into something beautiful and useful for His purposes."

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"I am the youngest child of three and since I can remember I have been seeking everyone's approval so that I could feel comfortable being myself. I'll be honest the younger years of my life (up to age I don't really recall a lot. I know that my parents fought constantly until they finally divorced when I was five. We became a split home and very dysfunctional. My oldest sister went to live with my grandparents, my brother went to my alcoholic father and I stayed with my mentally ill mother. She was by far the least equipped to pass on any useful tools for dealing with life. I lost her to a suicide overdose at age 24. I know that dishonesty and resentments were the most predominant defects in my household. I learned this dishonest behavior at an early age. It became acceptable and a tool which became very useful to become an amazing actor in life. You see as an actor I could put on a show to get the reaction out of you which fed my desire to be accepted. It became my earliest addiction. The more common terminology is manipulation. I am now 43 years old and this has been by far the hardest of all my addictions to understand and be aware of. Even in sobriety I quiet often use it to feed my ego and paint a picture for you that my life is great... I have everything together... allow me to help and show you... forgetting this is not a real sense of self. It is not a real sense of integrity. It is more deception. It is ignorance of emotion and true honesty with others.

I developed many substance abuse addictions very quickly after my mother's suicide. I tried different treatment centers and programs with a half desire to stop but a larger desire for consequences of them to go away. I wanted to learn a form of control which I could only do for brief moments in the following years. I transferred addictions all the while having a sense of self that could never be filled. No matter how hard I tried through relationships, through materialism, through social status I was always left feeling empty. Ironically, it seemed the more achievements I made, the emptier I felt. I was afraid and defeated with an overwhelming sense of impending doom.

Finally at age 39 the greatest thing happen to me although it sure didn't seem like it at the time. I was beaten down to the point of surrendering everything I thought worked for me and I felt enough pain and despair that I actually reached out for help. I found people who felt like I did, who thought like I did and for the first time of my life, I felt real acceptance and approval for who I was. Just knowing I was not alone and seeing what they were doing to manage these things in their own lives gave me hope that there was an answer for me too.

"I still struggle from time to time as that is part of the human experience but I have a community of people who help me and want nothing from me in return. If this message resonates with you please reach out because you're not alone. There are solutions and we can live wonderful lives with a true sense of purpose and real integrity without having to put on some act. The first and most important decision you will make is to just reach out. God Bless you all."

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"Growing in up in a small town, my early life was ripe with family, athletic events, recreation, and church attendance. I had a father who worked hard and provided what we needed and a mother who devoted her life to her children. My days were full of spending time with my extended family and doing what kids do. Tragically, my mother developed breast cancer when I was eight, and succumbed to the disease just three years later. A feeling of being separated from everyone else was made more prominent by the death of my mother and grandmother in the span of one year. I can remember thoughts of not wanting to live being prominent during this time. Fear was a feeling that I struggled with my entire life and after my mother passed away, I remember developing a feeling of impending doom that became my constant companion. A perpetual cloud of depression seemed to follow me everywhere. Moving on into middle school and high school, I began to experiment with drugs and alcohol. Anything I could procure to alter my consciousness I would use. During my junior year of high school, I attempted suicide by taking a bottle of sleeping pills and drinking beer. I had grown up in a religious household and felt drawn to seeking God, but never could I tap into God's power for any extended period of time. I manage to graduate high school and begin taking courses at the local junior college, but by Christmas break, I received two DUI's in the span of two weeks. You could say I was simply just existing. This type of living went on for six months...waking up in strange places, not knowing who or what I had done the night before. I was on the verge of being thrown out of my house at the age of 18. As fate would have it, I was given an opportunity to receive substance abuse treatment for ninety days at a local treatment center, and there I was introduced to a way of living that would ultimately change my life.

Twelve step recovery helped me achieve all the things I wanted out of life including a family, career, home, and the esteem of my peers. One would think that by having all of your exterior needs met, happiness and joy would follow close by. I can't say that good times and happiness weren't experienced during these years of my life. Something was missing. After almost twelve years of being on the wagon, I began using alcohol and drugs again. My life was soon turned upside down. Within a short amount of time, I was using drugs and drinking every day. How could I do this? How could someone who was an admitted drug addict and alcoholic fall back into this pattern of living? While I had attended and participated in 12 step recovery some during my sober time, I had never utilized the tools and put into practice everything the people in 12 step recovery suggested I do. By the grace of God, I found myself plucked out of the insanity and given another chance in 2013. The last seven years of my life have been far more difficult and far more rewarding than my first chapter of recovery. I've been given a way of life that works under any circumstance. Divorce, estrangement from children, legal consequences, and the condemnation from my community are situations that only a spiritual connection could see me through without drinking or taking drugs. Today I have a specific purpose in my life and all my needs are being met. I get to walk arm in arm with brothers and sisters who are just like me, and who practice the same solution that I do. I don't have to face anything alone. I don't worry what people think of me as much as I used to and the constant critics lurking in my head have quieted down. I am not imprisoned in my self imposed hell anymore. As long as there is a breathe to take, there is hope!"

"Growing up my life was pretty normal. My parents were both drinkers and they were what you would call "functioning alcoholics".

The household was a pretty good time tho.

When I was about 12 years old, I began to realize I was different. I noticed boys in my school more often then I noticed the girls. I soon came to realize that I was gay. At the time it wasn't popular or cool to be gay. I had to hide it at every turn in my life. And it ate away at me. The fear that someone would find out and also I just didn't want to be gay. I hated myself and who I was.

When I was 14 a coworker offered me some marijuana, and within a week I was doing shrooms.

I went from a straight A student to someone who could barely make it to school. The depression and suicide thoughts were starting to take control. And my only escape was smoking weed. I didn't drink very often tho in my teenage years as I didn't want to be like my parents.

When I graduated high school I started a serving/bartending job and the drinking began. It was everything I was missing in my life. It let me be the life of the party. The jokester, the jock, the straight guy. It let me be someone I wasn't. It let me wear the ultimate mask. And drinking was fun for those first couple years. Then the depression took over, I had a suicide attempt and spent some time in the hospital for that. In my twenties I got my dream job and became a general manager of a restaurant. I had faked my may to the top position. I had arrived. But shortly I had started to experiment with cocaine. And it was amazing. Suddenly I didn't black out when I was drinking and I could control my behaviour more. That led into longer binges and harder drugs. Crack and meth were now a regular part of my life. But I still kept succeeding in my work life. Until I wasn't. I lost my job because of my alcohol/drug use and I eventually got 2 DUIs in a matter of a year, and spent some time in jail as well for drug possession. I quit doing hard drugs for a couple of years but eventually went back to them. I still drank and smoked weed daily tho. The next 13 years were a consistent pattern of drinking and using and being a "functioning alcoholic" as I still was self supporting myself and always seemed to have a job, and made management at most of the places I worked. I was living a double life. By this time I had come out of the closet and faced that part of my life and I was happy with that but the self hate and defence mechanisms were still ingrained in who I was. I was afraid to be my authentic self. I desperately wanted to be sober but deathly afraid I was going to lose a huge part of myself at the same time. It's what I used to stop my brain from spiralling. In my early 30s things were at their worst. The party had officially ended. I moved home to try to get some control of my life but within a couple months tragedy struck and my dad passed away. I was now on a death spiral that lasted for a year and a half. I didn't want to live but I was too scared to do the ultimate thing and take my own life. I eventually made the call and got into detox and rehab. It was life changing. It had been years since I had more then 2 days in a row of sobriety and suddenly I didn't feel so alone. I was finding out who I was. With a lot of work and a ton of help from some of the most amazing people I got clean and sober. For the first time 4 months, the next time a year and a half. I had a horrible summer of drinking and using again but I'm now coming up to two months clean and sober. My life has gotten considerably better in the last couple years. I still struggle with happiness sometimes. But I am one of the fortunate ones to have found what life can be like clean and sober. It is because I was desperate enough to reach out, ask for help and do what was suggested of me to do. If anyone reading this is struggling there is a whole host of people that are more then happy to help. An individual once told me I'm not on the road TO happiness but I'm on the road OF happiness. There is no end goal just a daily journey of finding out who and what I am as a person. It's been a blessing. Thanks for taking the time to read this."

"I grew up in a great family environment. A loving, caring mom with patience of gold. A dad who loved me, played sports with me and taught me many things. They always made me feel safe. Growing up I was always the athletic type and always enjoyed playing sports and being around them. I can remember from a younger age starting to develop immense and irrational fears and used obsessive rituals to control them. Thoughts of loved ones dying, being kidnapped, losing my talents, giving people disease or bad luck, becoming paralyzed or sick would be solved with continuous habitual rituals such as checking the bathroom and my room in the exact same order, touching things exactly 5 times, not touching people or pointing at them, saying prayers the exact same way, checking the house top to bottom over and over again before leaving the house. This caused me tremendous stress, confusion and anger. I also was always so concerned with how people seen and portrayed me. I always felt like I was being judged and that I wasn't good enough or didn't truly belong. It got to the point that even playing sports was no longer fun for me I would be in the batters box worried what the people in the crowd thought of how I looked or the ball I just let go by or on a partial break in hockey suddenly struck with worry about how I looked in the crowd, I felt trapped and a prisoner to my own mind.

The voices in my head grew and became stronger and stronger. I found alcohol around the age of 14 and from the first time it had quite the effect on me. It allowed me to fit in and be a part of no matter where I went and most importantly it shut of these voices and feelings that had been tormenting me and allowed me to be part of. I never drank normally I started and couldn't usually stop until I blacked out and passed out. I found hard drugs at age 20 that helped me to avoid passing out and allowed me to keep drinking the way I would. It wasn't long before I realized I had a big problem on my hands and I realized that these things were no longer working for me. They used to help and now they were a temporary escape with grave side effects becoming less and less effective and causing more problems and amplifying the ones already there. I became depressed and suicidal. I tried to quit for years and could not regaurdless of how many times I said I was done and how genuinely I meant it, I kept going back. I tried many different options and resources to get sober. Living sober groups, counselors, doctors (one who I still use today who has been a great help), phycologists, multiple treatment centers and could not stay sober regardless of their best efforts.

I realize today that this is because I suffer from a disease called alcoholism and it wasn't until I went to an AA meeting on a Saturday morning that I heard the message of how I can recover from this disease. They spoke of the solution instead of complaining and whining about their problems and struggles. They used their past experiences and struggles selflessly to help me. I heard the message of how I can recover from this from someone with the same shared life experience as me and how they got through it and I became willing to do whatever it took to recover. I was given a new way of living and today I can thankfully say that I am happily sober and these feelings of past fears, anxieties, OCD rituals and depression have dramatically lessened if not completely disappeared and if they do crop up now and again I now have the tools to deal with them in a healthy way and keep them at bay. I am a sober and free person today and have a new way of living my life thanks to the actions I took and those who showed me the way and am grateful for that.

Reach out you are not alone, you matter and deserve to feel the genuine joy live has to offer. There is a way through your struggles allow yourself to experience them."

"Growing up and only child in a home with an alcoholic mother and alcoholic father was at times very lonely, very scary and a whole lot chaotic. I remember very well how sad and scared I was. sitting in my room, in the dark... late at nite on school nites.. wishing they would turn down the music, or ask their friends to leave .. quit letting people in. It was party mode in my home every night of the week. Blaring music and a lot of booze. At the age of eight is when the first time my parents had asked me to join in .. in a way. Asked me to smoke a cigarette with them ,sitting on the couch. I lit the smoke and immediately started to cough. That was when I was first taught to inhale. Then came my very own glass of wine. And that was the beginning of a whole new world. From then on it was just the norm for me to smoke with them, drink with them and be part of the parties. As I got older, my friends would come over and be given alcohol and smokes .. my house was the party house. It was fun. Everyone was jealous of my life. I had no rules. None. By the time I was 14 I had used probably every drug you can think of. And I was hooked. I loved them all. One thing I always knew was that a drank and used differently then my friends. I would black out, make terrible choices , get arrested, got into many fights. Every single time I picked up that first drink... hell broke loose. I was just like them. I was just like my parents. Never had I seen them sober past 4 pm. Never. My mother would perform sexual acts with men openly in the home .. while my father was passed out from a booze coma. Men would be everywhere in my house. I spent most of my time with friends. Friends were my family. I couldn't get over how calm and at peace their homes were. But I was the girl, that no ones parents really liked their child to be with. I tried to spend most of my time away from my house. Away from my parents. The chaos was incredibly traumatic. One night at the age of 16 ,and another night of more heavy drinking my father and mother got into a pretty awful fight. My dad had found out my mom was sleeping with a 22 year old. He was wasted.. angry and already mentally sick. He grabbed a shot gun and in a split second pulled the trigger. And took his life. My life was never the same after that day. I left home. Fast forward more traumatic years of hard dark addiction. Got pregnant at 17 and ended up In a very abusive marriage. I was isolated, physically, sexually and emotionally abused. I was now living in a whole new nightmare. And. I was alone. I was caring for two small children. I drank and drank every day. To numb the pain. At that point I felt entitled to drink or use. I earned it. My life had been shit from birth. And that's all I thought I deserved. I had multiple suicide attempts. Some very serious ones. Some Overdoses, psych wards and rehabs. I just felt defeated. Drinking and drugging was my solution. My mother to this day, 37 years later is deeper and deeper into her disease of alcoholism and I'm everyday, every minute .. fighting to battle this demon that destroys and takes everything from you. There was no platform back then as a scared 14 year old girl. Or even 25 year old girl. Back then, I had no idea where to start, to even ask for help. I prayed everyday social services would come for me. Now there is. Don't feel alone. Not for one minute. Because someone, somewhere out there understands your pain. Today. I don't want to Kill myself. Today I don't want to drink. I am able to find peace and safety. I choose to be sober today so my family doesn't have to suffer that pain. I love them more then anything in this world. And sobriety allows me to keep them. My daughters and sons will never have to couch surf, or cry themselves to sleep, or be afraid to be at home. Share your story. You can save a life. Reach out. You can save your life."

"I started drinking at the age of 12. I think I needed one at the age of 6. That is about how far back I can remember where I didn't feel like how other people looked. I felt I didn't fit in. I felt alone in a group of people. I was riddled in fear. I had this constant feeling of impending doom. I was always scared of getting beat up, dying from a fatal illness or harm coming towards someone I love. It just always felt like something was about to go wrong.

These feelings had little to do with the environment I grew up in. My parents were loving, I was involved in sports, and excelled in school. While my life as a child wasn't perfect, I was blessed to have such amazing parents who truly did their best with the tools that they had.

When I discovered alcohol, it took all of the fear away. At last I felt comfortable in my skin. I could talk to girls. I wasn't afraid to fight. I felt at union with others. Alcohol was my solution to being maladjusted to life.

I can safely say I was better with alcohol. For many years it was my best friend......until it quit working and things began to go dark. Alcohol no longer had the same positive effect on me as it used to. I soon found that cocaine was able to help me continue to drink without getting messy. It was basically a vitamin to allow me to keep drinking and bought me a couple of extra years of relief. Soon after, things got even darker.. While my intentions were always to have one or two drinks to take the edge off, more often than not, the night would end with me alone, drunk and high in a complete state of paranoia staring out my window for hours on end with a baseball bat in my hands. While I didn't contemplate suicide during this dark period of my life, I did have constant and intense feelings of impending doom. These are feelings I had when sober and inevitably always drove me back to the alcohol and drugs.

To others, my life looked perfect. Even with all the alcohol abuse, I was still able to maintain a high level of perceived success. I had a good job, great family, lots of material possessions and many of the external benchmarks that society would deem as a success. But I was dying on the inside.....What I have come to learn with a level of certainness, is that your can't alleviate an inside malady with outside stuff. All the outside success in the world can't fill the whole in the soul that is alcoholism (addiction).

I know that men are often encouraged to reach out when struggling. I am the guy that did reach out. I started looking for mental help in my late 20's. Over the next 15 years I had been to counsellors, therapists, treatment centres, doctors, and private coaches. I have been diagnosed with ADHD, bipolar, manic, PTSD and depression. At one point in time, I was taking as many as 20 prescription pills a day. My mental state was really starting to deteriorate. I felt I had become a fraction of the man I was meant to be and the doctors told me I was going to need to take meds the rest of my life to maintain any kind of mental health. In addition to all the pills, I still couldn't stop drinking.

Now I do want to really clarify, that anyone that tried to help me truly had my best interests in mind. I also don't want to minimize any of these other mental conditions in any way. They are very real, cause immense suffering, and require medical help. It just wasn't what I was suffering from. The professionals didn't know what to do with me and unfortunately most didn't have the humility to say so, At the end of the day, I was an alcoholic. I can still remember sitting across from a recovered alcoholic and having him go through a certain chapter in their textbook for 12 step recovery. He was explaining how I was physically and mentally different than my fellows and it had nothing to do with choice. It felt like the gates of insanity were finally starting to lift. It was like holy shit.......that's me! For the first time in my life I finally knew what I was! Not only did this person explain what I was suffering from, but they also assured me there was a solution. I finally had some hope!"

"I can still remember that day, the smells, the way the room felt, the warmth of that summer day at the beginning of August, 3 weeks before my 12th birthday. The day that I say signified the biggest shift in our lives. We said goodbye to our favorite Aunt after a short but devastating battle with cancer. It's like we were in denial that it was going to end, maybe we thought once summer was over she would just be better and life would continue as it always did. My second oldest brother had a relationship with our aunt that was incredible, he spent most of his summers with her on their ranch, countless hours on the phone with her, she was his role model and true best friend. Six months later we felt the second impact of our loss, that same brother attempted to take his life on the Family Day Long Weekend. Thump......... How? Why? Did we say something wrong? Could he just not bare life without Auntie?

When something like this happens in a small-town, word travels fast. By the time the school break was over and my brother was still in the hospital, we were receiving sympathy cards in the mail, apologizing for our loss, when returning to school kids were hugging me apologizing that I lost my brother. As far I knew, the last time I checked in with my parents he was still alive. It was a tremendously long 10-14 days while he was in the hospital. Thank god for a miraculous neuro team at Foothills and the family that surrounded us. It is true what they say "it takes a village to raise a child" It does also take a village to help in a time of stress and tragedy.

As my brother came home and we worked on our new normal, things slowly went side-ways for him. Our family did seek him counselling and other avenues, although he always seemed to know the right thing to say to them to get himself out of it. He never did welcome this help and thought he was OK. As he got older and worked in the oil patch, met different people and was introduced to new things... These new things weren't great things, they led him down a path of addictions of drug and alcohol abuse, they began to affect his state of mind, his judgement and his ambitions. He would start with a new life but would alter his ambitions, become angry and lead himself astray. All sorts of things set him off, whether it was the loss of a girlfriend, an animal, a piece of equipment not working properly or an unanswered phone call. These challenges did eventually led him to complete suicide, the Sunday following an amazing visit with us at home. The news was shocking, we thought everything was starting to get better for him. Maybe that was the plan all along, to make the amends he needed to, as a place of peace in his heart.

As a family of 4 kids the loss was significant, you go from feeling like you have so many brothers to rely on, to only having 2... this may not seem like a big deal but it was felt so deeply. The pain that I saw in my parents was like walking around with an open wound, that pain was indescribable, at times almost unbearable. That pain I think for me, may have been the most impactful aspect of losing him. I coped through seeing my parents slowly moving back into regular life, checking the mail, socializing... seeing them smile again. I would not wish that pain on any parent, sibling or extended family member.

My second coping strategy was to surround myself with my amazing networks of friends but that network began to get smaller as I experienced new things myself and wanted to explore new avenues. Finally, I felt that maybe leaving was my best option, following my dreams, traveling the world. I was holding onto the hope that my brother might guide me and lead me into the right direction. After making several mistakes and leading myself astray, I lost that hope and released him from being my "guidance." It was only then that I felt like I was healing from that loss and somewhat of the burden that was holding me back. The release was so freeing, I was finally able to be independent and make decisions without wondering if this was for me or in hopes that I was doing this to keep his spirit alive, doing things he never got to do.

As a suicide survivor, the grief may always stay with you, but it does not have to own you. You may always have the what ifs and wishing they got to be there with you and continue to experience what life could have brought to them. We will never know what their exact final moments were like. But someone out there knows how people get to the point in their lives where they feel like this is the only option. "

If this person's story resonates with you, please message us and we can put you in contact with this individual. You are not alone.