Thank you to The Mental Health Foundation of Nova Scotia for the incredible work they do in communities across the province. Today I had the honour of providing the keynote address for their Let’s Keep Talking Awards, and was gifted at the end with the Outstanding Activist Award for 2021. I wanted to share the remarks I provided today, in the hopes that it may help others and possibly give some food for thought to those in positions of power.
Let’s Keep Talking AwardsOctober 8th
In my early 20s, I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
This news was scary to receive, but finally I had answers.
I best describe living with anxiety and OCD as constantly being situated at the peak of a roller coaster, that plateau before you jolt downwards and gravity sends you flying at warp speed towards the ground.
That’s my normal, believe it or not, stuck in my compartment of the roller coaster, constantly on the edge of plummeting downwards with no ability to stop.
My mom loved to tell the story of when we went to Disney World and lined up to ride on Thunder Mountain. My Dad assured me it was a “just a little train ride”.
My dad lied.
Mom recounts how I was in unbridled panic, screaming to get off, trying to Houdini out of the metal bar constraints keeping me falling to a sudden and certain death.
In some ways, I’ve never gotten off that ride. I’ve just had to learn how to live in perpetual fight or flight.
Today, I manage it in part through various coping tools, including running.
But for a long time, I managed it by drinking – alcohol provided the ultimate momentary escape.
The incredible writer Ann Dowsett Johnston wrote about this phenomenon in her book Drink, which covers her own recovery and examines the “intimate relationship between women and alcohol”.
Dowsett Johnston states perfectly that, “Liquor soothes. It calms anxiety. It numbs depression. Ask any serious drinker: if you want to find your off button, alcohol can seem like an excellent choice.”
So, I took alcohol on my perpetual roller coaster ride, and in doing so the fear did indeed temporarily subside.
I found my off button.
In the long term though, it never stopped me from spiralling downwards into unmanageable anxiety, booze just delayed the drop and made it even messier.
In other words, alcohol really works. Until it doesn’t.
I should introduce myself. Hi, I’m Ally, and I’m an alcoholic.
A note on language, that’s not how everyone who has experienced, or is experiencing, substance use disorder likes to refer to themselves, but it works for me. It keeps me honest.
And if we’re keeping it real, I probably don’t fit your imagined image of an addict; and I think it’s important to address that.
To prepare for this talk, I reached out to Lisa Mullin, the Executive Director at the Marguerite Centre. She kindly gave me some of her time to provide a lay of the land in terms of what addiction and recovery looks like right now in Nova Scotia, and the social inequities at play.
And there are a lot of them.
For example, there are 50 inpatient detox beds for men in the province, compared to the 12 beds available for women.
Lisa told me that she often opens up her public talks with questions she puts to the audience – and I’ll shamelessly steal her exercise and pose the same questions to you.
So, close your eyes, and ask yourself…
“What does an addict look like to you? …
What are they wearing? …
Where are they when you picture them?” …
Usually, the answers check off all the stereotypes that we see on TV.
And those stereotypes, the ideas we have of what constitutes a “drunk”, they keep a heck of a lot of people very, very sick.
In reality, Nova Scotians suffering from addiction are widely diverse.
And the sad fact is that some of us have a better shot at survival than others.
There is a saying I saw on Instagram that I relate to so much.
It goes… I didn’t make good choices, I had good choices to make.
Yes, I had a substance use problem, but I also had access to a clearer path to sobriety.
I’m white. Middle class. Educated. Housed.
This is important when I stand here before you and share my story of recovery.
I didn’t make good choices. I had good choices to make.
Our job status, our working conditions, whether we are housed, the neighbourhoods we live in and the experiences we had beginning at childhood – these all directly impact the likelihood of whether we are able to achieve and maintain good health, both physical and mental health.
These factors also influence whether we have access to a redemption arc.
And frankly, that’s an uncomfortable truth to reckon with – acknowledging that my race, socio-economic status, my public relations degree – these things all help to make my addiction story easier to swallow.
The thing is, acknowledging that recovery has been easier for me doesn’t negate how hard it has been to get better.
Both things are true.
My story is deeply painful, and living with a mental illness is an exhausting and daily struggle.
To start, I have never had a normal relationship with alcohol. From the first time I tried drinking in high school, with a group of friends on a set of train tracks in south end Halifax, I saw booze for what it was – a boost of adrenaline, an instant shot of confidence that annihilated any sense of inhibition.
I loved it. It made me love myself.
And while my relationship changed with alcohol over the years, the relationship remained consistently toxic and absolutely intertwined with my mental illness.
Shortly after I was diagnosed with my anxiety disorders while interning at a PR Firm in Toronto in my early twenties, I found myself back home in Halifax living downtown on Argyle St.
It was the perfect studio apartment, very Parker Posey – high fives for the Gen Xers who appreciate the reference.
I had a good job in communications at the time, and I had been prescribed medication to help manage my anxiety and OCD.
And as it sometimes happens with anti-anxiety drugs, the particular prescription had an adverse effect. I became very depressed and experienced suicidal ideation.
Not knowing what was “normal” to feel on medication, I turned to alcohol to try to balance things out and would continue down this path of self-medicating on and off for the next two decades.
Most of the people who knew me back in my early to mid-twenties might remember a woman who performed relatively well at her job and networked with the right people.
Those closer to me recognized there were signs of trouble.
Fewer still knew the real story; a tale with so many disturbing chapters.
I was spending all my spare money on alcohol, resorting to check kiting – which, for those who are blissfully unaware (and good for you), check kiting is check fraud where you take advantage of non-existent funds in your bank account by writing yourself a cheque, and then depositing it, into an empty bank account.
I lived with no power for longer than I care to admit running an extension cord out into the hall and connecting it to my laptop so I could entertain myself with DVDs as I drank alone in the evenings.
It got worse.
There was self-harm – and moments where the self-harm got really dicey. Moments where I hailed down a police car to rush me to the ER.
There were many intoxicated visits to the ER.
There were sick days, and missed flights to client meetings in neighbouring provinces because I was too hungover and depressed to physically get out of bed.
There was so much sadness. So much loneliness.
So much torture going on within my head.
My journey with alcoholism has had its peaks and valleys. When my mental illness was in check, so was my drinking. When my mental illness was unmanageable, my drinking was too.
In my late 20s, I fell in love. I found someone I could trust; someone I could count on. And for many years, that allowed me the reprieve to get on the right medication, address my mental health, and for the most part drink like a “normal person”.
In my early marriage, when starting a family and raising our young kids, I had things under control.
Until I didn’t.
Life threw some curve balls, and I had not built up the coping tools to hit back.
Many of you here today can probably relate.
And for the women here especially, who have balanced work and family, you can appreciate moms are always the last one to get sick.
When everyone comes down with a cold, including us, we soldier on. There is no time off from work, no time off from parenting. No time off from the stress and the dark thoughts that plague so many of us.
Referring again to Dowsett Johnston, she likens alcohol to the modern woman’s steroid.
We have grown up in the “’women can have it all’ era” – and having it all comes with the incredible benefits of carrying the weight of a full-time job, the responsibilities of motherhood, maintaining friendships, keeping fit and chasing the illusion that we aren’t aging, so that we can remain relevant and necessary to others.
But having it all means that you have to make sacrifices, and usually that comes at the expense of you – so there’s no time for therapy, taking a walk is impossible when you need to make dinner for the kids, and the idea of taking a day off work is laughable…so you push through the day, walk through the door and pour a drink to take the edge off, and then perhaps you pour a couple more, chasing that beautiful numbness, and before you know it, you start to count on it – rely on it, and one day you realize that you can’t go without it.
This is what happened in my late thirties, my drinking escalated – although at this point, my drinking was different. I wasn’t drinking alone in a dark apartment, I was filling glasses of wine with friends at playdates, sharing memes about “You’re the Reason Mommy Drinks” on Facebook, taking what I thought at the time were sophisticated shots of my boxed sauvignon blanc poured into a dollar store goblet to post on Instagram with cringe-worthy captions like, “Kids in bed, here’s to mommy juice!”
I was able to hide my addiction, because I didn’t have to hide it – as long as I joked about it. It was fine.
It was not fine.
Alcohol dependence is a progressive disease, and I know this to be true.
I’ve talked a lot in the past about how my mother’s terminal illness led me to finally lose all semblance of control over my drinking, but I’m also realizing that it took staring down the end of my mother’s life to save my own.
My anxiety and OCD were controlling every waking minute of my life, and I couldn’t drink enough alcohol to quiet the thoughts.
I didn’t learn about “coping tools” as a kid. I mean, sure, in the generic “use your words, not your hands” to deal with feelings of anger or frustration. But there was no handbook for the roller coaster ride, for the obsessive thoughts that would torture me as a kid and make me feel as though I was a horrible, faulty human.
My mom, in many ways was my coping tool. She was the priest in my confessional booth. Those OCD thoughts that told me I had to come clean on an action or “something bad” would happen, well, I dealt with those by reporting in to her. She, nor I, knew the severity of what I was dealing with at the time. To my mom, I was just intensely honest, and albeit a bit strange.
What do you do when the one person who truly knows and accepts you for who you are is on their way out?
Well, if you’re me, you drink lots more. You pretend it’s not happening. You spiral out of control, knowing a small part of you wonders whether it is best to go with her.
There was no more pretending, there was no more hiding, the gig was up – and thankfully, I was able to muster what was remaining of my humility to reach out and ask for help.
I messaged a friend who was in recovery, I told her I had a problem.
For me, once I hit send on that message, I knew there was no turning back. I could no longer ignore how sick I was, how close I was to losing it all.
This ask for help was my first step towards recovery.
This past October 1st marked three years of freedom from addiction.
As it increases moisture levels levitra cost low of skin it helps in dry skin condition. brand levitra 20mg First trimester exposure can increase risk of congenital defects. Studies levitra sales further indicated that 80% of all men suffer from BPH symptoms. Sullivan sildenafil super and his wife Jean are the parents of teenagers worried about their safety and security.I can’t tell you how grateful I am that I got sober before the arrival of COVID-19. Before the lockdowns, before online school. Before our world became much smaller.
I know that I would have depended on alcohol to get by.
And based on recent data, I am not alone.
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic over the past 18 months has led to an increase in alcohol consumption and substance use amongst Canadians, according to the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction.
Statistics Canada reported that heavy drinking has seen an overall increase – with stress, and boredom, being cited as two major triggers.
These statistics don’t paint the whole picture, however, as it is challenging to gauge data on dependence – not everyone seeks treatment if they have a substance use problem, nor does everyone acknowledge their use as problematic despite meeting the criteria.
What we can definitively know is that the increased rate of alcohol consumption has a significant impact not only on our individual physical and mental health and wellness, but on our overarching health care system and delivery of social services.
Here’s why that matters.
The economic burden of substance use in Canada is $38.4 billion – $14.6 billion from alcohol and tobacco products. These are numbers from 2014 Stats Can reporting, so we can wager that this amount has increased.
In Ontario, the disease burden of mental health and addiction is 1.5 times higher than all cancers put together and seven times higher than that of all infectious diseases. I suspect the numbers in Nova Scotia are fairly aligned when adjusted for population.
I’m not sharing this to impress you with stats, but rather to set the tone and lay down the context – especially in a province that recently voted in a majority government who ran on an aggressive health care platform – promising to overhaul the delivery of our health care services, including mental health supports and resources.
Let me be crystal clear – we cannot talk about mental health without talking about addiction.
So, let’s talk about it.
And it goes both ways, the chicken and the egg, mental illness and substance use disorder –as people with substance use problems are up to three times more likely to have a mental illness.
In 2018, the Report on the State of Public Health delivered each year by Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer emphasized that problematic alcohol use accounted for the greatest health and social costs based on cumulative harms of hospitalizations, death and lost productivity – more people are hospitalized from alcohol use than from heart attacks.
Women are in particular danger. The same report cited alcohol use amongst women as one of the most pressing concerns of our time. From 2011 to 2017, deaths attributed to alcohol increased by 26 per cent among Canadian women in comparison with 6.5 per cent for men.
I’ve noticed a concerning trend when statistics around alcohol consumption amongst women are shared. There is an outcry from a vocal few – whether it be in the comments on an article or responses on social media – that decry women are being unfairly targeted for their drinking habits.
Yes, it is unfair.
It is unfair that drinking 3-6 alcoholic drinks a week increases the risk of breast cancer in women by 15 per cent. Women who drink two glasses of wine daily have a 50 per cent increase in their risk of cancer.
It’s unfair, but it’s the truth. And I, as an educated woman with a grandmother and mother both having had breast cancer, did not know that; and I bet a lot of you were similarly unaware.
When I speak out about my experience, the culture that has been created where we embrace wine as a cure-all for today’s stressors, I’m not advocating to take away a woman’s right to drink. It’s quite the opposite, I’m championing for a women’s right to make an informed choice.
I’m advocating to keep women safe.
This includes being kept safe from alcohol-related sexual violence.
Data from the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse reports that drinking by both women and men can affect judgment and the ability to evaluate risk, and therefore increases women’s susceptibility to aggression, date rape, violence and sexual assault.
I sadly don’t need the data to know this is true, because I am one of the alcohol-related sexual assault statistics.
No, women never deserve it. But yes, alcohol makes us more vulnerable – and reducing alcohol use needs to be included as part of a multifaceted approach to reducing sexual assault.
The perpetrators of sexual assault are always responsible, but knowing the risks and the statistics can empower women to better protect themselves.
That is important to me. And it should be important to you.
Women are being directly targeted through savvy alcohol marketing. Society recognizes there are unique stressors applicable only to women – we carry a lot of the emotional labour, oversee majority of child care, manage the health care of our families, all while many of us try to achieve that ultimate “have it all” trophy by working full-time outside the home.
It’s not sustainable. People know it’s not sustainable.
Instead of offering help by modifying work hours, or say, implementing progressive child care policies, we’re told to take the edge off with a glass of wine.
Take a recent Tropicana Juice advertising campaign. The company invested heavily in celebrity endorsed marketing materials that promoted the idea of women keeping a secret mimosa fridge in their homes. Complemented with a cute #TakeaMimosa hashtag, the campaign encouraged women to hide from their families and drink alone in closets and bathrooms.
A video ran on social media where celebs like Molly Sims enthused about the need to take a break while they poured a drink from their secret mini-fridges disguised as laundry hampers and toolboxes.
Yes, I’m serious.
In the video, Molly faced the camera and raised her drink saying, “It’s amazing. It’s so I can be a better mom. The best mom.”
Suffice to say, it wasn’t the greatest look for Tropicana during a global pandemic where mental health challenges were dramatically on the rise.
They pulled the campaign, and apologized.
But look, it’s not just companies selling us family friendly breakfast beverages…
This obsession with alcohol as self-care is pervasive across all aspects of our lives, and offered up as a solution even during our darkest times.
When my oldest chid was three, we were excited to learn that we were expecting a sibling for him. Unfortunately, I, like many other women, lost that pregnancy through miscarriage. I remember vividly laying there on the hospital bed, being told by the emergency room doctor that there was no longer a heartbeat to be found.
He was sorry. I should take care of myself.
“Go home, he said, “pour yourself a big glass of wine”.
Not talk to someone. Not rest. Not cry. I should pour myself a big glass of wine.
My recovery (and everyone’s recovery journey is different) depends on working with and supporting others living with substance use problems. It is in this work that I experience both gratitude, and a striking reminder of just how lucky I am to have had the safety net I did when I was ready to get help.
Asking for help is incredibly hard, but even when you’re ready to make that ask – following through can be an impossible task, again, particularly for women.
This includes acknowledging addiction. Because acknowledging it can mean needing inpatient treatment – inpatient treatment that can cost $10,000 to $17,000 without a medical plan.
But even if you have the money – who will look after your kids? Will you lose your job? If you lose your job – how will you keep a roof over your head?
These aren’t anecdotal questions – I hear them frequently from women in the recovery community that I am lucky enough to know, love and call friends.
By the time these women finally get help, it’s usually because they’ve been mandated to get help. Their kids have been removed from their home. They’ve lost their jobs. They are sometimes precariously housed and in precarious relationships.
This brings me back to Nova Scotia’s current focus on overhauling our health care system, and providing better supports for mental health.
If we have learned anything throughout this pandemic, and I have to believe we have, it’s that the health and wellness of Nova Scotians requires a collective and unified response from all of society and all of our systems.
The same approach will be required to better support Nova Scotians living with mental illness and addiction.
Todd Leader, psychologist and social worker described this need much more articulately in his brilliant book, It’s Not About Us: The Secret to Transforming the Mental Health and Addictions System in Canada.
Leader says, “when we talk about the health of a population, and the work of government and its public organizations to ensure the well-being of that population, we must step out of our individual focus. We must recognize that in this case, the population is the client and improving and maintaining the mental health of that population is the job.”
I love the saying, and probably use it far too often, that leadership is courage under fire. That means doing the right thing, despite the backlash, despite the political ramifications.
So, I ask our leaders – at all levels of government – are we protecting our people? Or are we protecting big industry?
Do we do the right thing for Nova Scotians? Or do we continue to cower at the feet of Big Alcohol.
One way to walk the talk is to make our intent clear through the development and more importantly, the execution, of a provincial addictions’ strategy, which would include dedicating portions of our alcohol revenue towards treatment, prevention and research.
A strategy could examine innovative and out-of-the-box thinking such as expanding even further on the current government’s proposed Chronic Illness Treatment and Prevention Program – which focuses funding on an in-home treatment model for patients with chronic illnesses, based on the INSPIRED model for Nova Scotian COPD patients.
What if we took this concept and tailored it for Nova Scotians living with addiction?
Many of the struggles identified by COPD patients of the INSPIRED program are consistent with those shared by Nova Scotians living with addiction – no matter the recovery supports they access, they often wrestle with social isolation, relationship tension, fatigue, resentment, restricted personal freedom, anger, helplessness, guilt, depression, difficulty sleeping, loss of self-identity, and panic.
The premise of the INSPIRED model could potentially address a number of the challenges raised by self-advocates who are caught in the Groundhog Day cycle of active-addiction and recovery; offering a hospital-to-home model of care that provides specialized support for patients and their families to enhance their confidence to manage their illness.
These ideas are worth looking into.
A provincial addictions strategy could do so many things, but most importantly, a strategy must be directly informed and developed through direct consultation with Nova Scotians who know addiction first-hand.
Nova Scotians who know the stigma that comes with a substance use disorder.
One week ago, I celebrated three years of sobriety.
It’s remarkable how much my life has changed since October 1, 2018 when I realized that I was fighting harder to be able to find a way to keep alcohol in my life than I was to free myself from its clutches.
A beautiful thing happened when I let go; I landed.
When mom was very sick, and I was very newly sober, I took up running. I was encouraged by a friend to sign up for a half marathon even though I’d only ever run 5k. So, I bought a book and followed a plan the best way I knew how.
Pretty soon, I started to figure that I may be able to actually knock this thing out.
A week and a half after mom passed, I ran my first half marathon on the streets of Halifax, running past the Hospice where she and I had our final chats.
I have no doubt she was along for the ride, but it was me in the driver’s seat for once.
I could do hard things, on my own, it hurt but I trained to deal with that pain.
I had…coping tools.
There’s a mantra I repeat to myself during a race when the kms add up and you hit what is known by runners as the pain cave: “The only way out is through”.
For the first time in my life, I trust myself, I have confidence in myself. I’m not hiding from my mental illness, I’m sitting with it, and in some cases, running straight through it.
And that’s what running does for me, it’s as much about building my mental fortitude as it is about testing the limits of physical endurance.
So, while I didn’t aspire to become an advocate around mental health and addiction, I know my voice can make a change.
Some of you may be familiar with the work of Brene Brown who speaks so eloquently and powerfully on shame and vulnerability. Brene says, “When we find the courage to share our experiences and the compassion to hear others tell their stories, we force shame out of hiding, and end the silence.”
I said earlier that I didn’t make good choices, I had good choices.
I had the social support, job security and child care assistance to see those choices through to fruition.
And that should be the reality for everyone.
No one’s redemption arc should be harder fought.
So, let’s indeed keep talking as we are doing today, but even more so, let’s make sure people aren’t fighting alone.
And if it’s you who feels you are fighting alone, I promise you there are people who want to help. I promise you that you are worthy and deserving of happiness.
For the rest of us, let’s get to work.