My addiction used to control my life. Not Today.

Stacey Bowen knew it was time to seek help for her crack cocaine addiction the night her baby girl caught her by surprise.

During the day, as a single parent of two young girls, she took care of everything that had to be taken care of. From the moment she got them up for breakfast to the moment she tucked them in at night, all of their physical and emotional needs were met with loving care.

But when the girls went to sleep – and they always slept through the night – it was mommy time and smoking crack was what she did with it.  She always kept her bedroom door locked, just in case one of her girls would wake up at night and try to walk in.

But on this night, after getting high like she did almost every night, Stacey ventured out of her room to give one of her daughters a silent kiss on the forehead as she slept. Just as she was leaning in, her daughter’s eyes opened wide.

'"Mommy what’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with your face?” Stacey retreated to her bedroom and shut the door. Her daughter kept pounding her fists on the outside of the door pleading to be let in. “I’m thinking My God what am I going to do? And that’s when I realized, oh my God, this is the moment.”

Fourteen years of continued success free from addiction and one grandchild later, she now works full time as a CAMH peer support worker.

“You have to be ready for treatment to work, but I believe that sometimes interventions are necessary.”

That is what got Stacey on her road to recovery.  Still haunted by the memory of the late night episode with her daughter, she agreed to treatment when all three of her sisters recognized that she needed help. 

“I wouldn’t be here without treatment.  My addiction was so out of hand where the dealers were coming for me, so yeah, I don’t believe I would be here.  I believe my children would have been taken away from me and I would have lost my housing and my life.”

Of the 34,000 patients who come to CAMH every year, one in four seek inpatient and outpatient treatment for a range of substance use disorders, including alcohol, cocaine, heroin and other opioids. But with an opioid epidemic that pre-dated COVID still raging, demand for addiction services at CAMH has skyrocketed in recent years, with emergency department admissions almost doubling this decade.

“We’re in a crisis now.  All you have to do is walk out your door to see it. You walk down the street and see somebody who has no place to live and no people in their life.  Many times it’s because of untreated addiction and underlying trauma that leads to addiction. You look in their eyes and there is nothing there."

"There’s nothing there and it’s not right.  Everybody should have their health taken care of and that’s not living. It’s dying.  These people are dying slowly, but they’re dying.”

Despite the grim realities of life on the front lines of addiction services, Stacey has an unshakable belief in the power of treatment at CAMH to help people get their lives back.

“I am so thankful to the people who donate to CAMH.  You are changing the lives of a lot of people. I’ve seen the changes.  Young, old, disabled, people of every race.  I see how the nurses and everyone else takes care of our clients and get their lives back.  For me, CAMH has been a place of hope and change. I look at all the thank you cards from clients that we put on the walls and it makes me so glad that I work at CAMH.”