In his youth, Ziggy struggled with an addiction that impacted his school and family life. Twenty years after treatment, he shares what recovery means to him now and how he’s still using the tools he learned two decades ago.
In the 1990s, Ziggy was a teenager in London, U.K. who was beginning to realize he might have a problem with marijuana. But for years, he felt unsure if – and where – he could get help.
After years of dropping out of school and an array of other educational programs, the then-22-year-old was at a critical point: an addiction taking over his life, an ultimatum from his parents, and offer to get treatment – halfway around the world.
This year marked Ziggy’s 20th year in recovery and his proud return to EHN Edgewood Nanaimo, the facility where his journey began. We talked to him about his path to treatment and how he still uses the skills he learned to guide his recovery.
EHN CANADA: Can you take us back to when you started to feel like you were struggling with drug use?
ZIGGY: Weed was my biggest problem. I took a bunch of other drugs, but I thought it was all recreational. I wasn’t really entirely sure that I had a problem with addiction at first, but when I look back, oh yeah, there’s definitely an issue because I’d been trying to cut down. When I was 15 or 16, I was struggling at school, and I got taken out of school for mental health reasons. I was smoking weed every day during that period. When I re-entered school, I started getting really depressed and so I went on antidepressants.
Between the ages of 18 to 22 I’d managed to stop the medication and was trying to do better. But in reality I was getting progressively worse with my usage and alcohol began to become a problem.
EHN CANADA: With marijuana such a commonly used substance (even more so today), did you feel like this can’t be addiction?
ZIGGY: Yes, that’s exactly how I thought about using. I had made a conscious decision to not make a habit of hard drugs because I thought that’s what would make me an addict. I totally believed the idea that because it was not considered a hard drug, I wasn’t going to end up with a serious drug addiction that was completely consuming my life. But in the end, that’s what was happening.
EHN CANADA: How did your drug dependency continue to impact your life?
ZIGGY: Around age 20, I’d completed school with an art qualification and I went on to do an extra year of schooling to do business studies. I thought it would be useful to learn how to monetize my creative fields. And it just didn’t happen. I didn’t know what to do. So dropped out of that and started another art course…and dropped out of that as well. My confidence was low because I just couldn’t commit to anything. I thought it was just about confidence, but it was obviously because I just wasn’t really functioning.
Marijuana was my way of trying to cope with feeling like I didn’t have normal life skills. It didn’t necessarily make me more confident, but I thought it made me feel more okay with my general lack of self esteem. In reality, it was actually eroding it more and so I would just smoke more in order to feel okay with myself. I was feeling quite disconnected and unhappy, even hateful of general society at times.
EHN CANADA: Did your parents notice you were struggling?
ZIGGY: My parents were trying to be supportive, but were also quite frustrated with the way I was behaving. I would lie a lot about the extent that I was using. They’re both pretty work orientated. My dad’s quite the workaholic type, and they would say, “Look, if you study, that’s going to help you.”
We ended up in this plan: if got onto this university course, they would help pay for my rent and I could move out. But the fact was that I just thought, “Oh great, I can move out and smoke as much as I want.”
The plan could have been great if I’d applied myself, but I’d set myself up in a situation where I was just inherently going to be doing something that was demotivating me more and more. In the end, I dropped out of that as well. I managed to get reimbursed by the university, but since my parents had given me the money to pay for that year, I owed it to them. They asked where the money was and I tried to hide the fact that I had spent the money on weed and spray paint. I got a job in a shop and doing gardening, but I didn’t know how I was going to manage paying off what I owed my parents as well as the rent.
EHN CANADA: Were they aware of the drug use or was this something you had to confess at some point?
ZIGGY: They were aware, but what I had to confess to was that I’d spent all their money and couldn’t afford the rent. I thought if I kept lying about it and telling them what I was telling myself, then maybe it would all just go away.
It was quite obvious that I didn’t really know how to look after myself. My mum let me come and live back in their house, which I’m really grateful for, but she said, “You can come and live here, but you can’t keep getting wasted all the time. If you take the help that I’m going to offer you, then you can have somewhere to live.”
She managed to express to me that she was having a really hard time and was already getting support through Families Anonymous which is another 12-step program. She said, “This is what your behaviour is doing to me.” Some of that seeped in and I thought, “I don’t want to do this to my mum.”
And I said, okay, I’ll do it. I went to a drug and alcohol counsellor. She was a recovering addict, and she very quickly said I should probably go to a treatment centre for help.
EHN CANADA: You live in the U.K. How did you choose EHN Edgewood Nanaimo, half-way around the world, for your treatment?
ZIGGY: My counsellor said, “You’ve got three options: there’s this one in the U.K., there’s the one in the U.S., or this one in Canada.” I thought, well, if I go somewhere in the U.K., I’m probably going to run away. I just didn’t trust myself at all. And I thought, Canada’s good because when I was a kid, I had an amazing teacher from Canada that helped me with my dyslexia studies, she was a very big part of my early life. My view was that I couldn’t walk out the door because I won’t be able to look after myself and I definitely won’t be able to get home from Canada.
EHN CANADA: What was it like once you arrived at EHN Edgewood Nanaimo?
ZIGGY: I don’t know if it was the jet lag or withdrawal, but my first experience was extreme exhaustion, and I completely let go of trying to do anything for myself. I thought, okay, I’m just going to do what everyone tells me to do: if they tell me lunch is at this time, I’m going to make sure I get there for lunch. I would go to bed at about 8pm because I didn’t know how to talk or interact with people or even string a sentence together. I just thought, well, if I go to bed then I don’t have to worry about how I’m behaving around people. I was very shy and closed down.
EHN CANADA: Did you connect with your clinicians?
ZIGGY: The counsellor I had was just an awesome human being. I’m really glad I met this person because he was very patient and kind, he just took time to explain the process. There was no rush. There was no judgment. There was no telling me how I was fucked up. It just really helped that I had this person that matched with what I needed.
EHN CANADA: Did you respond to the treatment process immediately?
ZIGGY: Initially, a lot of my resistance was internal. I’m not argumentative, but I would be holding back, thinking, oh no, that’s not me, or that doesn’t make sense. But then suddenly, I was thinking, “Wait, this makes sense, that makes sense, and that also makes sense. Why does so much of this make sense!?” Maybe because I relate to 90% of it. I couldn’t really deny that anymore. So maybe I’ll just see what it’s like to be less resistant.
I don’t know if I knew what I needed, but I just knew I was receptive to the way they were explaining some of the work that needed to happen. I accepted that that’s what I had to do. The structure and the lectures were really useful. As for the group therapy, I understood the purpose of it, but I was a bit nervous of talking in front of other people at first.
EHN CANADA: When you completed treatment and it was time to go home, did you feel ready?
ZIGGY: I was quite scared and nervous, but motivated. I got home with a mindset of it’s a good idea to look after myself. Maybe I can pay back the debts that I have. Now I’m sober, I can make amends to my family because they’ve been so supportive. I needed to let them know how appreciative I was of them being there for me and be more responsible.
EHN CANADA: Did you find that some of the tools you had learned were useful back home and even over the past 20 years?
ZIGGY: A few years ago I started to suffer with anxiety and depression from codependency. I had to go back to basics and ask for help as I was unsure of what was really going on. I started to see a therapist, reached out to a couple of people and began meditating every morning.
The simplest one took me a really long time to get back. In treatment, they gave us a list of other alumni who will take you to a meeting. And it was the hardest thing in the world, because I had to pick up the phone and call a stranger. It was Tony and he doesn’t know me. He answers the phone and I ask him, and, of course he says he could do it. In the last couple of years I contacted two other people when I wasn’t feeling very well because I needed to connect with some like-minded, sober people. So that was one of the tools.
One of the first things we did in treatment was meditation. It was confusing, but also really nice. I probably meditated 10 times over the previous 18-year period. So, I started meditating regularly two years ago and that really changed a lot of the ways my life was operating. Other tools were learning about self-care again, which was described in treatment. So, for e.g. saying I’m going to go to the climbing gym every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Simple routine things.
Those are my present aha-moments in in recent times.
EHN CANADA: How did it end up that you went back to visit this year?
ZIGGY: I actually went back after my first and second years after treament.
When I was in treatment and went to Cake Night, I thought this is so long, but at least I get to eat cake at the end of it. My counselor had said, “You’ll see, it’s going to be really nice.” Seeing people come back and get their multi-year chips…my temporary sponsor came back for his seven-year chip and he was there with his wife, also an alumni. I was inspired and thought that looks kind of cool to be able to come back and show appreciation and share that some things are difficult, but change is possible!
For the past 20 years, a lot of my recovery has been about learning to take care of myself. And I thought what’s another way that I can do that to celebrate? I have a lot of appreciation for Edgewood and it has a fond place in my heart. I thought it would be a really wonderful thing to do. It’s a very physical way of engaging in my recovery again, kind of like a pilgrimage.
EHN CANADA: Were there other people from your cohort at the 20 anniversary?
ZIGGY: This was the funniest part about all of it was that the people I didn’t expect to see were there, and the people that I tried to meet up with or had hoped would be there weren’t there. And so it was quite good — being reminded that even my best efforts to make something be a certain way got thrown to the side. But there were new people I get to meet and people I hadn’t expected to see again, like my counsellor. I was really happy about it in the end!
EHN CANADA: What does your life look like now?
ZIGGY: I got a bit sidetracked during covid and thankfully I still have an art studio. That’s the next part of the puzzle: getting back to my art. It’s been a bit of a gap and a bit of a challenge. And I feel like, “Has life moved on and I just don’t do that anymore?” But I know it doesn’t really feel like that yet, so I’m going to make some new work. But now I feel like I have a bit more headspace and time to make some art again. I’ve also just done some foundation training in recovery coaching. So, I’m hoping to do that.
EHN CANADA: And finally, what does recovery mean to you?
ZIGGY: It’s gonna sound really corny, but recovery is my body learning to live with my head. My brain is trying to figure everything out and control it all. Meditating helps me quiet down my mind. Once that quiets down, I can be more intuitive. If I can connect through my heart, I will be less resistant to inevitable things in life and able to learn from my past. So, the simple version is just listening to my head less and listening to my heart a bit more.
EHN CANADA: Easier said than done sometimes.
ZIGGY: Yeah, well, it took me a little while, quite a long time to get to that point. And I think if someone had said that to me at the beginning of treatment, I would have been like, yeah, fuck you, but it’s my reality at the moment and it works for me.
STRUGGLING WITH ADDICTION OR A MENTAL HEALTH DISORDER? Addiction and mental health disorder treatment programs can help. EHN Canada offers programs at facilities across the country, as well as virtual options. Find out more by calling 1-866-867-6788.
Photo by Finnegan Travers.
