From Darkness To Life

One of the biggest life lessons I am working on is patience, and my patience has paid off in this case! I finally had the opportunity to sit down with one of the members of Our Collective Journey, also known as OCJ.  

My guest is Ryan Oscar, one of three co-founders of OCJ and the podcast, From Darkness To Life. Our Collective Journey aims to connect people with people and strengthen communities through the power of shared experience.  

They pride themselves on authentic, honest connections with individuals rooted in shared experiences. What they’re doing amazingly well is helping people share their stories because every time that happens, it helps erase the shame for others, which allows them not to feel so alone in their pain.   

Here are three reasons why you should listen to the complete Episode:

1. Ryan shares his addiction and recovery story and what he is doing to help others.
2. We discuss the gaps in the system and how Our Collective Journey plans to fill those gaps.
3. He talks about the podcast and the power of shared experiences.

 

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

Who is Ryan Oscar

• Ryan has suffered addiction to alcohol and drugs.
• After his second suicide attempt, an act of God saved him and led him to the path of recovery.
• After going back to college at the age of 40, he is now a qualified addiction counselor.
• By sharing his story and the story of others, he helps to bring hope to those who feel hopeless.

Ryan’s upbringing

• Ryan is originally from Saskatchewan, relocating to Medicine Hat in 2015.
• He grew up in what he perceived as an average household as he didn’t know any different.
• There was a lot of anger, violence, and alcohol involved in his home.

A man’s man

• Ryan’s father was a man’s man.
• He played hockey and did a few jobs in the oil patch.
• Ryan wanted to be like his dad, his role model.

Fitting in

• Following in his dad’s footsteps, Ryan played hockey and excelled.
• At 14, he was playing with much older guys and felt that he didn’t belong.
• He started to drink with the team, it made the inadequacy he felt disappear, and he could connect with them.

Excessive drinking

• Ryan didn’t drink every day, but when he did, it was extreme.
• The people he surrounded himself with drank the same way, so he never thought that he had a problem.
• This led to many downfalls, like not completing university and leaving his hockey career.

Moving back to Saskatchewan

• Ryan had a fiancee at the time and a little boy.
• He wanted to be like his dad, so he got into the oil and gas industry.
• With the same mentality as when he grew up, he found people who drank like him and started the same cycle.

Violence and alcoholism

• Although Ryan wanted to be like his father, he despised him simultaneously.
• He got into fights all the time, not caring about the consequences, and alcohol made it easy.
• He admits that he created a lot of chaos and ruined many situations through violence and alcoholism.

Working his way up the ladder

• Over 15 years, Ryan worked his way up to second in charge. 
• His dad was the superintendent in charge.
• He and his dad argued over something petty, and Ryan told his dad to beat it.

The death of his father

• Ryan’s father ended up hitting some black ice that day, rolled his truck, and passed away.
• His father had tried to call him a few minutes before the accident, and Ryan chose to ignore it. This led to immense guilt.
• Ryan went to the accident scene and saw his father in his truck, already deceased.
• Being a man’s man, he took it upon himself to tell his mother and brother.

The catalyst to self-destruction

• There was a lot of guilt and shame that Ryan felt due to this trauma.
• He says this experience was the catalyst for his self-destruction.
• People had told him to see a counselor, but he thought this was not what a man does.
• A couple of days after the funeral, Ryan went back to work.

Trying cocaine

• Ryan progressed further up the ladder, taking over his dad’s seat.
• He started drinking a lot more, and things became very chaotic.
• He stumbled across some hockey guys doing cocaine in the bathroom and decided to try it.
• It never crossed his mind to do it again after that one time.

From alcohol to cocaine

• After four months, he tried cocaine again and eventually found himself in that circle of guys.
• He started dabbling a bit more, and within three months, he was a daily user.

No consequences for his actions

• Ryan spiraled out of control and tried to take his life.
• He ended up in a psych ward and doing treatment.
• He didn’t need to face any consequences, and he just went back to his life, his job, and his marriage.

Relapsing

• Ryan was clean and sober for six months, and then he relapsed.
• He relapsed with alcohol, and within two hours, he had an eight ball in his pocket and went down the rabbit hole.
• The next day, he was in the hot seat for being intoxicated, and he discovered that it was the alcohol that had consequences.
• People hadn’t noticed that he had used drugs again.

Drugs became a staple

• For the next year and a half, Ryan didn’t need alcohol, and drugs became a staple in his life.
• From the time he woke up to when he went to bed, he was using.
• Everything appeared to be fine from the outside. He got a promotion, bought a nice big house, and had a few vehicles.
• Ryan was crumbling inside, but he felt that his whole world would fall apart if he reached out for help.

His last run

• Knowing that he was not returning, Ryan stole a work truck and referred to it as his last run.
• At this point, his wife had caught him and frozen all bank accounts.
• He had cocaine, prescription drugs, cough syrup, and a couple of bottles of vodka, hoping this cocktail would be his end.
• He was in a truck in the middle of nowhere and eventually went to sleep, at peace that he would be out of everyone’s hair.

An act of God

• Early morning, his uncle knocked on the window and found him.
• It was nothing short of an act of God as he had gone through great lengths not to be found.
• Ryan was furious and felt a sense of failure.

The recovery

• Ryan spent a lot of time in the ICU and ended up back in the psych ward.
• This time, it was different as everything he was fighting to keep had come crashing down.
• Ryan went to a private treatment center and told the psychiatrists everything they wanted to hear.
• Two weeks into treatment, he was still contemplating suicide and putting together a suicide plan.

The counselor who called him out

• A counselor was in the 12 step program for more than two decades.
• He was the only one who could see through the bullshit and said that Ryan should come to find him when he’s ready, to be honest with himself.
• The next day, Ryan went to see him and worked with him for seven weeks.

Biking across Canada

• Ryan met a member of staff who was a few months into her recovery.
• She had planned a bike trip across Canada and invited Ryan.
• Ryan had nothing else going on at the time, so he thought it would be a good idea for his recovery.

Raising funds along their bike journey

• To keep family members and friends informed, they started a Facebook page.
• They decided to raise funds for the treatment center, helping one or two people who couldn’t afford the $15,000.
• By the time they got to Halifax, they had +_900 followers and had raised $22,000.

Going back to college at 40

• They both ended up enrolling in the addiction counseling program during their bike trip.
• Ryan thought he would sail through given his journey but forgot about the academic part of the course.
• Writing exams was difficult given the challenges that came with short-term memory loss due to cocaine use.
• He, however, made it through and went out to practicum.

Addiction crisis worker

• Ryan ended up doing a couple of practicums over three years as an addiction crisis worker.
• He then co-founded Our Collective Journey, eventually doing this full-time while also counseling on the side.

Our Collective Journey

• All the founders of OCJ were in recovery and talked about filling the gaps.
• The goal is to connect people with people.
• Strengthening the community through the power of shared experience.

Answering the call for help

• OCJ is committed to being available when someone calls for help.
• They encourage people to reach out for help and respond as soon as possible.
• When someone finally gets the courage to reach out, the window of opportunity closes fast, so they want to be there to listen and help.

People reaching out

• The details of people who reach out are kept confidential.
• Almost 200 people have reached out so far.
• This includes people who recognize that they have a problem and their family members.

Gaps in the system

• Some of the cracks in the system include capacity, time, and funding.
• Not everyone will get one-on-one treatment, so there is a very cookie-cutter approach.
• Filling out paperwork and transportation are also gaps in the system.

The podcast

• By sharing their stories and the stories of others, they hope that they will resonate with others suffering from addiction.
• Each of them has fought the darkness that has brought them to the brink of taking their lives. 
• They want people to know that they’re there to help with a level of understanding unparalleled.

Common threads

• Everyone has a different story to tell, but the feelings experienced with addiction are all the same.
• The sense of guilt, shame, and isolation.
• Trauma is also one of the leading underlying causes of addiction.

Forgiveness

• There is freedom in forgiveness and letting go.
• Ryan would want his dad to know that he has no resentment. He was doing the best he knew how. 

What he is grateful for

• First and foremost, Ryan is grateful for his recovery and having a choice.
• He’s grateful that he found God and has a family and health.

3 Powerful Quotes from this Episode

14:29 – “Drugs were a staple in my life from the moment my feet hit the floor to the moment whatever time of day it was I went to bed and used behind that curtain right behind that, that mask that everything is okay. And as long as I wasn’t drinking, people weren’t questioning me. At that time, the wife and I bought a nice big house up on the hill, and I got a promotion. We had some vehicles and this and that and everything on the outside. I painted this picture that man; he’s got it going on. He’s doing so well. But behind that picture, I was crumbling. And upstairs mentally, I was broken.”

47:43 – “We like to say that our stories are different, but the feelings that come with them are the same. And I think that has a lot to do with it doesn’t matter where you come from, what demographic, what level of income, the feelings you experience in addiction are the same. And a lot of it is that isolation. In the end, it’s I’m alone in this nobody’s ever going to understand.”

49:18 – “Oh, and another common thread is trauma, right? Yeah. Gabor Matei talks about all the time most professionals in the addiction world talk about trauma, which is one of the underlying issues or underlying causes for eviction. And for me, it wasn’t. As I said earlier on, I didn’t think I came from a normal home, and I didn’t. I’ve never thought I had a traumatic experience growing up, but now I look back and think, Wow, it’s not the event itself. It’s how I processed it, and there’s a lot of trauma back then”.

 

Connect with Ryan Oscar

Our Collective Journey   

Instagram

 

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Thanks for listening,

Tiff