Culture key to recovery

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Will Johnson has been arrested 136 times. Each time, he was drunk.

"If I didn't drink, I wouldn't have a criminal record today," he says.

Many of the charges were simply for being intoxicated in a public place but quite

a few were for assault. In 1972 he was convicted of manslaughter. The sentence was suspended. Two years later he was charged with attempted murder.

It's quite a past to overcome, but 20 years after his manslaughter conviction, Johnson is dry and holding down a good job at a Winnipeg car lot.

He's had three attempts at sobriety in those 20 years, including one eight-year stint of not drinking before a mixture of frustration, depression and hopelessness sent him back to the bottle.

This time it's different, says Johnson, who is Metis.

"This time I got involved with my culture."

That focus came form the Pritchard House alcohol treatment program run by

the Native Alcoholism Foundation of Manitoba. Johnson entered the Winnipeg-based program three years ago. At Pritchard House, an emphasis on Native culture is a key

part of the program. The "holistic" approach tries not only to heal the body, but to feed the mind and spirits as well.

Through the process of learning about his culture, Johnson says he learned about himself. Now he regularly attends Native ceremonies and goes to a sweat lodge at least once a week. The friendships and the beliefs he's formed at things he can turn to when the going gets tough - things he can turn to instead of the bottle.

Johnson took his first drink when he was 12 years old, stealing whiskey from his dad's bottle and replacing it with weak tea and lemon gin from his mother's bottle, topping it up with water.

The family lived in Snow Lake, a small community in norther Manitoba that lives up to the bleak pr9mise of its name. Barely in his teens, he started hanging out at the dorms of the young miners working for the Hudson's Bay Mining and Smelting Co. A good singer, he was popular, and he would go from dorm to dorm, partying, drinking.

When he was 15, he moved to Cranberry-Portage, Manitoba and got a job working in the bush for six to eight months at a time at the sawmills. He kept drinking, and after a while, he was no longer the fun-loving singer when drunk.

"As things progressed, I started being the one who was the disturber, I was the one getting into fights, getting in trouble with the law."

One drunken punch sent a man through a glass door. His jaw hit so hard it broke and ruptured his brain, killing him.

He moved to Winnipeg and lived on Main Street, the seedy, run-down dangerous part of town that is home to the down-and-out, the drug addicts, alcoholics - people like Will Johnson used to be.

He drank "nearly every day - and not just booze. That's when I found out about aftershave and rubbing alcohol."

And he fought. He followed a man back to his hostel and beat him up and was charged with attempted murder. He spent three months in remand and the charges were dropped when the victim disappeared.

"I knew I had to get myself straightened out," Johnson says. But it wasn't easy. The next several years were filled with instability. He went into a rehab program and stopped drinking. He got a job in a convenience store and worked his way up to manager. With a little money saved up, he moved to Vancouver to open up a gas bar with a friend. The friend stole money from the franchise and they were fired. He hired on with the Hudson's Bay Co. to manage a store in an Inuit community in the north. Then back to Vancouver where he got into roofing. Then to Saskatchewan to drive a truck with his dad, then back to a mining camp.

It was there, eight years later, that he started drinking again.

"My dad got cancer and died; one thing led to another. I was frustrated and I started drinking again."

He stopped shortly after starting, realizing it wouldn't take much to destroy everything he'd built up. Realizing he needed help, he moved to Saskatoon, started going to Alcoholics Anonymous meeings, and finished his grade 10, 11 and 12 within a year.

Things didn't work out. He lost his job, couldn't find another and started drinking again, stopped for several years, got a good job at a car lot, and built up a $37,000 bank account. In seven months of 1989 he managed to blow it on alcohol and cocaine. He got evicted from his apartment because he couldn't pay rent.

He can remember the date - July 12, 1989 - when he woke and said to himself "I don't want to drink anymore."

"I was fed up with all I had done...it was the same old cycle, over and over again."

He quit his job and went into the Pritchard House Treatment Centre and this time the program's emphasis on traditional Native beliefs and lifestyle had an effect on him. He grew stronger spiritually and mentally.

Three years later he still goes to meetings at Pritchard House. He's in touch with his brother and sister. He has friends and a steady job reconditioning old cars.

"It's OK, it's good...I look forward to getting up in the morning."