Sleep Country Canada and Listen Up Canada co-founder Gordon Lownds spoke with People First Radio about his experiences with cocaine addiction, which he’s documented in a new memoir called Cracking Up.
According to his memoir, while he was in the work associated with the startup phase of Sleep Country, Lownds ended up in a relationship with a woman he met while she was working at a strip club in Seattle.
“This woman ended up moving in with me in Vancouver, after knowing her for about a year, and a couple of months with living with her, I discovered that she had a drug problem, which was a complete surprise to me,” he said.
“I didn’t see any of the warning signs at all. Tried to get her into treatment and she just wouldn’t go. And finally I told her that she was gonna have to leave ’cause I couldn’t run my business and live my life with a drug addict living with me. And so she just, she said, ‘I’m willing to go, but at least, why don’t you try it once with me? So you can see how it makes me feel and why it might be difficult for me to get off the drugs.'”
Lownds ended up trying crack cocaine.
I’ve been a survivor all of my life. I’ve outlasted a a lot of different adversities and it never occurred to me that trying cocaine once would create a problem for me. And it so happens that my introduction to cocaine was actually smoking crack cocaine, which is potentially a highly addictive substance. I didn’t know it was crack at the time…after the first hit, it was like euphoric chaos and, you know, all of the stress of the world, the problems, the concern about the drug, the girlfriend, it all disappeared magically. And it was just, it was complete euphoria. After you do do a hit of cocaine on a crack pipe, it lasts maybe 20 minutes to half an hour, and then as soon as it starts to basically dissipate, what you wanna do is, do another one. ’cause it felt so good. And so we ended up partying for the entire weekend, and I went to work on Monday morning saying, well, I can party on the weekends and this will be a lot of fun.
Lownds says that within six months he realized he had a problem. He would eventually take a leave from work, although at the time he didn’t tell his partners about his substance use.
“I figured if I could take a leave for three months, I can get my act together. The girlfriend had already gone back to Seattle and so there was nothing stopping me from getting clean and sober on my own. And for that three months, I just deteriorated further and just was shooting up cocaine on a daily basis.”
Two days after the date he’d said he would return to work, Lownds called business partner Stephen Gunn and explained that he had a drug addiction.
“Luckily Steve’s reaction was, ‘I’m really sorry to hear that. What can I do to help you?’ I didn’t expect that kind of, sort of compassion,” he said.
“Not that he’s a bad guy, but it just never occurred to me that someone would take that approach. Cause I was completely ashamed and felt guilty about the position I put myself in and the position I put my partners in.”
Gunn helped Lownds get into a treatment program in Toronto. Following treatment he would experience relapse, but was eventually, he was able to move past his addiction.
Lownds credits working with a psychiatrist that he met in treatment, as well as the help of people within the 12 step community.
I discovered was that people in in the 12 step programs are just like other people, some of them are good guys, some of them are not. A lot of them still have issues that they’re dealing with. And I was fairly unique in the sense that I had a ton of money at the time ’cause we sold Sleep Country just after I got clean and sober. And people found out. If you have money in a community where most of the people that are struggling financially, you become a bit of a target. I got a bit jaundiced about a lot of people in the program, but on the other hand, you know, there’s a ton of them out there that are well-meaning.
I would not have survived and gotten clean without their support, particularly in the early days. But one of the things that became clear to me is that when addicts and alcoholics get to the point where they get clean and sober…it’s quite common amongst that community to discover that now that I’m not doing drugs I’ve got some mental health problems that I have to deal with…12 step programs don’t help you with your mental health issues…if you’re bipolar or clinically depressed or narcissistic and a whole range of other things. So I realized, you know, that, that I had some mental health issues, which is why I continued to see the addictions doctor for a good, I’d say 10 years after I got clean and sober.
Lownds says addictions treatment is a very complicated issue, and that he doesn’t necessarily have strong opinions on some of the debates that are going on in society around issues like sober housing or safer supply programs.
“My only sort of fundamental belief is that whatever approach to helping people out gets the addict in touch with people who they can communicate with is the most important step in getting them to the point in their lives where they’re willing to deal with recovery,” he said.
“The harm reduction thing, some don’t like that. Some people don’t like the safe supply programs. But basically I’m saying if you’re getting an addict in touch with another human being, who has the ability to help them out when they’re ready to ask for help, then that’s a positive step forward.”
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