Word of caution: This post contains discussion concerning the topic of suicide and may not be suitable for some readers. If you or someone you know is in immediate crisis or has suicide-related concerns, please call (in Canada) 1-833-456-4566 toll free (In QC: 1-866-277-3553), 24/7 or visit talksuicide.ca.

My first few years in recovery went as expected. I excelled in learning and performing; but my unconscious self did everything it could through romantic relationships to undermine and eventually sabotage my emotional sobriety.

When a relationship ended, I drank. I had periods of continuous sobriety that paralleled the duration of my relationships. A few months, seven years, a few months, and two years. Neither the ending of the relationship nor the relapse that followed were planned in advance—as far as I was concerned, life had done me wrong and I was in anguish. My post-break-up relapses didn’t last long (except for the last one). I remember they involved just going to a nearby pub, doing some controlled drinking, and returning to my recovery group to start over. I suppose you might call it a ‘spite’ relapse, giving the universe and my newly titled ex-girlfriend the middle finger. At the time, I could not see my pattern and was blind to how I was struggling with dependency issues.

I had been dependent on something, or someone, my whole life. In 1998, my father had a triple-bypass and a post-operative stroke. I happened to be in-between both relationships and jobs at the time (I had just been fired for being ‘unreliable’, which was their code for ‘comes in hungover too often if he comes in at all’), so I gave up my apartment and moved back home to help him with his recovery, driving him daily to physiotherapy, supporting him with shopping and meals, helping with exercises, and so on. I made this choice to help him without thinking—it was just the right thing to do. I didn’t give much weight, however, to how returning home made me dependent on my father as well. I wouldn’t end-up in rehab for three years yet, and being back home meant that money that had gone to rent could now go to feeding my addiction.

Even though my father recovered well enough from his stroke to resume driving, I remained under his roof for the next 12 years, from the age of 35 to 47. During this time, I entered rehab and began my journey in recovery. I went to university as a full-time student and obtained a couple of degrees. A student loan covered my undergrad, and scholarships covered the graduate degree. In my recovery group, I shared my story at meetings, served my group, sponsored newcomers, and started a meeting at the university. On the outside, it looked like I was doing all the right things. But on the inside, I was keeping something hidden from myself—the direct connection between my sobriety and romance, that is, my addiction to alcohol and my addiction to falling in love. My unfortunate inability to be honest with myself would soon become my undoing. Another couple of heartbreaking relationships were just around the corner, and that one-two punch would toss me out of recovery for nine years.

I had only recently moved out into my own apartment again when someone from my past contacted me through social media. We quickly developed a romantic connection, even though we lived in different provinces. I had already applied to two PhD programs, and I fired-off a third to a university in the city where she and her three children lived. When I look back at it now, I realize that I fell in love with both this person and also with the idea that, at the age of 47, I could perhaps one day become a ‘stepfather’.

My history of addiction and all of the behaviours associated with it had robbed me of my prime years to settle-down, build a home, and raise a family. The popular notion of mid-life crisis is a spouse/parent trying to flee the trap of domestic life. I was doing the reverse—running wildly toward a life of domestic bliss. I suspect my partner knew this on some level. Likewise, she was on her own and it would not hurt to have someone around to ease the burden of raising three kids. Life has its demanding moments.

Following acceptance in the PhD program, my possessions went into a U-Haul, my adoptive family came to retrieve me, and we all hit the road for the east coast. It was an amazing journey, and I was on cloud nine. My partner beside me, three teenagers in the backseat, and a new life awaiting me at our destination.

Within a couple of months, I was alone in a tiny studio apartment near the university, unable to return to this new family that expected and deserved so very much more from me.

I was sober, had been going to meetings, had a sponsor, but I was most certainly not well. Immersion into my studies distracted me from the pain, and I got busy in recovery groups with service and helping others. I did the best I could to make what amends I could with the mother and her children that I abandoned. I didn’t convey the underlying problem, however, because I was not aware of it at the time: the reason I do not have a home, family, and children is because I have never been ready. Just because life puts such gifts in one’s path does not mean one is ready to pick them up and carry them. But a needy person who is self-centred and feels like life owes them would snatch them up without hesitation.

My rebound relationship happened a couple of years later. It was tumultuous and short-lived, but it destroyed something in me. I had never felt an attraction before like I did for this person, even though I did not know her very well at all. One day she was committed, and the next she was out. I didn’t know what was going on inside me, and even though I sought out a therapist and talked with friends, I buried a lot of my pain and confusion. One’s capacity to be honest with others cannot exceed the capacity of one to be honest with oneself.

I was setting the scene to leave recovery. I was angry at this God, angry at recovery groups, angry at my PhD supervisor, my cohort, the university that would otherwise have never been on my academic radar, and the predicament I found myself in. I knew very well that my troubles were of my own making. I was aware that my choices led me to this. I knew that I wanted to be more mentally and emotionally fit. But I had an idea that I could not jettison from my mind: What if being in recovery groups was hurting me somehow? What if, by depending on a higher power and living in the culture of the groups, I could not heal or correct problems I had with dependency (on others, on a romantic partner)?

At some point before May of 2014, I knew for certain I was going to leave the recovery scene. My journal writings from that time reveal that I had a single-minded focus to rationalize and justify the decision to leave. I conjured for myself many reasons: I didn’t want to live in aversion; I wanted to have healthy relationship with alcohol (even if I didn’t drink); I had problems with dependency that staying in recovery groups covered-up, perpetuated, and even encouraged. I found anti-12-Step discourse online, read books and articles that countered the narrative that alcoholism is a chronic disease, and read with eager eyes any anecdotes of people who turned away from dependency on recovery groups.

There was one voice, however, that I failed to listen to. My sponsor at the time had left recovery for a while many years prior. Estranged from the meetings and the program, he tumbled into a deep depression and became suicidal in his isolation. He not only cautioned me of the danger that might await, but I know he was very, very concerned for my well-being. After I decided to leave the program, he messaged me with “I need to leave you be. Good luck.”

I attempted to do controlled drinking. That went from a glass or two of wine to going through bottles of hard liquor. I went out to places where I put myself in some danger. I had a nasty fall and was very fortunate to not suffer serious injury. And I eventually stopped drinking on my own. Okay, I thought, well I guess I can’t drink still, but I don’t need to return to recovery. I called myself ‘post-recovery’. I applied for a leave of absence from my PhD program. Reason?: ‘burnout’. I spent the next year and a half alone, riding my bike, walking the seashore, playing video games in my apartment, and otherwise isolating. I had cut myself off from the community of recovery as well as my academic cohort. I was alone. But I was ‘post-recovery’!

I returned to Ottawa in December of 2015. I spent a couple of years in my father’s basement playing video games and doing that social media sport where you get into time-wasting debates with people you would never want to meet in person. I tried to make myself as useful as possible around the house and property. My father was in his 90s and appreciated the help. In return, I had a roof over my head, food to eat, and received a generous stipend.

I drank in secret now and then. I tried to control it, and if I felt weak, I tossed it. I poured more booze down the drain than I put in my body during that time. It was a miserable place to dwell—not sober but not drunk.

My father had kidney disease, it was progressing rapidly, and he was getting more frail. I was happy to be of help to him. I knew I was in a terrible funk and alone, and caring for him was a useful distraction. I also felt it to be a labour of love and, for me, an obligation I could not possibly abandon. Not after all the years I leaned on him.

I didn’t dare drink now, as I could not allow myself to be impaired during my caregiving, but the work produced much anxiety for me. Cannabis had been legalized, so I learned how to microdose oil to self-medicate.

Eventually he needed a full-time care. He was not going to a nursing home so long as I was available. I became my father’s caregiver and, in the process, learned for the first time in my life the true meaning of love. A team of nurses, PSWs, and my sisters all helped out when they could.

I attended to my father for over a year-and-a-half until he went into hospice for a short time before passing. I took care of the arrangements. It took a number of months for me to settle his estate and release it to his beneficiaries, my three sisters and myself. Our childhood home was gone and we became orphans.

I move into a small apartment near the airport and one year after my father’s passing the pandemic arrived. Part of me welcomed the lockdown. I was alone anyhow, and the path from alone to ‘shut-in’ is, I discovered, much shorter during a pandemic. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for people who relied on gathering community for mental health care. Like people in recovery groups, for example.

From March 2020 onward, my mental health declined in isolation. Depression worsened and by the summer of 2022, I was having persistent and intrusive ideas about ending my life. I was writing my obituary, a lifetime tally of achievements and regrets, notes to leave behind. I realized that I had already started preparing when I was settling my late father’s estate. I sent almost all of my possessions to the dump. I had accumulated a lifetime of keepsakes and treasures in the basement of that house. All of it gone. When I look back now, I had given up before I left recovery groups, over 7 years before the arrival of active thoughts of suicide. What kept me going was knowing that, one day, I was going be needed to care for my father. I also didn’t want to break the hearts of my family. I didn’t want to live, and I didn’t want to die.

In August of 2022, I reached out for help. I went in to see my doctor and told him I was thinking of ending my life and explained my thoughts and feelings about that. He didn’t send me to the psych ward—it was probably because of the fact I was asking for help and how I had explained my situation. He did, however, refer me to a counsellor at the hospital, and I started anti-depressants that had worked for me in the past.

After getting to know me a bit, my counsellor suggested that I go to a secular recovery group meeting. I didn’t even know such a thing existed! Although I had not touched a drink in a year-and-a-half, my isolation was killing me. I didn’t follow that piece of advice right away, but I did start doing the therapeutic homework that she assigned to me.

In April of 2023, after a few months of working on myself, I attended a secular meeting. It had been a month short of nine years since my last meeting. It felt alien on one hand, and on the other I was back where I belong. I embraced the latter feeling, and so began this new phase of my recovery.