David Berner - All the Way Home: Building Recovery that Works

All The Way Home

Once in a generation an idea so bold, so new bursts forth it shatters our neat categories and changes the way we view an unsolvable problem. Davids book is a galvanizing probe into an uncommon but very effective way of treating drug addictions.

Here is Berner at his bestwise, funny, outrageous, rabbinical, maddeningly offensive, smoldering, and profaneyet tender, compassionate, and loving.

A watershed book a must read for any health care pro fessional.

LEE PULOS, PH.D., ABPP CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST

David B erner has blessed us with a roller-coast er memoira blood and guts drama revealing how a therapeutic community offere d abstention from ad diction. It is laced with humor, irony, and profanity. Berne r writes the way he speakswith rambling brilliance, at tim es uproarious, somet imes marvelously war m or lethal.

And in t he process Berner rev eals the charlatanry of Vancouvers supe rvised injection sit e: a pitiless revolv ing door enabling ad diction.

This is Berner t he Bard at his best.

JUSTIC E WALLACE GILBY CRAIG

Be warned: Dont begin this tome as late sleepy-bye reading b efore a hot conferen ce at nine the next m orning. You will arr ive a red-eyed, fur-t ongued readaholic. S tart for the style a nd story telling, st ay for the wisdom an d insight. Profane, profound, impatient, painful, but ultima tely a love story fo r the drug-users and drinkaddicted ex-c ons that only a fool about humanity would take risks for, the book is as unsparing about the complex B erner himself as it i s about X-Kalay, the group he founded in his early twenties so raw and fresh that we were making it up as we went along. His experience-shaped bombsight in the ad diction trencheswha ts a little mixed m etaphor among friend s?unerringly target s the blundering and costly nostrums of the fashionistas in t he media, academe, c onventional counsell ing, and frightened politics. This is no fawning blurb: Ive always cast a cynic al eye on any book de scribed as a real page- turner. Berners writ ten one.

TREVOR LAUTENS ,

COLUMNIST FOR BUSINESS IN VANCOUVER

All the Way Home is a startlingly candid memoir of a maveric k in the world of add iction treatment. Da vid Berner, well kno wn for his unorthodo x yet highly effectiv e methods, grabs his readers attention w ith a style so crisp and punchy, it pops . His well honed word smithing and thought ful insights are the mark of a master the rapist who has been awake and listening intently. Berner navi gates the contours a nd complexities of t he addicted mind wit h home truths precise ly drawn.

JESSICA MALKIN, M.A., M.S.W.

All The Way Home

Building Recovery That Works

DAVID BERNER

Copyr ight 2013 hy David Herner

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Berner, David, 1942-

All the way home : building recovery that works / David Berner.

ISBN 978-0-991 8220- 1 -0

1. Substance abuse--Patients--Rehabilitation-- Canada .

2. Substance abuse--P atients--Services for--Canada. I. Title.

Editing by Carole Audet

Cover design by Barbi Braude

Content design by Fiona Raven

eBook development: WildElement.ca

These are my memories; I am the teller of my own story. Certain episode s are imaginative recreation . To protect the privacy of others, some names have been changed and characters conflated.

If you would like to republish sections of this book, please contact the publisher for permission.

Published by

David Berner

www.davidberner.com

This book is dedicated to Geoff Cue.

Geoff has been my friend, mentor, father, and brother. Without his quiet and steadfast guidance and insistence, the

first therapeutic community program in Canada for alcohol ics, drug addicts, and ex-convicts would not have even begun, let alone thrived the way it has.

Without G eoff, I would not have discovered what I c an do and what I was meant to do in this life.

contents

foreword

In 1967 I met a man who would shortly ma ke the world a bette r place. His name wa s David Berner. He w as a volunteer with the Company of Young Canadiansthe CYC. I was just finishing u p my eight weeks of CYC training at a pl ace called Val David, Quebec. Volunteers and staff from severa l different projects s howed up to tell us about the work they w ere doing. David Berner was one of them.

He expl ained that he was th e volunteer on a pro ject in Vancouver c alled the Indian Post Release Centre . He wor ked alone. He said t hat the Indian Post Release Centre had o riginated with a grou p of inmates in the British Columbia Pen itentiary. He descri bed the project as a halfway house for e x-convicts. But then h e went on to say tha t the halfway house still wasnt much mo re than a good idea in a few peoples he ads. There was no actu al building yet and many of the inmates who had come up with the idea for the Ce ntre were still behi nd bars.

A short time later I ended up wor king on a CYC proje ct in British Columb ia. When I stepped off the plane in Vancouver, David Ber ner was waiting to p ick me up. During my first few weeks in V ancouver he showed m e around the city, ta lked to me about som e of his ideas for t he future of the yet- to-be-seen Indian Po st Release Centre an d invited me to acco mpany him on one of his many visits to t he BC Penitentiary.

I was never officially involved with the I ndian Post Release C entre project. But D avid saw to it that I stayed involved an yway. He saw to it that a lo t of outsiders stayed in volved. He had a way about him that was d ifficult to ignore an d impossible to refu se. Thats how it ha ppened that I was in vited to participate in the Centres firs t group therapy mara thon session. I had n o idea what to expec t when I showed up f or it but I learned p retty quick. There we re a bunch of other o utsiders in attendan ce who had to learn fast as well. We had all been invited to participate in the marathon because ther e were only a handfu l of ex-cons living in the halfway house a t the time.

The maratho n session was held i n a small room in th e second rented hous e that the Indian Po st Release Centre ev er called home. It s tarted around eight oclock in the eveni ng and wound down twe nty-four hours later . The marathon was a gruesome ordeal. Ther e was a lot of bagga ge in that room and i t all came out in an environment that wa s hot seat gestalt t herapy to the core. The marathon bristled with heated words a nd overflowed with mo re than just a few t ears. Offending people and then fuming over being offended your self, oh yeah, and then laughing hysterically about it afterwards, were the rules of the day and we were all into th at crazy game like w ild animals. We never left that small room. We even ate our meals there. I specifically remem ber this because of s omething that happen ed that involved a p late of food. At some point one of the or iginal residents of the Indian Post Relea se Centrea big, sca rred-up guy who turn ed beat red when he g ot madjumped out of his chair, threw hi s plate of food again st the wall and scre amed, Halfway to wh at? Halfway to someth ing I dont want to go back to anymore?

In my mind, that inc ident marked the beg inning of the end of the Indian Post Rele ase Centre. Within a year, a new philosop hy for the halfway h ouse had begun to em erge and the place it self had a new name the X-Kalay Foundati on, the Unknown Path Foundation. What w as the unknown path? We were. Our dreams were reality. Step o ut in their direction .