Learn, Laugh, Listen – Love

What event is most significant in your life?

One answer is being born – the other is dying.

I say, it might be the day when addiction laid your world bare or perhaps the day, that day, when you climbed – climbed out of addiction to begin your life again. The redemptive night of Saturday, April 29th, triumphant in every sense, celebrated recovery.

Learn, Laugh, Listen occurred at the Bronson Center. Attending this event was an experience that will remain with me like that photograph you keep in your wallet, cherished and protected.

This event was all about consciousness-raising – a first of its kind and a prelude or build-up to Recovery Day, which will be held on September 23rd at Ottawa City Hall.

Gord Garner, the Festival Producer for Recovery Day and instrumental for Saturday night’s spectacular achievement on stage opened the show to resounding applause and vocal appreciation. The hopeful and optimistic mood in the auditorium charged the atmosphere and connected everyone. He said he will talk for 4 minutes but quipped that 4 minutes would feel infinitely longer. He captured both admiration and respect from this impactful audience. Garner spoke about support. Beforehand, Garner told me this show is about joy, an emotion we don’t connect with addictions. He emphasized, addictions are a social responsibility – not just for the individual who is addicted, while community action is vital for dealing with addictions. He called on us to be contributors to recovery.

Winning against addictions requires massive changes beyond the individual. We must have enough services and (mental) health care in place – which we lack. We need an adaptable criminal justice system with a cooperative corrections department along with allocating significant funds. Our political or social outlook, our psychological view about people with addictions must shift in a radical direction.

Events such as these raise our awareness.

CAPSA or the Community Addictions Peer Support Association (CAPSA) is a nonprofit composed of people affected by addiction besides being the parent organization of this event and Recovery Day.

Addiction is not the problem of the addict, it is in fact, our problem.  As a single society, as members of the general public or concerned citizens irrespective of status, we must do our part to conquer addictions. This is the role of a Recovery Ally. We empower people with addictions.

To be an Ally is being an influencer and more than attending a single event – it is commitment. Social change does not occur in an instant.

Saturday nigh reflected the hopeful side of addictions and sitting in the second row I knew that soon, this empty stage would be a floor for revolution. Voices would fill this auditorium. Solitary microphones would carry allied voices that spoke or sang united through education, comedy or music.

Healing happened here.

I anticipated the event unfolding as city life continued uninterrupted outside. That’s precisely the point, sometimes people need disruption to stop and take notice of others. We get complacent, comfortable in the routines of our daily lives with focus on our issues. This benefit was a much needed catalyst to move us out of indifference or non-reaction and into social reaction. It interrupted with unparalleled force.

LEARN

Providing the night’s context were two Carleton University Professors, Dr. Kim Hellemans and Dr. John Weekes.  They spoke with amazing clarity while providing valuable insight into reaching solutions to help people in their recovery. Their words combined to form a comprehensive picture of addictions through the complementary perspectives of neuroscience and psychology. Through their research and clinical experience, I discovered important lessons.

People do not choose to have addictions. Substances are strong and they rewire the brain to make the feeling of reward from the substance superior to the joys of everyday living. These behaviors can be unlearned through intervention but there is lapse, relapse and resistance.

Treatments are not cures.

Addictions function on cognitive, emotional and behavioral levels but client-centered care, unconditional and non-judgmental practices in service delivery are key.

As Dr. Weekes alluded, a clinician who can save one life proves that the 10 or more years he or she used for education and training were indeed years well-spent.

And looking to the future, a series of smartphone Apps are in development for electronic intervention. Even so, these cannot replace human connection.

LAUGH

Pierre Brault and Jim McNally provided laughs, uncontrollable at times. The goal was not about forgetting why we were gathered together in solidarity. It was not about forgetting the critical seriousness of addictions. It was about reclaiming lost experiences, celebrating the simple pleasure of a joke – freeing people to laugh again when many have experienced indescribable torment and loss. These moments listening to funny and satirical humor were respite from pain, providing much-deserved balm and much-needed solace.

LISTEN

We did. We heard Keith Glass and Lynn Miles. Their stage presence was beyond magnificent and when writing about the transformative power of music, this was it. Each song captivated. Their guitars enraptured. Et lux in tenebris lucet. Light pierced the darkness on stage and in us.

As Glass and Miles performed, each song was another testament to survival, to triumph over diversity – from addiction to recovery.  The palpable silence through the auditorium rendered the songs, poignant.

(Angels passing above stopped to listen.)

Out of 900, Miles chose a precious few of her songs. The lyrics spoke true.

“You can’t change me and I can’t save you.” is a memorable refrain.

“There’s a lesson in everything.” I must agree.

And as Garner told us at the start of this monumental evening, the sounds tonight would be unlike any Ottawa has heard before.

He was right. I hope Ottawa doesn’t wait too long for the next event.

Each person should stand behind people with addictions. If so, vulnerability reads victory.

I add, that people with addictions need understanding and compassion, empathy. I have always refrained from using labels because I hate them. Labels are for cans not human beings. Addict does not belong in our vocabulary along with related slang or slurs.  These create, these perpetuate hate and intolerance.

So from now, if we can, let us try to be a true Recovery Ally, with the banner and the T-shirt, with the likes on Facebook and moreover, in our everyday when we hear or see someone, a person struggling with an addiction to whatever the substance or practice, we remember this night.

 And even if we didn’t attend, we understand that to Learn, Laugh and Listen means to Love.