Wednesday 7am Guest - Brad F

0:00Where some see heroes and other see egos, Bloomberg sees the era of billionaire athletes. While others follow the noise, we follow the money. Learn more at Bloomberg.com. Show button here. Football is finally back and prize picks is going crazy with the deals to start the season, giving out promos every day in September. On prize picks, you can make all the picks you want all in the same app. And now prize picks is available nationwide. So what are you waiting for? Lock in for kickoff because everyone and everything is on prize picks. What you want? Download the app today and use code Spotify to get $150 instantly in lineups. If you win your first $5 lineup, prize picks, run your game. This is the Toronto Today podcast. I'm your host, Greg Brady. This is not only the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, but September. And our last day of September wraps recovery month. And today has been deemed recovery day.

1:00A lot more attention on how we're handling and helping people who are suffering from addiction. And this is everything we are debating greatly addiction treatment. We have debated safe supply. We have debated the hard hubs. We've debated what we need to do that we're simply not doing right now. Reniscent is one of Ontario's largest, not for profit addiction treatment providers. So they give a lot of perspective to individuals, to families, and obviously voluntary treatment. There's two, it takes too long. It takes so long. And right now there's a great divide among people talking about voluntary treatment and wondering what it looks like and why the access is so hard to get. But Reniscent slogan is the road to recovery starts here. It is a very, very true statement joining us on the line. Someone who's been on both sides of this fence and come through it with flying colors. He's a Reniscent alumnus and an Addictions counselor. Brad F joins us now on Toronto today. It's great to have you on and thank you very much for the time.

2:02Hi, good morning, Greg. Thank you very much for having me. Really happy to have you. Tell our audience me as well. I know a bit about you, but flesh out your story and sort of we'll go from low point to high point. Not the talking to me is the high point of anybody's day, Brad, but I'll let's start at your low point and why I'm talking to you right now. Well, I can tell you it's been the high point of my day so far, Greg, so I appreciate it. Thanks. Yeah, so I mean, I so I fell into addiction quite early in my life. You know, before I was 20, I was I was in addiction and I lived that way for almost 25 years and for those that aren't familiar with addiction, it progresses. It doesn't start as some life devastating thing. It progresses through the years. So subtly, sometimes that you you hardly notice it. Eventually, it gets to a point and eventually got to a point in my life where I just couldn't

3:05I just couldn't handle life anymore. I didn't know how to live with or without the drugs. Were you downtown here, Brad? In Toronto? I was like I'm from Cambridge. So that's where that's where everything started for me. But I came to Toronto in about 2013, 2014. And it just followed me everywhere I went. So let's circle back to Cambridge. Again, I think what I've noticed living where I live in Ajax or Durham, you can imagine what what I see when I go to downtown Asha was heartbreaking that the addiction issues are well documented and they're easy to spot. But you've also probably seen I would guess in Cambridge, I would guess in some of these smaller towns, the idea of seeing people struggling with mental health or addiction in a big city. It's probably not anything new. But it's new to people in Cambridge and Ajax and and you know, downtown London Ontario, which was pretty idealic. If you grew up in Cambridge, you know, what London used to be like. We're seeing so much of this present now. Tell me about how that was to be in a much smaller town without services

4:11and without help for you. Exactly. You've really got the very good point there, Greg. It's the lack of services and help that caused this to become. It's you know, it's it's shocking to see it and it is sad. And I've been there and I know people who are still there. And you know, it's the it comes to the surface. It you know, first it came to the surface in the big cities and now it's coming to the surface in the smaller community. And it's a lack of services and a lack of understanding and certainly a lack of funding. There's so many people that are asking for help. They're asking for help. There's a wait list for Renison, right? So for and this is for people that are like voluntarily saying, Hey, I need help. And and the wait lists are so long that people can get the help that they need when they ask for it and we're losing lives and families are being destroyed. How did you get better? How did I get better? Well, I asked for help and fortunately, I survived

5:12until I was able to go to Renison. So, you know, as you when you introduced me, I am an alumnus at Renison. I went there in 2021, August and September 2021. And I'd been to treatment before. It was actually the second treatment center that I attended in 2021. But this time I was I was like ready to engage with it, you know, and then it was you know, and the counselors there, they showed me compassion and love. And it gave me a little bit of a start, you know, and they gave me direction on how to continue afterwards. And so next week on Thursday, October the eighth, I'll be proudly celebrating five years of clean done. Incredible. And so obviously, the pandemic starts as well and everything, the world shuts down right. We're all in our houses. We don't know what to do with ourselves. We all, you know, I tried not to show weakness, but I scream into a pillow. I ate too much. I might have even dragged like we, we all were we're with our vices and not knowing

6:14what was normal and what wasn't. Couldn't have been it couldn't have been easy to battle through that. And I bet you a lot of what happened during the pandemic and how long it lasted here in Ontario, especially created a lot more addiction in certain households. Wouldn't it have? I think it, well, I don't think it helped anything. Yeah. You know, I think it, I think it, you know, magnified a lot of people's mental health issues, whether that be addiction or something else, but, you know, I mean, it certainly didn't help me, you know, not being connected, right? Like that's what the pandemic did. It disconnected us from each other. You know, it told us that we can't, we can't be as connected as we were before. And that's what we're trying to do at Renison, right? We're trying to connect people together that are working towards the same goal. Everybody that works at Renison, like myself included, we have lived experience. So we know what it's like. We know what it's like to have been there to get through it, right? The damage that it does to us

7:16as addicts and to our families and our loved ones. Yeah. So that's what we offer at Renison. And we've been doing it for a long time. And we have a lot of pride in what we do. And it's, you know, it's so fulfilling for me to have made this career change throughout my recovery to come and work at a place that saves lives and saved my life quite frankly. I bet we're talking to Brad, who went through addiction, came out the other side. He's now a counselor at Renison. It's a great story. Today is recovery day in Canada, which focuses on celebrating recovery, pushing through some of those stigmas and letting communities know, yeah, you can get better. The public conversation I mentioned around addiction and recovery in Canada has kind of shifted over the last six or seven years. Where are we still failing to break the stigma? I hear that word a lot and I go, but I also want to help people that are on the street. It's not normal to to to sleep in a subway station and it's not normal to be

8:17passed out in broad daylight on the street. I want policies that will help those people. And I know people say, don't stigmatize them. I'm like, I want them to get better. That's not the same thing as stigmatizing them. I agree. It starts with understanding that addicts and people that are suffering this way are not bad people. We're unwell. We're sick. We need help finding a way out. That starts with services. There's just simply not enough funding or non-unum services available for people that are asking for help. It has to be there for when people are ready. Because when you're stuck in a cycle like I was with addiction, I could be ready to accept help one minute and then refusing it the next. If I don't get it, it'll make me feel like nobody cares. People walk by me. Don't care. I feel alone. I feel disconnected. I feel judged

9:24and I'm just unwell and I just need a hand. That's such a great point. I want to broaden that given your depth of experience here for families or friends listening to this. They're listening to this and they're like, I know someone's struggling right now. I saw them yesterday. I'll see them today. What's a great piece of advice you would give them when they feel I can't do this anymore. They're lying to me. They're letting me down. They're not doing what they need to be doing. What's the most important piece of advice you'd give a loved one who's watching someone struggle? Be ready for when they ask for help. Be ready. Because you can't force somebody to ask for help. You can offer the help. Oftentimes it comes from a very loving place. I want you to be better. What are you doing? Get help. Just telling them that it's okay. There's help out here. When you're ready to ask for help, I'll be here for you. Connect with other people who are living through a

10:29similar experience. There's groups for this kind of stuff. At Renneson, we have a family program that we offer that will help educate family and friends that are close to an addict or an alcoholic that's going through early recovery. It's about educating yourself about what the other person is going through and being available when that person finally reaches out. Is your hand there to accept theirs? That's so massively important. I'm tied for time, but before you go and I can't thank you enough. I hope it won't be our last conversation either on the air because this is so important and you're somebody to celebrate on a day like this. I don't mind a good debate on the best of days. One debate I hate. I'll tell you, Brad is people debate all the time. I sit there. I hear it sometimes and it makes me want to walk away and they debate whether addiction is a disease or a choice. And I just think I just think every case is unique. It's such an unhelpful debate. There's choice involved with using a substance or engaging in a destructive

11:32behavior. But the repeated exposure to an addictive substance clearly for some people alters their brain. So it's always both. It's never universally one or the other. Is it a silly debate to have? Or you tell me if I'm wrong. I might be wrong on it. So I mean, whether or not it silly is not not the answer. But I can tell you that it's a debate that's already been settled. It's in, you know, it's been settled by people that are far more educated than myself that it is in fact a disease. That wasn't my choice to make. So I don't know why this debate continues. Well, I guess I do know why it's because of the stigma and the lack of education. People think, oh, well, why don't you just stop? Oh, thanks. I never thought of that. Right? Like, how do I do that? And I think I think you're right. You know your experience better than I do. But I think as you say, you made a choice at some time to tackle that disease and go, I got to, I get a say in this and

12:36I'm going to choose to seek help and a treatment and cope in a different way. And that's it's something some people can do better than others. But they kind of both, that's what I mean. They kind of both interplay. There's the disease aspect. I don't quibble with it all. I believe that and then the choice creates a little bit of a framework for as you've done, get through the other side, but no doubt there's biological factors involved. There's no doubt. Yes, exactly. And again, you know, if you have a disease, it's like you need to see somebody about it, some kind of expert, right? And then you need to follow up with treatment, right? And that's what we do. And it's hard to understand because there's no like pill to take for it, right? There's no prescription for it, but there is a program and it's worked for millions of people for, you know, approaching close to 100 years. Yeah. So I mean, reach out, ask for help, start the program, you know, and we're here to help. And I tell you, renaissance it changes lives. We help people every day. And we just need

13:40some more awareness, education, funding from the government to make sure that our doors stay open for people so that families can recover, addicts can recover and we can live amazing lives because that's what we deserve. We're good people. We're not bad people. We're, we just need some help. We're, you know, we're sick. Totally. I get you. I'm thrilled. I'm talking to you right now. Brad, thanks very much for this today. People can go to renaissance.ca and find out a lot more about the team, a lot more about the programs they offer. And we'll do this again sometime. Thank you for this. Thank you so much for your time, Greg. I really appreciate it. You got it. There's Brad, like again, that's a story. I see that debate all the time, all the time. It drives me a little bit crazy. And if you, if you see someone that you love struggling right now, you're not terribly concerned with that debate. Your, your only issue is how do we lower this impact? How do we, how do we have empathy? How do we take something that's actionable? And how do we get them through the dark tunnel, the dark times, all that stuff? And I can imagine in that counseling field,

14:46burnout is probably pretty high. I can't imagine the kind of stuff you're like, this is, I'm just not winning at this. I'm not making a difference. I'm not cracking through to this person or that person. You'd think about the losses, if you will, more than the wins. Thanks for listening to the Toronto today podcast. We drop the highlights of the Daily Show every weekday morning. Don't forget you can hear the entire show on the radio at home on your smart speaker ask Alexa or say, hey, Google, play 640 Toronto or Toronto today. You can hear us on between 530 and 9 weekdays on 640 Toronto. Have a great day.