Building Relationships From the Ground Up | Joel’s Story

Sharing his life story is outside of Joel’s comfort zone — but that’s why he’s doing it. After two years of recovery, he’s looking for ways to get involved and give back, practices he’s already employing in his personal relationships. The last few years for Joel have been hard and stretching and — ultimately — transformative. So like he’s done time and time again in recent seasons, he’s taking a leap of faith.

I think the last time I talked about myself like this was before I got baptized, and that was nerve-wracking too. But here we go.

I grew up on the island, in Nanaimo. My childhood was pretty average, except that we grew up poor — when I was really young, my father was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and he used to say that he drank because it worked better than medications. He was kind of an absent father; he was always there in body, but he wasn’t a disciplinary figure or a provider. He was detached.

I think as a kid, I found being poor embarrassing. I would do things to entertain other people, to distract them from my circumstances. I got into trouble a lot, and because there wasn’t any discipline in my home, I pretty much ran amok. My rebellion included smoking weed and drinking, starting when I was about 12. Drinking was social at first, but I went a little more wild than some of my friends — I’ve always had an attraction to getting outside of myself.

I’ve always had an attraction to getting outside of myself.

In my teens I veered towards harder drugs. I skipped school a lot; I completed grade 10, and then halfway through grade 11 I dropped out to start working in construction. It was around 18 that I stopped using hard drugs: I’d seen people go down pretty dark roads with methamphetamines, and I found I was becoming depressed and losing sleep. So the drinking and smoking continued, but I was able to detox from the harder stuff.

Parenthood and opportunities

Shortly after I rehabbed myself, I met my children’s mother at a party. A few years later, our daughters were born: identical twins. We rented a home, and even though I was still drinking, I thought it was okay because I maintained work the whole time.

In 2013, I got an offer of a job in Vancouver, and the role came with triple the salary and RRSP matching. It was a lot better than what I’d had in my life so far, and when we made the move, I started to dream about saving up for a house someday. The money seemed like a huge opportunity.

I started to dream about saving up for a house someday.

But my drinking got way more out of control. I went from just drinking on weekends and maybe the odd beer during the week to drinking almost every day. It became evident that my idea of saving all this money to buy a house wasn't going to happen. My wife and I worked alternating schedules, and when I was with the girls, I was just like my father: I was there, but I wasn’t hanging out with them the way I should have been. By the time the girls were about eight or nine, the alcohol had taken over my life. I started neglecting them and their mother, and that continued for several years.

Seasons of loss

Things took a turn for the worse in 2019. My dad died from alcohol withdrawal, and I didn’t grieve well; I just used substances to suppress everything. I had this impulse not to be weak. I took up cocaine, and it became a pretty regular habit. Meanwhile, my girls weren’t kids anymore — they knew what was happening, they could see it. Finally in 2021, my wife told me that if I didn’t quit drinking and doing drugs, she would have to leave. I didn’t believe her. A month later, she took the girls and was gone.

I didn’t grieve well; I just used substances to suppress everything.

I was so resentful. As an addict, I think you always try to point the finger at others. I started drinking around the clock, not sleeping very well — that went on for about a year. And then my mother passed away. That was the worst day of my life. But again, I chose to grieve by being a fool. I thought, “Hey, I’m going to take out all my retirement money and I’m going to spend it.”

Over the next couple weeks, I went on a bender. I wasted all that money, and all of those selfish acts just brought more shame. I maxed out my credit cards and destroyed myself financially to the point where I was kicked out of my house. For the first time, I was homeless. I had nowhere to go.

A fortuitous connection

I wasn’t willing to sleep in my car, so I sweet-talked my ex-wife into letting me stay with her and the girls. She’s a pretty smart lady, and she hated watching me destroy myself. I took advantage of her compassion, and I was verbally abusive. The cops got brought in a couple times. There are a lot of things I don’t remember, and the alcohol was pushing me further and further into depression. I didn’t want to go to treatment, but I was really afraid of being homeless.

It started to occur to me that every bad thing in my life had come out of a liquor bottle. And maybe it was time to give it up.

My ex-wife had an uncle, Mike, who happened to work at Union Gospel Mission. I asked my job for some time to get help, and then I called Uncle Mike. He immediately invited me to his house, and we sat on his couch as he helped me fill out an application for recovery. I didn’t know at that time that UGM existed, or that it had recovery programming. Mike challenged me not to drink until intake, which I didn’t manage, but I could tell my ex-wife was really happy that these first steps were happening.

Building healthy connections

I entered Gateway stabilization and then recovery programming in 2022. The first person I met was Aurel — he came up to me with his Romanian accent and said, “Hello, my friend.” He was always so kind and nice. And I was like, “You know, maybe I could get used to being around people. Maybe not everyone is out to get me.” Aurel and I went through recovery programming together, and commenced at the same ceremony.

Part of recovery is getting through those early stages of the guilt and the shame you’ve caused with your actions and selfishness. It took me a couple months before I dried out enough to think clearly — and then all these memories started surfacing from my childhood. I remember asking one of the alumni about what I was experiencing, and he explained that I’d always had those memories, but I’d drowned them in liquor. I really needed the structure of the program to give me the time to process everything I’d buried.

Journeying in faith

Through recovery and volunteering at Broadway Church, I started to learn about who God really is. My father knew the Bible well, but he grew up in a strict Catholic home that led him to hate religion. So I’d always believed in God growing up, but like every relationship I had in my life, I’d abused that one too. I’d blamed God for my circumstances, and I was really mad at Him when my mom died. It was just a mismanaged relationship, like every relationship I’ve ever had.

It might sound backwards to someone looking in from the outside, but after I learned about the love of God and felt it, I came to realize that I've never experienced that with anybody or anything before in my entire life. And that’s why I stayed living on the 4th floor at UGM for so long — I wanted the extra time. I’m still learning.

I’m slowly putting my life back together. I went back to work in 2023 three days a week, and gradually increased to full time. I notice that I communicate way better, and I’m doing more challenging work — I’ve taken on a surveyor role, and I do a lot of math all day. My career’s taking off in the direction that I’d wanted to go for quite a few years now.

I’m communicating with my family too: my ex-wife and I are working on our friendship again, and my girls are super stoked about how far I’ve come. We talk a lot now. You know, they haven’t had a safe father to talk to since they were really young; I didn’t have the capacity for a maturing relationship with them. But they’ve come around. It’s fun: they come to me for advice again. They ask me questions about life. And they see a big change in me. We navigate through hard times, but we do it together. We’re still healing. I tell my girls it’s okay to not be okay. And my relationships are getting way better.

I know that if I stay sober, everything else improves. I know that for sure. And I want to stay close with God, because that’s who gets the credit — not just Uncle Mike. I think as long as I stay on this path, everything else will kind of fall into place.