Addicted at first sip
Learning to beat the disease that has plagued a family for generations
By: Laren Pritchard
Boyce and her dog. Photo courtesy of Julie Boyce
Julie Boyce grew up in a family where drinking and substance abuse was commonplace, starting with her grandparents and then on to her father. When Boyce also picked up the bottle, it felt normal. Or, at the very least, familiar.
In this household, like many before it, substance abuse was used to cope with emotion and so emotions were drowned in a bottle. And so the pattern continued on from there.
That is until Julie Boyce got sober.
The beginning
“As a kid, I just learned to cope through using substances. I was in elementary school and I remember stealing alcohol, and I got drunk on the school bus. It’s a very vivid memory, because I didn’t know if other kids were doing it, and I did it alone. I think I did it because I had a decent amount of unrest inside of me,” says Boyce
Beginning at a very young age Boyce began using alcohol and later marijuana to get through the days.
“The moment I started drinking and using drugs, I feel like I did it addictively. It just consumed me, it was all I thought about.”
Not long after Boyce had moved to B.C. to live with her father, her addiction became too strong and she dropped out of high school. With every day the addiction became worse, as did the consequences.
“From a really young age I was just really lost and I was really hurting about a lot of things that were going on in my family and my life, and I had never learned how to cope with my emotions,” says Boyce.
With a father who was mired in his own addiction, teenage Boyce didn’t have anyone to notice what was going on with her, and with no connection to parents to care for her she turned to the only thing she knew could numb the pain: alcohol and marijuana.
The downfall
Choosing to move back to Alberta and try to make it on her own, Boyce felt at the time that drugs and alcohol were the only way to numb the pain of parents who weren’t there and had established a foundation that made her believe she was alone. This path led her to discovering harder drugs and getting into the wrong crowds.
“I feel like I’m very lucky to have not been in some pretty serious situations. I was in some pretty bad situations with bad people. People who are in jail right now for murder, rape, for having weapons. Things that I can’t even believe I associated with these people. But that’s really what happens when you start doing drugs, and when drugs start to take over it welcomes that environment,” says Boyce.
Boyce says the alcohol and marijuana stopped numbing the pain, and eventually the people around her started introducing her to bigger and harder drugs.
She was introduced to cocaine, and then GHB, and things continued until she tried fentanyl for the first time.
“Fentanyl is so addicting so quickly. The thing is my body would detox, and the detoxing of it is horrible, it feels like I was dying. So I progressed into that cycle of, I would wake up and feel horrible, I was insane really, like what can I do today to get drugs. And a lot of times as a woman it’s who can I manipulate through my body to have some sort of power so I can get drugs,” says Boyce
At the age of 20, the situation had progressed to Boyce losing her licence for drinking and driving, and lying to herself and those around her that she was no longer making these poor decisions.
“I continued doing really risky things. I ended up in jail a few times, and mostly associated with people who weren’t safe or good. Thankfully I made it out alive,” she says.
As things became more serious, and each decision led to a stronger need for drugs and more dangerous consequences, Boyce began to search for a way to get out.
“I think there was a voice inside of me saying I don’t really want to do this anymore, I don’t know why I am doing this.”
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Anatomy of Addiction
Addiction affects every part of a person's anatomy
Age
70% of mental health problems have their onset during childhood or adolescence.
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Young people aged 15 to 24 are more likely to experience mental illness and/or substance use disorders than any other age group.
These are some of the signs of mental relapse:
1) Craving for drugs or alcohol;
2) Thinking about people, places, and things associated with past use
3) Minimizing consequences of past use or glamorizing past use
4) Bargaining
5) Lying
6) Thinking of schemes to better control using;
7) Looking for relapse opportunities
8) Planning a relapse
Mental Relapse
Who Deals With Addiction
In Canada, approximately 6 million people (or about 21% of the total population), will experience addiction at some point in their lives.
Emotional Relapse
Signs of an emotional relapse can include:
1) Bottling up emotions
2) Isolating
3) Not going to meetings
4) Going to meetings but not sharing
5) Focusing on others
6) Poor eating and sleeping habits
Gender
Men have higher rates of addiction than women, while women have higher rates of mood and anxiety disorders.
Addiction and Mental Illness
People with a mental illness are twice as likely to have a substance use problem compared to the general population. At least 20% of people with a mental illness have a co-occurring substance use problem. For people with schizophrenia, the number may be as high as 50%
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Similarly, people with substance use problems are up to 3 times more likely to have a mental illness. More than 15% of people with a substance use problem have a co-occurring mental illness.
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This is when the person starts to actually use again. Some define physical relapse into two categories:
Lapse: The initial drink or drug use
Relapse: A return to uncontrolled using
Physical
Relapse
The road to recovery
Although she may not remember how she got connected with Alberta Health Services, she does remember it being the beginning of the end of her time with substance abuse.
For the first time she was connected to a drug and alcohol counsellor to talk to, to help validate that she wasn’t a bad person, that she was sick.
“I was still very much addicted, especially with fentanyl since it is so addictive. But that journey led me to a treatment program and that was the first time I had ever heard about 12-step anything, like AA and just help really.”
“I definitely did not get it the first time,” Boyce stated about her road to recovery. Although she would make it through a program and stay sober she was never able to make it longer than three months before relapsing.
In the beginning Boyce had a mindset that she didn’t need the full program and could do it on her own. “I would go to one AA meeting a month, or a week, and I wasn’t really committed.”
That was until she was charged for stealing alcohol and found herself in the diversion program and standing in a courtroom.
“Part of my agreement was if I do a certain checklist then I wouldn't have this charge. So part of that was speaking to a counsellor, making a safety plan, and going to treatment.”
This treatment took Boyce out of Edmonton, and brought her to a treatment centre in Calgary where things finally seemed to stick. “I don’t think I was ever recovered at all, I was just white-knuckling it to get through,” Boyce said.
“When I came to Calgary I gave it my all, I trusted my counsellors, and told them the really bad things I didn’t want to talk about before,” Boyce states of the beginning of her time in her final treatment. “I got really honest about my role in everything. I got honest about that, and all the parts of it finally when I came to Calgary.”
Now five years sober after leaving the treatment centre in Calgary, Boyce is studying social work in the hopes of one day being able to help others and make her community a better place.