Shane Sturby-Highfield’s road to recovery has been a lengthy journey.
“Drug addiction and alcohol abuse is just merely a symptom of underlying issues that I had,” Sturby-Highfield told Global News.
“My life changed around the age of 10. That’s really when I started more along the lines of my addictive behaviour.”
Sturby-Highfield says he started using drugs and alcohol at the age of 15. In his 20s, it started to spiral out of control. He became unemployed and found himself without a home, isolated from loved ones.
“My addiction started to grow into the point it was completely unmanageable,” he said. “I wouldn’t show up for work, I wouldn’t show up for gatherings, I started to isolate myself a lot more.”
He went to treatment twice, but each time fell back into addiction. Then, in 2021, came a turning point.
“I built up the courage to phone a friend and say, ‘This is where I’m at, I need someone to come get me otherwise I’m not going to be here in the morning.’”
Sturby-Highfield went to a RAAM clinic and then to a detox centre, before getting into the Bruce Oake Recovery Centre. That would become his third and final time accessing treatment; Sturby-Highfield has been sober ever since.
“I didn’t feel alone.”
The 50-bed treatment facility for men opened in 2021, founded by sportscaster Scott Oake and his late wife Anne out of their own grief. They lost their son Bruce to addiction just over 15 years ago.
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“Bruce was a gifted child, he was good at a lot of things, but his path into addiction was the same one followed by a lot of addicts: Weed in high school, which didn’t separate him from a lot of his classmates, but then Bruce had been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder around eight or nine, and that made him ripe for taking chances,” Scott Oake told Global News.
“Starting with ecstasy and then crystal meth and then after that it was a giant leap into opioids and the drug that would eventually claim his life: heroin.”
Oake says the family never stopped trying to get Bruce the help he needed, and Bruce was stuck in a cycle of active addiction, recovery, and relapse.
“Then finally in March of 2011, we got the call no parent should ever get. There would be no more attempts at recovery because Bruce was dead of a heroin overdose in Calgary,” Oake said, adding the family wrote his obituary on the plane ride to Calgary to get their son.
“There was no shame in what had claimed his life and we wouldn’t hide behind it. So the first line of Bruce’s obituary reads: ‘Tragically Bruce Oake lost his battle with addiction at the tender age of 25.’ And that one line really was the genesis of the project that has become this beautiful place, the Bruce Oake Recovery Centre.”
The 50-bed facility for men opened in August 2021. Since then, more than 600 men have graduated its recovery program.
“When someone comes in, often they are really at a low point in their lives. With our long-term, four-month program, there’s a transformation that happens while you’re here,” executive director Greg Kyllo told Global News.
Oake says it’s rewarding to see the success stories at the centre.
“Every time I walk through the doors of the Bruce Oake Recovery Centre, I am inspired because as soon as I walk through here, I can feel the buzz, the culture,” Oake said.
“And as I always say, it’s a culture of kindness, it’s a culture of love, but most of all, it’s a culture of hope.”
That culture of hope is something that helped Sturby-Highfield reclaim his life, and one he wants to share with others walking down a similar path.
“The moment we stop trying is when all hope is lost, and I reached that point in myself, too. It can take us to a dark place. Keep trying, keep putting the effort in,” Sturby-Highfield said.
“Reach out for help. It’s never too late.”
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