Faith in recovery
Why punishment won’t break an addiction
By: Solaya Huang
Greg Tymiak is passionate about bringing reform into prison systems after spending over a decade in jail himself. Photo courtesy of Greg Tymiak
As a kid, Greg Tymiak thought he’d never touch any sort of substance, but after experiencing the excitement and high that comes with drug use, quickly found himself addicted and on the fast track to prison.
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“I think it was more of a social thing with everyone else smoking weed and wanting to try it,” says Tymiak. “Once you try it for the first time, the high itself is just really exciting, and I guess with any drug [it] made you feel better at first.”
By junior high, Tymiak was using marijuana and alcohol, then cocaine, then MDMA, more commonly known as Ecstacy.
“I couldn't believe how good Ecstasy made you feel,” says Tymiak. “I got involved with a lot of raves and selling drugs throughout the bars.”
Repeat offender
Since he was 13, Tymiak had also been in and out of the prison system, starting as a juvenile offender at the Calgary Young Offender Centre for violence, and eventually working his way into the federal system where he served for 13 years.
“I had an anger problem and then mixed with the antisocial patterns of the people associated with the crime, it all just went hand in hand,” says Tymiak.
In prison, he discovered fentanyl and methamphetamines, the latter which would lead him into a new state of euphoria more powerful than Ecstacy.
Finding euphoria
“The first time I tried meth, I was hooked,” says Tymiak. “Meth releases a mother load of endorphins - so you're going to get that euphoric state. And there's nothing that feels as good as that.”
“[Even] having sexual relations on it, the orgasms are 13 times greater. So between the sex and the drugs, it became an addiction.”
Tymiak was on drugs for the entire time he was in prison. That became one of the most difficult parts of his addiction.
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“The struggle [is] dealing with yourself and being stuck there and not having any control over it, and it was just the easiest way to pass time,” says Tymiak. “That's the method that most people go to is just use drugs to numb the pain.”
In recovery, one of the objectives that is taught is to “live in the now.”
“Anything that takes you away from the now, whether it's fear of the future [or] resentment of the past, is taking away from the now, which is all we have,” says Tymiak.
“The thing is when you're an addict and you're in pain or in jail, the thing that you're trying to do is to relieve yourself from the now. So it's like the polar opposite of what we're trying to achieve [in recovery].”
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Finding treatment
For Tymiak, the only program that has ever worked is the one at Fresh Start Recovery Centre with their Alcoholics Anonymous program. But as good as the program is, he had to put in the work.
“I was clean for 10 months and I had another lapse because I didn't do everything that they were asking me,” says Tymiak. “They set up the 12-steps and the last steps are get a sponsor, get a home group, chair meetings and help other addicts.”
Tymiak however felt he could pick and choose what steps he wanted to follow.
“I didn't think I needed this, [but] those are the key factors that are going to keep you sober long-term,” he says. “You have to participate, you have to be selfless and give back to other addicts.”
Faith
Tymiak is also very adamant about having faith-based systems in recovery.
“Out in B.C. when I was serving time I did seven years with the West Coast Salish people and the elders out there,” says Tymiak. “I did all their programming and that was the most successful time I actually had in prison was when I was working with these elders and practicing spirituality.”
“One of the key points of alcoholics anonymous is that you need to find a power greater than yourself, and without that power, you cannot recover,” says Tymiak.
The “Big Book”
For loved ones and families of addicts, it can be hard to support them without enabling their addiction, however Tymiak says that most people can be ignorant when it comes to addiction.
“People will [say], ‘Why can't you just have a few, why can't you do this?,” says Tymiak. “What the 'Big Book' teaches us is that for these addicts, the first thing is try to understand them and have compassion for them because it's a disease that they have no control over.”
The “Big Book” he’s referring to is “Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How More Than One Hundred Men Have Recovered from Alcoholism,” written by William G. Wilson.
Known as the “The Big Book '' due to the thickness of the original 1939 text, Tymiak says its “like these guys back then wrote this book and it was like God knew that we were going to need this for addictions in the future.”
“It's an amazing program that I think is from God to help us with addictions in today's modern day.”
Tymiak (third from left) at his graduation ceremony from Fresh Start Recovery Centre. Photo courtesy of Greg Tymiak
