Counsellor draws on own experiences

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"You can't put a bandage on loneliness, fear and anger, but you can sedate the loneliness and fear with drugs, at least for a time. I know, because I've had all those experiences."

So said Peter Strikes With A Gun, Director of the Peigan Prevention Counseling Services at Brocket, Alberta. He spent 20 long years in a drug abuse cycle, destroyed a good marriage and temporarily alienated his two children.

"I was living in Edmonton and I could almost always find work so I'd fool myself by saying, 'You're not so bad. You've got a job. You've got friends,' so I could put sobriety on the back burner. But then I'd lose the job and that would be an excuse to drink even more."

Strikes With A Gun admits now that it was a fantasy that he could just work through his problems by himself, but he said treatment programs really didn't work for

him for a long time.

"I was too afraid to expose myself to other people. I couldn't trust anyone. I didn't feel important enough within myself, so I wound up being defensive and feeling sorry for myself, instead of fighting for myself."

Eventually, even the drinking didn't help any more and he realized everything else had to take a back seat to his recovery.

"I was afraid of myself the most; of seeing what was really there inside me. But I began to realize that I was not so bad and that I was destroying the gifts given to me by the Creator. So in 1979, I surrendered everything - job, relationships, friends - and I devoted myself to staying sober."

It was years before he realized he could at least stay sober for one day at a time. During that period, his biggest help came from volunteering to work with other people who were going through the same difficulties. So 12 years ago he made another major decision - to come back to Brocket and his people.

"Coming back here was both and hardest and the best part of my recovery. My family were almost all abusers, so I had to detach myself from the people I cared about and loved the most. But I was determined to do this, and I turned my life over to a higher power and to change."

He became almost obsessed with getting well, going to almost any length for sobriety. He attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, hitchhiking to distant places if

no meetings were being held locally and organizing meetings himself.

Weekends he spent alone rather than risk getting caught up in social gatherings where everyone was drinking. In July 1981, after two years of sobriety, he was asked

to come work for the Peigan Counselling Services.

Today, as director of the counselling program, he continues to use his own experiences to help others. He now has a family again and is a caring husband, father

and foster father.

"I learned that you have to fight for yourself and find your own solution, but it also helps to have someone to talk to who understands what you're going through...

"Treatment helped me see that there were things I wanted to do with my life that alcohol was keeping me from doing. I think one of my greatest strengths here is that I can be a model to show that sobriety is not only possible, but that it can lead to a better life."