"I mean, little things make me happy," Rebecca Roberts said sitting in the sun on a cafe patio in Courtenay. "Even just enjoying the beautiful nature in the Comox Valley."
It was one of the last sunny days of summer, and the breeze was just right.
"I grew up here in the Comox Valley," she said, looking out at the trees. "I moved here just before Grade 1, did all of my schooling here. I did well in school, had lots of friends."
However, she hasn't always had that stability in her life. Actually there was a time where Roberts was actually reported missing by her family when she was lost on the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver.
Roberts' journey started the way a lot of teenager's do in small towns, with being bored on weekends. She started experimenting with drinking and drugs, eventually realizing she had a problem after too many trips to the hospital.
"The first time that I realized I had a problem, I was I kept finding myself hospitalized from alcohol," she said. "The nurse told me 'did you know that alcohol is addictive?' and I yeah I didn't. I hadn't even really realized that, and it made sense because I would end up in the hospital and then I would be drinking that same day.
"Drugs and alcohol been a part of my story since, you know, from way back," she said. "I had an intervention by mom and about seven of my best friends ... they had hired a worker, and her way of dealing with it was through a 'tough love' approach. It was actually super harmful. However, I did go to treatment on the mainland and stayed clean and sober for about two years.
"Then I ended up relapsing and eventually lost my place and all of my belongings. I was living in my vehicle and eventually that stopped running, and so I was homeless."
As many have experienced before and since, that slope of addiction is slippery. It was how she ended up living unhoused in Vancouver for eight years.
"I had you know a lot of health issues going on from being unhoused and and using you know fentanyl, crystal meth and anything else I could get my hands on. My health was deteriorating and I was just feeling really lost. I spent three years where I didn't talk to my mom or any of my loved ones. My mom finally put a missing person's report out for me and we reconnected then."
After that, Roberts decided to make a change. She put in a request to go to treatment and spent a year at three different treatment facilities. She finished one program after six months, and then did two more three month programs. Eventually she was able to get into second stage housing on the mainland, however it was only three blocks from Hastings Street.
"I had a boyfriend for seven years while I was unhoused and he was still in active use and we ended up reconnecting," she said. "I ended up relapsing and I lost my my second stage place. I ended up back on the streets for about 10 more months."
She still had recovery as a goal, and tried to get her partner to come into treatment as well. She was put on a seven-to-nine-month waitlist for treatment, which she said "is just crazy."
"So many people die in that waiting period of trying to get help," she said.
It got to a point where she had to tell her partner "I'm doing this no matter what. I have to choose me... and I'm making this decision for myself."
She went back to treatment. As she approached her discharge date, she could not find a second stage housing option. However, a friend offered a place to stay in the Comox Valley and it finally started to stick.
"I moved here straight from treatment," she said. "It's been such a wonderful experience coming back to the Valley in recovery."
Now, it's about "just showing up for yourself you know being willing to do whatever it takes, being on top of the basics. Being unhoused for so long, it's taken a while just to kind of feel like normal again and functioning like a healthy adult in in society. I started with getting my ID, and then I got my driver's license and my mom helped me buy a car and that's been a game changer."
To Roberts, recovery is something that is done with others. She said that the opposite of addiction is connection, and to have someone who has been through the process helping along the way was a very important part of her recovery.
"I have a home group through Narcotic Anonymous, it's a women's-only group and I religiously go to it every week. That's a huge part of my recovery — having a community," she said. "Going to 12-step meetings is a big part of it. I have a sponsor and we talk weekly ... I'm also a peer support worker at the Village Medical Clinic, and am a peer on the Care-A-Van."
When she moved back to the Valley, Roberts was taken on as a patient at the Village Clinic. She worked with a peer named Callum, who she said "truly made all the difference."
"Dealing with someone with lived experience increases the empathy and feeling not judged really helped me feel like I had a team again. I am so grateful," she said. "Gratitude is key to being successful in all areas of my life."
For that reason, Roberts has become a peer herself. She's got a diploma in human service work, and just started taking two social work courses at North Island College, thanks in part to Peter from the Lifelong Learning Centre.
"You can just emphasize so much easier. I truly get where people are coming from, and I'm able to open up and feel that compassion. I enjoy giving that back, because so many people have contributed to my success .. it's really rewarding to see someone come in and go from not doing well to being housed, maybe they've gotten a haircut, to eating solid meals. You get to see people do better. It's very rewarding."
"Giving back, to me, is a huge part of my recovery."
"Being tied to opioid addiction is slavery, really," she said. "It's terrible ... it's ... it's scary when you're doing things that you would never imagine doing just to not get dope sick. The housing piece is huge. It's really hard to get clean or even want to get clean ... or do something positive for yourself if you're not even able to meet your basic needs."
"I just want to give hope that (recovery) is possible. I've come from literally the very bottom to being a functioning part of the society. Just keep trying, because we've lost so many people to the torture of drug poisoning and crisis, and I truly believe that so many deaths were preventable."
"Just don't give up on them because there's always that light," she added. "They're still in there. I know that the substances can make them do things that they're you know wouldn't normally do, but that person's still in there and they need the they need love, they need your love."
Mental health, substance use, and grief services and supports are available. Residents may call Service Link at 1-888-885-8824 to learn about supports that best meet their needs. If someone is experiencing a crisis, they can contact the Vancouver Island Crisis Line, available 24/7, at 1-888-494-3888. To access mental health and substance use services, visit Mental Health & Substance Use Services or HelpStartsHere.gov.bc.ca. For harm reduction information and resources, like where to get Naloxone, visit Toward The Heart. The Village clinic, the only OAT (opioid agonist therapy) clinic in the Comox Valley accepting new patients, provides support for people struggling with opioid use. You can contact them at 250 331-6333.
