Taking the hard road
How a recreational habit became a lifelong struggle
By: Solaya Huang
Matt Stewart with his brother Preston (left), and father Eric (middle). Preston is wearing a Sober Up hoodie from Fresh Start Recovery Centre. Photo courtesy of Matt Stewart
When Matt Stewart was in his early teens, he began to experiment with alcohol and marijuana. But what started out as a recreational habit became a lifelong struggle with addiction, and sent him on a path that would take years to come out of.
​
Stewart grew up in Coalhurst, a small town northwest of Lethbridge, Alta. He was raised by his single mother and three brothers, all at least a decade older than Stewart.
“Watching them always party and do stuff like that, I thought it was the cool thing to do,” says Stewart. “So the first time I had any type of substance use was with collecting their beer cans at the end of the parties they'd have at my mom's place and drinking the leftovers.”
​
The first time Stewart became addicted to any substance however was when he started smoking marijuana. By the ninth grade, he had dropped out of school to work and support his habit.
“That was basically the turning point for me when it went from recreational use to where it was an actual addiction. I threw away my schooling because I wanted to get high.”
Discovering cocaine
At 18, Stewart had gotten his first full-time job working in the construction industry and was able to get his own place, a basement suite that he rented with some friends. There he was introduced to cocaine.
“It became [an addiction] very quickly after I tried it for the first time,” says Stewart. “Every thought that I had throughout the day, while I was out at work, was obsessing about getting and using more cocaine.”
From that point on, Stewart’s life centred around his addiction. Every paycheck earned would go towards buying more cocaine, taking priority over everything else.
“I was selling everything that I had,” Stewart recalls. “I was quickly becoming an employee that my employer didn't want around anymore because I was always showing up tired and I couldn't work hard.”
​
His mother had also noticed this change, as she had experienced the same thing with his father, who was a heavy alcoholic. When Stewart was 18, she would occasionally drop off care packages for him. One day, when Stewart wasn’t home, she left a package on his doorstep with two Cocaine Anonymous pamphlets.
First time getting sober
“After she found out that I actually read through that stuff, she took me to my first 12-step meeting,” says Stewart.
But he continued to use drugs heavily. Eventually, at 23 years old, Stewart decided for the first time on his own to try and get sober, seeking help at a treatment centre in Lethbridge.
After graduating from the month-long program and managing to stay sober, he ended up meeting a girl who would become the mother of his four daughters. Married and having started his own business, it seemed that his life was finally getting back on track. But for Stewart, the struggle for sobriety wasn’t over.
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
.jpg)
A mugshot of Stewart in 2017 for the Lethbridge Police #WantedWednesday. Link courtesy Lethbridge Police
Relapse
“With the 12-step program, there's a lot of different facets to [it]. It's simple, but it's a lot of hard work.”
All that work, says Stewart, he hadn’t actually completed.
“Eventually I relapsed. I lost my business, my wife at the time was threatening to leave me. She couldn't have the kids around me because I was always high,” says Stewart.
“It was basically the great lie of my addiction [was] that I could do this on my own and that I didn't have to follow a set of rules or principles to live by to actually maintain my sobriety,” says Stewart. “I guess that was the biggest struggle. And, you know, I paid the price dearly.”
Though Stewart has hit more than one rock bottom in his life, there came a point where he was at his lowest.
“My wife was giving me fair warning that this is enough. She's had enough of trying to hold on. One day I just came home and the house was empty. She didn't tell me where she was going, and I knew she was gone.”
“It didn't affect me like it should have,” says Stewart. “Drugs were there to numb any of the pain that her leaving with our kids should have caused me. I just used that as an excuse to cause more wreckage, to create more havoc in my life.”
He remembers talking to the people around him about what had happened, and out of sympathy, they would offer him even more drugs. But around six months after he came home to that empty house, his life would take a turn for the worse. He started to get heavy into selling drugs and into other crimes, crimes that would land him in federal prison.
Alone
“When I got to jail, everything ended. Nobody was answering my phone calls,” says Stewart. “I sat alone in my cell.”
“I can't remember exactly how many months after I got to jail, [but] I decided that this is something I finally got to do on my own. I don't want to continue my life like this just being so alone and disconnected from life.”
Though he developed a connection with Fresh Start Recovery Centre in Calgary, Stewart says that for him it wasn’t one treatment centre being better than the next, it was about being ready to take that monumental step.
“If there's one thing that I can pervade to the next person, is to never give up trying to stay sober.”