Recovery Stories

We sat down to talk with Mansel Waskewitch, a student Lakeland College Canada about his recovery journey.

"I grew up being a man, thinking I don't need help, 'you can do it yourself'. And what I did myself was drink."

After +20 years of drinking, Mansel decided to start asking for help. As soon as he understood that there was help, Mansel began his sobriety journey.

This is the story of Teneaka Laboucan, a ROC Recovery Champion Award winner, a First Nations Indigenous of Northern Alberta, a mother of 3, spouse, and an addict in recovery.

Teneaka sat down with us and shared her recovery story, her daily struggles, and what recovery and sobriety means to her.
 

I am Kurt Blind, I am Nehiyaw (Plains Cree), from George Gordon First Nation. My traditional lands are located in the Treaty 4 region, and I am grateful for the opportunity to live, work, play, study and heal on the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy. I recently received my Blackfoot name, li yi kit tah pii (Courageous Person) from Elder Miiksiikam (Clarence Wolfleg Sr).

I was born in 1968. I attended Gordon Indian Residential School 1974-1984. I left George Gordon’s in 1984, rarely going back to my traditional lands out of shame, fear, anger and resentment. At age 15 I moved to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and began experimenting with substance misuse. I graduated high school and began experiencing active addiction to alcohol and drugs. After high school I became a street worker to feed my addiction.

After nearly 35 years of living in addiction, on October 28, 2018, I began the withdrawal process from psychoactive substances. In September 2020, I enrolled in the Addiction Studies Diploma Program at Bow Valley College. In June 2023 I will graduate with a 3.80 GPA and represent the School of Community Studies as their valedictorian. I am a person who is grateful to be in recovery from addictions. I contribute my healing journey to my spirituality, reconnection to my Nehiyaw/Plains Cree and Blackfoot traditions and Indigenous ways of knowing.

Today, I am 4 years, 7 months sober. I have used the SMART (Self-Management and Recovery Training) program and use parts of the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-Step program in my recovery journey. I look forward to sharing knowledge with you as we walk this Great Circle of Life together.

My story of addiction is not a single event that occurred, rather a series of events that led me to coping negatively to adverse childhood experiences. I grew up in a middle-class family where I was afforded many privileges until this picturesque family fell apart because I also came from a family who did not understand their own addictions. Addictions have negatively affected my family for generations, still to this day. 

When my parents separated, I began using substances as a way out, I never thought my substance usage would progress from recreationally drinking and cannabis usage to a heroin addiction. I don’t think anyone wants to get to that point, but it happened so easily for me. I was diagnosed with ADHD and was left unmedicated. Living with Concurrent disorders was a major factor in my addiction and recognizing this led to my recovery. 

At the tender age of 18 I had recovered and relapsed three times. I have been sober 15 years and I am so grateful for all the people who afforded me the grace to fail before I could succeed.

My name is Cory and I’m a recovering addict. On August 29, 2006 I walked into my recovery and I have been working on it since. I am a Sixties Scoop survivor, and both my parents were residential school survivors. Because there were no services available to Native people back then, they both turned to addiction to cope with their experiences, and I was lost to the system when I was 6 months old. I spent nearly 16 years being abused in the foster system, and at 16 I was chased to the streets at knife point. I spent the next 14 years living on and off the streets, and 26 years in active addiction which I was forced into at knife point when I was 8 years old.

Being a functional addict, I continued to work and train. I worked and volunteered in non-profit, worked in warehouse and trades, and trained in multiple fields by utilizing contract employment services. I dealt with a lot of loss along the way, but I kept moving forward. In 2015 I suffered a back injury that ended my trades career, and I spent until 2016 rehabilitating my back while living homeless in Calgary. I applied to all the post-secondary schools because I promised my children I would go back to school with them to keep learning. I told my kids “A promise is a promise, and you don’t break a promise.” They were 5 and 7 at the time.

I kept my promise and convocated on November 10, 2022. After all the personal challenges I faced to get my degree, I am using my education to create a recovery program. My favorite quote for my recovery is “I embrace solutions, not excuses!” John Taffer, Bar Rescue (ironically).

Spring of 2018, I boarded a small plane to Prince George, B.C. at 630am with my aunt, uncle, their two close friends, and my typical daily hangover. I was invited to be a facilitator and support coach at a 4-day retreat that was hosted by my aunt and uncle’s friend who had spent the last few years learning and working alongside remote Indigenous nations in northern BC and had created a recurring wellness retreat.

I was invited to come support in this work as I had just graduated a master’s in counselling degree and had worked in the therapeutic support field for close to 12 years. On paper, and in presentation, I usually resembled a competent, professional, knowledgeable, and put-together worker in my field. In reality, I was relentless in my pursuit to self-destruct, to end, which felt completely driven by something that was not me. 

On the plane ride, I learned this man who I had been enlisted to help, had changed his life career to supporting Indigenous communities and had been in recovery from drugs (including alcohol) for over 40 years. I was 32, and this idea, concept, prospect of “recovery” or being able to live life outside of my own chaos with heart, health, and happiness had never resonated with me until that day. During the retreat that I arrived as “helper” I was immersed into a space which felt like I had been welcomed home. Surrounded with people, stranger to me, but alike, who held parts of my own story, I identified my chaos for the first time in my life and said… “I’m an addict, and I need help.” 

Relief. The ugly, raw, unspeakable, and hidden parts of my life no longer needed to be stifled and numbed through using substance. For me Recovery is a path to finding something lost, restoring or strengthening well-being in a way that works for the individual. May 30th 2018, the day I boarded that plane was the first day of my recovery and I have been clean and sober since. I am recovering, one day at a time.