20: Near-Death Drug Addiction to Winning the Courage to Come Back Award and Founding Camp Kerry // The Story of Josh Dahling

My dad was murdered in 96 and for me I would refer to as one of my rock bottoms. He was murdered a couple weeks before that. I was supposed to finally go and see him and I hadn't seen him since I was 7, since he was deported and there wasn't like the Internet and stuff like there is today. Trying to locate my father and being able to make those connections was really difficult. When you're in the height of an addiction, like I was in difficult times, people wanting to help others and I believe that's how, whether it's for bereavement or anything else, I think if we can all think of what we can do to make the world a better place and to help other people, we ourselves will be better and we'll heal from any traumas we may have had. It just brings out the best in people.

Welcome to From Rock Bottom to Rockin It. I'm your host Eric Gilbert Williams and this is the podcast where we explore personal stories of people, people who hit absolute rock bottom, then got back up, wiped off the dust, kicked failure to the curb and now they're rocking it like you'd never believe if you didn't hear it. Live right here we cover subjects in business, sports and life in general. If you like this podcast, please share it. These interviews are intended to inspire, to motivate, to give hope and vision. So please share this episode with someone who needs it. Use your Instagram account, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, hand signals, trained pigeon sent smoke signals up in the air. Use Morse code, whatever you like. Just share the love and share this episode. Also, email me anytime. Podcastericilbertwilliams.com Send me questions you would like to have asked of future guests and I will incorporate them. Or just send me some suggestions on how to run a better podcast. Or just say hello, I'd love to hear from you. That's podcastricilbertwilliams with. I know you're going to love today's.

Interview so let's get started.

With us here today on From Rock Bottom to.

Rockin, it is Josh Darling and his powerful, heart touching story of recovery, redemption, perseverance, the Courage to Come Back award and the founding of Camp Carry. I'm going to let Josh tell his own story in his own words and we're going to explore his path to recovery and the thousands of people he's helped since then. Josh, welcome to the show.

Well, thanks for having me.

It's great to have you here. This is a passion project. All of our dedicated listeners who are listening to this right now, who of course have subscribed and liked and shared the channel already. Just putting that in there. But people on this show are accustomed to hearing powerful stories and using them as a source of inspiration and motivation. You know, when I was a kid it was really important to hear these types of stories and talk about these subjects, get them off my chest. And it really benefited me as a result. And this show is all about doing exactly that, talking about these rock bottom experiences and how did you turn it into a rockin it moment? And yesterday I was going through YouTube and I watched your acceptance speech with the courage to come back award. Really powerful. Anyone who's listening and isn't familiar with Josh's story, check out on YouTube the acceptance speech for the courage to come back award. I do encourage you to do that. But without further ado here, Josh, in your own words, what happened and what was your rock bottom moment so that people can understand where we're coming from?

I guess a little background might help, but I think I mentioned to you that I have a few times in my life that I would refer to as rock bottom.

Yeah, more than one. Yeah.

I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 76 and at that time there was apartheid regime. Yeah, it was basically a war and there was a division of people based on race. My mom was born there and I have other relatives born there and generations born there. And at any rate, my mom didn't want to raise us in that type of environment because there was a lot of violence. We immigrated to Canada in 1980 and it was difficult times. My mom didn't have any supports here and now. Long story short, we're very poor. So we lived in low income housing for a period of time. And I guess it wasn't the changes my mom had hoped for in South Africa. She had a good job and I guess we lived fairly well. And when we came to Canada, we went without food and got into things that a lot of people did in our neighborhood, into drugs and into drinking and that sort of thing.

The exchange rate even now is particularly low. I have a few friends that have moved here from South Africa. And one common denominator I've noticed is that it's very difficult to get here from South Africa, partly because of the cross border challenges in the immigration office and acknowledging that apartheid was there and there's political issues and also because of the exchange rate. If you're a wealthy person in South Africa, you're kind of normal over here and if you're normal over there, you're poor over here. If you're poor over there, well, you're pretty screwed. It's very, very difficult. Is that kind of what happened here?

Yeah, like, there's a lot of layers to that story. My mom was thrown in an orphanage when she was younger, and my mom. My mom's mom. So my grandmother fled to Canada to chase a man.

Okay.

So my mom struggled and went through some abuse issues and stuff in the orphanage, and that probably impacted her lifestyle and some of the parenting difficulties she had. But, yeah, when we came to Canada, my mom, I guess, had this dream that her mother would kind of support her because she had me and my brother at the time, and it didn't work out that way. And, yeah, we had no money. And I can't speak for all immigrants that came to Cannes in 1980, but we came through New west and then into Port Moody, and at the time, it was very Caucasian and wasn't very welcoming to immigrants. So a lot of stories I have, you know, I've spoken to people that immigrated, had similar stories. Like, for instance, I was one of those kids that always had cavity. I'd go to the dentist, and I never get freezing to get my fillings right.

Okay, that sounds painful.

Yeah, a lot of first nations people can relate to that. I used to have a Jamaica or a friend from Jamaica. He had similar experience. Not saying everybody was racist and all dentists were that way, but there still was a lot of people that were racist and weren't welcoming to immigrants.

That's interesting in Canada, of all places.

I mean, to me, I'm sort of that next generation, and I never really saw that. I mean, has Canada changed over the years, or what's your perspective on that? What sort of happened?

Yeah, I would say tremendously.

Okay.

And partially because of my experience of coming to Canada. And then years later, when I got educated, I just became a Canadian citizen in 2018.

Congratulations. That's very exciting. Glad to have you here.

Very proud to be a Canadian citizen, but things were very difficult for us. There's a lot more things in place for a lot of immigrants. And, you know, I can't speak for everybody, but our experience wasn't very positive, and we were very poor. My dad came over about a year or two later, impregnated my mom, and then he was deported for various reasons. So then my mom was. Had three kids, and then we were put into a transition home for nine months after my sister was born for safety reasons. After that period, my mom met a guy. Well, several guys but one person in particular who I could refer to as a stepdad, and he was drunk and abusive. And me and my brother were sexually abused where I was for sure, for a number of years. We struggled as kids. That's all I can say. Like, I don't really want to talk too much more about it. Got out onto the streets in my teenage years, got into trouble. Kind of the typical story you hear from a lot of people with backgrounds like mine. You, you drink, you do drugs, you do things that you wouldn't probably do if you had a loving and nurturing home and do a lot of damage along the way. And I had three girls impregnated between the time I was 13 and 20. And those three, well, two were miscarriages, one had an abortion. And those were difficult times for me. And I remember dealing with my emotions, particularly through my teenage years, with drugs. It seemed to kind of numb things out. It's really hard telling my story because I go all over the place and I keep getting all these flashes of things.

Let me help you out, because this is a conversation and anyone who's new to the show. So people listening to this show have. Everyone has a rock bottom moment and a rockin it moment, and they all land in various spectrums, various levels of intensity. And so someone listening to the show, if you've never shared your rock bottom moment before, imagine you were just on air right now and sharing and trying to share those intimate details. What does that strike inside you? What kind of emotion comes up? The courage that it takes to sit here on air and for me to tell my story. Look, I got arrested for drug trafficking as a kid and I was lost and ran away from home and I never graduated from high school. And this stuff is. Now it's comfortable for me to talk about it because it took years of training. And when I bring different guests here on the show, we never know to what level it's going to hit different people and what kind of impact it's going to have. So you already won the Courage to Come Back award. And I just want to acknowledge here that you are a very courageous person to share and talk about this stuff. And that's why your story is really impactful. A lot of people don't have that strength yet. And I say yet on purpose because it takes time to get it to go on air and talk about some of this stuff. So I appreciate where you're coming from. If we go backwards a second. My dad went through several foster homes when he was little and it was Very difficult for him. He's told me a few stories about some of the abuse that happened. And at the end of the day, though, he won't talk about it. He won't really tell me the details at all. And I don't have any idea exactly what he went through. And when I was little, I had a lot. I mean, even as an adult, I had and perhaps even still have a lot of resentment towards him in the way that he was part of my life as a father figure. I mean, he didn't do anything bad to me at all. He was a. I think that he really did his best effort, and I love him and appreciate him for that. But he wasn't the father that I wanted. And once in a while, when I go to blame him, I think back to some of the stories that he tried to tell me about when he was in a foster home and how difficult that was. And with him as my role model, I saw the world as he saw it, which was very scattered, scary. That's probably the best two words to describe it. Scattered and scary. If we talk for a second, Josh, when I see you on your YouTube and I'm talking to you now, you've found a grasp on reality. Now you've made sense of it. You have a beautiful home. You told me a little bit about that. How did you find a sense of love in the world and understanding? And how did you figure out how to function in the world despite coming from these challenges that you went through?

I guess in a nutshell, growing up was tough. Went through a lot of things that most kids don't go through, and Canada at least. And I'm always aware there's always people that have had it, I would say more difficult than I did, but there was a couple people along the way that I thought would be there to help. But at the end of the day, they were just nice people and they were concerned, but they wouldn't let me live with them. You know what I mean? Right. My dad was murdered in 96, and for me, I would refer to as one of my rock bottoms. He was murdered a couple weeks before that. I was supposed to finally go and see him, and I hadn't seen him since I was 7, since he was deported. And there wasn't like the Internet and stuff like there is today. Trying to locate my father and being able to make those connections was really difficult when you're in the height of an addiction like I was. So Honey Radio was murdered. Somehow I managed to go over. He was in Greece it was really complicated because I didn't have a valid passport and we could talk all day about that process. But I went to identify his body. Hadn't seen him since I was 7. He had decomposed for 11 days. It was pretty gruesome. And that was a real rock bottom that like in the work I do today, I have an understanding of grief and how that can trigger addiction or maybe concurrent disorders. For me, I just kind of went into a rage and I had a drinking problem before. The world had a problem with my drinking and my drug use afterwards, if that makes sense.

Yeah, it lingered and it stuck with you.

I did a lot of damage and physically to myself, but a lot of damage to a lot of people. It was August 1, 1997. I woke up in a hospital. It's not the first time I'd woken up in a hospital. Actually, for a few years prior to that, it seemed to be like a monthly thing. But that particular time I woke up in the hospital, I was handcuffed to a hospital bed and had the typical. Well, I shouldn't say typical. It's not typical for most people, but at that time for me it was a typical conversation or, you know, Dr. Staring down at me saying, you're going to die, you need to stop this and all that stuff. And I couldn't get out of the bed. I couldn't do anything. I was incontinent to all those nasty things that come with abusing your body. And any rate, that was a very low point for me because the grief that I had been trying to stop from the time I saw my dad's body from when he died, and the grief I carried through my childhood of all the trauma and abuse that me and my family had experienced. I was kind of laying in that hospital bed and it was. I was starting to feel some of that, if that makes sense. So I would call that a bottle. The day after 8-2-97 became my sobriety date. So how did I come through that? Well, it wasn't by myself, I'll tell you that. Fortunately for me at that time, I used to do cocaine with this guy who was married to this friend of my mom, Gary. He died from alcohol related causes. But any rate, she had a friend that worked in the hospital. I was kind of known in the town and a regular there. So she had called Tracy. And Tracy came in and long story short, about a week or so after they were able to get me out of the hospital and into a facility where they used to detox and run A treatment program. You know, I had some charges and stuff. It was really complicated, and I don't remember all the logistics. It was kind of a fog. But long story short, I think I was three days in this place. It's no longer open, unfortunately. And the rules have changed a lot, too. So back then, if you had an addiction issue, they drop you off at a detox center. You go in, no questions asked. Now there's a lot of barriers to service. You got to go to the hospital, you got to get TB tests, wait 24 hours, and then try and get a bed. Most people will use between the time they can get a bed to when they went to hospital. And then you're stuck in that loop. For me, I went there, and my third day, I was still throwing up and getting sick, because when I was in the hospital, they kept me on a lot of Valiums so I wouldn't get violent. And they said, okay, Josh, now you got to help your bunk buddy here. You got to clean up his puke and carry him to the bathroom. And at that time, I was, you know, like, screw you, and non compliant, so to speak. But I don't know what happened other than I know for the three days prior to that, other people were doing the same for me. It was pretty gross. And what got ingrained in me, like, I was in this place for about six months. The only way I'm going to be able to help myself is to help somebody else. And that has basically been the foundation of my recovery, but also the foundation of how I live my life. And a lot of these people that were in that place with me, and I went to another facility after that. It was kind of a long process. And then I, you know, a couple years of court appearances and charges and whatever. But in a nutshell, how I got through that was when I was released from those facilities, I joined some groups where I could, whether it was making coffee, whether it was. I was court ordered to go into schools and tell kids. They wanted me to tell kids not to do drugs. And for me, during my childhood, it wasn't kind of black and white, so I had a problem with people drinking around me. But I like to drink because every time my stepdad got drunk, he'd abuse us and my mom and no sense and nonsense. But I could agree to tell the kids not to drink or do drugs because that's. That was my saving grace through some difficult times. So what I did was I'd go in the schools, and this was the agreement we came to And I would just kind of tell kids what could happen if you lived your lifestyle like I did. It doesn't end up pretty. Right? Right. For me, that was kind of also motivation to kind of do some of the stuff that I've done over the years to help people. I didn't realize that me going into school and saying, yeah, I drank and I had an accident and I hurt some people. I didn't realize that would actually have an impact because it wasn't a one time thing. This was a regular occurrence. And how I lived my life for a number of years still to this day. I wouldn't tell kids not to do drugs, but I'll tell them, you know, there's other ways to feel good. I did drugs because they initially made me feel good, but it doesn't last forever.

From a very early age too, I think if I remember correctly.

Yeah, from very early age and pretty much since my dad was deported.

So you were like seven or eight or something like that.

Yeah, first time.

My favorite part of your courage to come back award acceptance speech. You're cracking a joke and you were saying that you, you couldn't wait for this whole ceremony and all this stuff to be over so that you could go back to helping people. Yeah, I loved that joke. I thought it was powerful. It got to the point. The point here is to help people. It's not to do anything other than that.

Let me put that in perspective though, right. So I'm sitting in a room with about 3,000, I think it was the largest attended awards thing. They had 3,000 pretty prominent and influential people in the world every minute I was there. And you know, the things leading up to it, it's taking me away from doing the work that I do. You know, there's no funding in Canada for bereavement care services. And our mandate is to provide services to people that are coping with serious illness. The COVID virus, by the way, is classified as serious illness, grief and loss. Do you see a kind of a theme here?

There is, yeah.

So first of all, I'm thinking, well, all these people have the means. There was even some people from government there to not only fund my organization or services like it, but to influence legislative changes. So, you know, I had met with like the governor General and I don't know who else got a letter from the premier and this is all fine and dandy, it's bells and whistles, but I have a wait list of people that need to talk to someone because they're grieving or I have A teenager that wants to kill himself because his dad just died. Right. And that's where I feel I want to be.

And as soon as we come back from this short little break, I want to dive into the work that you are doing, the lives that you are impacting. And I'd like to hear what Camp Carry is all about. That when we come back from the short little break.

Hey, everyone. Eric. Here on From Rock Bottom to Rockin It. And on today's episode, I decided to support an organization called Fred Victor. You can check them out online@fredvictor.org this is an organization specifically focused on helping people who are homeless out in the world during this COVID pandemic. And obviously it's challenging for everyone. It's difficult for everyone in this time who. Social distancing affects everyone in every way. And if you're homeless, it even brings it to a new level. I mean, how do you protect yourself.

When you don't have that money?

How do you stay apart from people when you have no place to live? So that's what Fred Victor is all about. Check out the website. It's fredvictor.org that's fredvictor.org, i encourage you to check out the website. Pass the resources around. Donate, please, wherever you can. There's a relief fund that they're raising for very actively, and every dollar that you put in here is going to go a lot farther than you probably would ever realize. There's easily. In Toronto, there's over 9,000 people without a place to call home, and they're extremely vulnerable to the spread of COVID 19. Do it for them. Do it for us. Do it for the country. Do it for humanity. We all work together to get through this, and we will get through this. Check out fredviktor.org and now back to the interview.

We're back now. Thank you. Joshua, tell me about the work you're doing. I'd love to hear about some of these. Like, what's it like to be in Camp Cary? If I were there right now, what would it be like?

My partner in life now, her name's Dr. Heather Mohan. I've known her for probably about 30 years. And when I had sobered up, I went to school. Well, I had to go and do adult basic education and then go into university. I was in school for nearly a decade. I did seven courses at a time and I. I worked three jobs at a time working treatment centers. And Heather had asked me back in 2007, she said, Josh, I want you to Come. I'm starting this camp for families who have lost a loved one. And all I heard was, I want you to come and volunteer at the camp. And then I interpreted it as, I want you to come help me at my children's camp.

Okay.

When I did grief and the grief and loss course in university, that's what it was called. We learned Kubler Ross's model, which is. Can do a whole show on that. It was never intended for bereavement, but I never even learned the name bereavement. I didn't know what that meant. I didn't know it meant. Meant for working with people that are grieving. I declined. I said, no, I'm working in treatment center. I'm doing school. And you have fun with your children's camp, right? I went and I presented at a conference the following year. And all these people are coming, and they're saying, josh, you'd be so good at camp. And I'm like, I'm not going to children's camp. I'm dealing with the way I kind of thought of it at the time, real life issues here. In 2009, my life changed dramatically. 2008, actually, my marriage of 10 years ended because my ex was into drugs, and I became a single father of three quite quickly. 2009, I had a little bit of time, and I moved closer to where Heather was running this camp. And she approached me again and said, would you mind volunteering at my camp? And I'm like, fine, I'll go to your stupid children's camp.

Finally got you convinced.

I was going through a lot of court proceedings, and it was triggering a lot of things from my past, and I just felt I needed to surround myself with some distraction, I guess. And that's why I went. And I was sitting on a boat because camps used to be held in locations that were only accessible by boat. And I'm sitting on this boat with maybe a dozen or maybe close to 20 kids and teenagers. And I guess I'm kind of cool to some kids, or used to be. Not so much anymore because my hair's going gray, but I've got tattoos and earring, you know, kind of thing. And kids thought I was kind of cool. So they're all kind of sitting around me on the boat. I'm like, okay, this is kind of weird. And one kid said to me, I can't wait to get to Camp Cary. My dad died. And I'm like, that doesn't make sense. But my dad died, too. And I've never told Anyone that it's not something I talk about openly. And another kid said, well, my mom died all of a sudden, like I've got all these kids talking about who died in their life. And I was like, oh my gosh, this isn't a children's summer camp.

Yeah, you're not going to be working with crayons and pencil books and hopscotch. This is different type of camp here.

Even though I've been in School for 10 years, you know, in the helping profession. And I worked in two different treatment centers, one with the influential people in the military and another one with inmate, I thought I seen it all, but I was terrified that I was going to a grief camp. And I'm going to have to hear these kids stories because up to that point I never really spoken openly. Our family did not talk about my dad dying. He died. It was gruesome. I came back and we just kept partying. Still to this day, my brother's still just not doing too good. At any rate, what I can tell you is at the time, Camp Carry was just a once a year camp for bereaved families. And it was very small. And Heather ran the palliative care program at Lionsgate Hospital, North Vancouver. And she just ran this camp once a year off the side of her desk. And I can tell you I'd been involved in recovery. I worked in treatment centers. I'd been both the recipient and a provider services myself. The transformation I had seen in three days with these families was phenomenal. And then also with myself. It was the first time that I felt I had a place where I could process my own grief. Not only that of just my father, but of my uncle. And then a lot of people that I had associated with that died from her lifestyle. And I was transformed. And I felt like I was on cloud nine when I left. And as were the families. Yeah, we went. There was some intense groups. But on the flip side there was, you know when you laugh and you get that belly laugh and you just can't stop and you're like got tears running out your eye.

Those are the best laughs ever.

Regular occurrence that can't carry. And these are people that are grieving.

That's kind of the opposite of what I would think.

Yeah, yeah. So anyway, I said to Heather, I said I got some time on my hands. I said I got a lot of time on my hands right now. Other than at the time I was a stay at home mom and navigating the custody thing could do a whole show on men trying to have custody of their kids, it's just another thing.

But the system isn't in support of that. Generally speaking. It's kind of the summary.

It swayed the other way.

Okay.

Men used to get custody automatically. Well now they usually generally give it to the females and the kids always. It's a big mess. Any rate, I said we got to grow this thing. Heather. First of all, three days isn't enough. Secondly, we need to support these families after camp. So what started as me volunteering one weekend turned into a couple years later. We. We're able to register it as a nonprofit. We have year round programs. It took several years before I could draw a salary. Became a ninja at writing grants.

Yeah, it is a ninja skill, I gotta say.

Yeah. And we serve families like we run programs in British Columbia, Ontario and in the Maritimes. These camps are essentially family bereavement retreat in British Columbia. We have about 200 people come. We got over 200 volunteers just in B.C. alone. We have music therapists. We've got more music therapists on contract than any other organization in Canada. We've got art therapy, we've got animal therapy, we have dance support groups. And right now with this COVID virus, it's really. We've had to cancel a lot of our groups across the country. We actually had a youth retreat that was supposed to happen a week ago on Vancouver island, but I wouldn't say canceled. We've postponed our getting together physically, but now we're running groups online through the various applications. And we're also about to launch services for everyone that's working the front lines. I find that very exciting. First of all, I feel that I could have gone two ways with my life. I could have continued trying to stop those feelings and feel angry. Because when I think about something still to this day of how I was victimized and piled through the cracks, I still feel a bit angry. But I use that anger sort of like a fire in a dragon's belly to kind of motivate me to help people so that they can hopefully avoid some of those pitfalls that I've experienced or even worse. And yeah, it's pretty awesome to be able to do that.

How many people are going through camp carry in a year? What's it look like right now?

On average, through our family bereavement retreats, we'll take maybe about 200 to the one in B.C. just before the COVID outbreak, we were considering doing two. We could run them every week and still have wait. It's around funding. So we Fundraise, it's. It costs us around 80 to 100,000 to run a four day retreat. But what I can tell you from that is those 200 people, they're transformed. Unlike a treatment center. I had clients at one of the treatment centers I worked at for two years and you know what happened after two years? They'd leave shortly after, they'd relapse and then never see a problem again. I have families like kids and teenagers who I had first worked with in 2009 that are still close today with the bereavement. There are statistics that are finally being released, the stuff that I knew. But it's nice to have the research to back it. Now. Children and youth that have experienced a significant loss. So I'm not saying you're goldfish, but like parent, grandparent, like some caregiver or sibling are 20% more likely to follow through with a suicide. They're around 80 or 90% more likely to drop out of school or have difficulty concentrating, develop long lasting, permanent states of anxiety and depression. Those sorts of things get into drugs, be promiscuous and teen pregnancies. I was just a statistic. All but two out of several thousand youth and kids that I've worked with over the last. Since 2009, all but two have become a statistic. And the reason I believe two became a statistic is because they came to the program, the family program, their caregivers or their parent wasn't on board. They're like, well, they can sleep today. I don't feel they need to go to group. I'm like, if they're not participating, they're not going to benefit from what we're doing. And that's sort of what happened. But it's phenomenal. So you can send someone to counseling, we offer counseling in that. But there's something powerful around a camp setting. And I wouldn't be the first to say everyone that has been to a camp and there's camps for people with all types of things. Like there's camps for. One of the camps that we rent is actually run for children with autism. We rent their facilities. There's something about bringing people together in a camp that's magical. Yeah. So we have about 200 in B.C. that come to the camp, maybe close to 100 in Ontario, maybe around 50 in New Brunswick. And the reason it's smaller in New Brunswick, there's not a facility large enough to facilitate the demand.

Right. Those numbers, you mean like 50 per camp and how many camps a year happen?

So like in B.C. we just do one camp. But we have year round, every program's running pretty much every day. We've got counseling. People are receiving individual counseling. We have group counseling. We have a couple of community choirs that run. We have what we call a peer mentor program. So I was kind of influenced by my experience in 12 step groups. People can understand. A lot of people can relate to sponsorship. What that means is someone that has more sobriety can be there to support someone that is newer, right? Well, our peer mentor program is kind of a similar model. We have people that have access to services for two or three years. They now feel that they're in a place that they can help someone and that's essentially what it is. So yeah, we have literally thousands of people can access our services each year. And right now because of this virus and because of our people moving, people are more receptive to receive such services like counseling or support groups or workshops online. We're expecting to see a huge spike in what we're doing. And that's kind of what I'm in the middle of sorting out this week.

Yeah, sad but true. But that's what's happening right now across the globe. As soon as we come back from this short break here. I remember I saw you on stage and you had a hockey stick with a flag. And personally I have no idea what it is and we're going to find that out as soon as we come back from this short break.

And this is the time where I get to pick my favorite charitable organization and donate a little bit of money because I believe in leading by example. I hope you check out Josh Dalling's charitable organization called Camp Carry. You can visit their website@campcariesociety.org there is a link and URL to that website on the show Notes for this episode. I'm on the website right now. I just put in my details. I'm clicking the donate button for real, by the way, right now. And payment has been processed. I have the green check mark to confirm. I hope you get a chance to check it out. Remember to please share this episode. Please subscribe to the channel. Share the notes share a link to the episode so other people can hear his story. If you have a knowledge of anyone who is looking for help with bereavement and grieving, please remember to share this episode with them and direct them to the Camp Carry Society website. This is from rock bottom to rockin it. Now back to the show.

Okay, we're back now. And Joshua, what's with that hockey Stick and the flag. I noticed it, I saw it. You alluded to it briefly when you're on stage. And what's the story behind that? I feel like there's a lot of significance with this hockey stick.

Yeah. Like I said initially, I was in a room with a lot of people of influence, including people in government. And for about a decade I've been trying to influence legislative changes because I know if me and my brother had access to some type of grief support when we were younger, someone might have come in and said, well, these kids are being abused, let's get them help or whatever. But I don't think we would have done half the damage we did. Right. Drink and done a few drugs, but I certainly wouldn't have done the damage I did. And I can speak to that from myself. So I wanted to use that opportunity. I didn't want to feel like I was wasting my time. So I saw it as an opportunity to bring attention to the need for bereavement supports. And at that time, it was on everybody's mind was this bus crash and Winnipeg.

Oh, right, okay.

Where a number of kids who were on their way to hockey had died. It was all over the news in Canada.

Right, I remember that.

Yeah. What happens in Canada, because there's no funding for bereavement services, or I should say virtually no funding, what happens is we're very good at responding to crisis. So right now, governments all over the world are throwing money out to try and respond to a crisis. And you know, people that donate are very good to donate to a crisis. So with that bus crash, there was a lot of money that was donated to try and help with that cause. But what happens because there's no funding to service providers is they will refer, they don't offer a service. So ultimately what happens. And most communities in Canada don't even have a bereavement counselor. I believe when we first went to New Brunswick, I think they had one full time bereavement counselor in their health care. Well, they have two health authorities, one counselor for entire province. So it's shocking.

Yeah, it's not nearly enough. Yeah. If you're going to make a big impact. There's a simple math there. How many people do you need in order to make the right impact?

Yeah. So I see it as what we do falls under the umbrella of mental health. And last year in the DSM they actually removed the bereavement clause, which means is so if someone goes in to see their doctor or goes in to see a psychiatrist, in the states of the psychologist or psychiatrist, they'll be medicated and given a label. So you have clinical depression or you're, you know, you're bipolar, you're on that spectrum. That's dangerous because grief is a natural response to a trauma and trauma is an event that's out of the ordinary. So I've had the flag on the hockey stick because I knew that that was on a lot of people's minds and I wanted them to kind of hopefully influence or pressure the government making some changes, much needed changes. I can tell you from my personal experience and from the work I've done over the last 20 plus years, over 90% of the homeless population on the downtown east side, which has been in, you know, all kinds of news around the world. It's kind of unique for city looks like if you drive down this block, it's like a zombie movie or something. Hundreds of people out there tweaking. And over 90% of those people have had or had a significant loss before they had their drug use accelerated or before they had a psychotic break. So here we are funneling all this money into addictions in Canada. They're talking about before this pandemic around the opioid crisis. I'm not saying that people aren't dying from fentanyl and overdoses, but people always have. When I was using, people just died. They used to call it cardiac arrest. If you look at the numbers, I'm in the, what you would call a death business. I think we had 15,000 deaths over the last five years related to opiate. To opiates will die a day each day from cancer alone. Right. The number of overdose has actually been on the decline. So what I'm trying to say is after the headlines, we get the referrals, we get the families from the bus crash calling us for help. Literally every story you see on the news in Canada where there's been a tragedy or a loss, we all get that referral. We get the referral from Mental Health, we get the referral from Veteran affairs, we get the referrals from rcmp, from Ministry of Children and Families, yet no funding. So that's kind of why I had it there. I wanted to bring attention to the cause without doing this long lecture like I'm doing now.

And if we break it down like per person, what's it cost per person from a funding perspective to send someone through the bereavement camp at Camp Cary.

So our costs, because we give on most of our, like our family bereavement Program we have some of the best psychologists and family therapists come and they volunteer their time. And what we do because they're working is we give them an honorarium of $500 each. But because we're renting sites, there's a difference in cost. Depends. So significant difference between British Columbia and New Brunswick because in British Columbia it's got a larger population and it just costs more in general to do business. So our cost is around 1500 to $2500 a family. And that through the camp and year round counseling, year round access to a number of our programs. But to put it in perspective, when people that don't have access to bereavement supports go in to see their doctor because they're not sleeping, they're feeling anxious or they're depressed or they can't work or they go into a merge, it's a thousand bucks a day to our system.

Yeah, relatively speaking, this is nothing. This is a very powerful return on investment. To look at your program basically is what we're saying.

Incarcerate someone who they had a loss and then they went on a rampage and did what I did and hardened the drinking and driving and then did something stupid.

Yeah, we're investing in saving money here and lives.

Yeah. So when I'm trying to talk to the government and trying to get these changes, I was very close this year. I had a petition, two petitions actually. One was successful. It was going to be presented to the House and then the election was called. So I did a second one. It was presented and the government responded. And you want to know what the response was from the federal government?

I have no idea.

Yeah, I was trying to get change. So right now we have three days of bereavement leave in Canada for most Canadians.

Okay.

For a significant loss. So it means your kid, your spouse, or if your parent lives with you, if you're a federal employee, you have five days that was extended last year. So I was asking that they make arrangements similar to parental leave. When I had my kids, I had to keep working. Now moms and dads can get a leave and I think it's around 104 weeks or something like that. Anyways, it's several months of leave. Both mom and dad can take time off work to focus on their family. So what I know from doing the bereavement stuff is people aren't ready in three days or five days to go back to work and parent or go back to school and live their lives as normal. But people do.

And it's so obvious. Talking about it objectively, three days is obviously not enough, but somehow that doesn't reflect in how policy is written up is what we're saying.

Yeah. So the response was, well, last year we extended bereavement leave for federal employees up to five days. Most Canadians either created their own job or they don't work for the government. And even for the federal employees, five days isn't enough. How do I know? Because they come to us for counseling. Right. The other thing I was requesting that they do is fund bereavement services. No funding. They didn't even address that. It was really disappointing. So I feel there's a long road ahead of me. But at least this petition was heard in the House of Commons. We have just been granted first time ever funding from the provincial government, a small amount of $50,000. But that's precedent, I believe it's the first time, to my knowledge, that funding has been allocated towards bereavement services. So I'm quite proud of that. That was just announced last week.

Okay, well, congratulations on that success. And just to clarify earlier, when you said $1,500 per family, what does that mean, family? How many people is that?

So this is why I have to say average, because we've had families come to us. I remember we did a couple of years of running these programs in Maui. They were fully funded by one family, by the way. So we flew in counsellors and we brought families from Canada to Maui and it was phenomenal. Intensive retreats. Well, when we had families sign up from Maui, One family had 27 members.

Wow, that's a big family. Were you ready for that?

We had to be. So generally, most of the families that come to our retreat program, our families who have lost, like there's two adults and one of the adults has died. But we've also had families where they've lost their children or both parents have died and kids have come with social workers. We just kind of average it. Some families come, they've got six people, some people have three. So on average, we could say our costs are 1500 to 25.

Okay.

Every family had 27 people, the cost would be higher. My dream, I can't speak on behalf of our board and organization, but my dream is to essentially work myself out of a job so that one day there is bereavement funding for services, not just for us, but for hospices, for anyone that does bereavement counseling. That there is. Families can take the needed time they can without losing their jobs. They can mourn their loss and focus on their wellness. But also I would like to establish centers for bereavement, centers of excellence for bereavement care. And what that would look like is facility where we could train people to do what we do because the results are so phenomenal. So we can bring in teams and train them and so that families, if they've had a loss or their home burns down and someone dies, that they have a place they could come that's safe where they can be supported. And yeah, that's kind of my dream. And I think what that would do is it would alleviate some of our costs because then we wouldn't have to rent these giant camps. Maybe we could do it on a smaller scale. Maybe someone would. Maybe the government would build a camp so we don't have to pay 100 grand for four days. Right.

I hope we stay in touch here throughout this. You have such a mission. And now that I'm reflecting, we're talking, it surprises me just how little the subject of grieving is acknowledged or put on the forefront. I never really personally thought about that. And there's people listening right now that are grieving on their own subject, and there's something that they need to work through. And Joshua, if you were to have some words here just as we wrap up our chat today, if you had a final word here to speak to someone listening to the show right now about bereavement, what sort of. Whether it's a suggestion or an advice or any message at all, what would you say to someone right now listening?

Well, right now I know that we have a new crisis on hand as a result of this Covid. I know people have family members that are in care homes and that are in hospice that are dying that they can't see. And for people that have loved ones, when you can't be by them when you know they're dying, that adds a whole new layer of trauma. And I know there's a lot of families, like in New York, where their loved ones are being thrown into freezer, into semi trucks with freezers, and that's being put all over me. It's very traumatic. I want people to know that is trauma and that everyone, like, I don't know what to say. It's just.

It's tough. It's such a big scale. I mean, you hit the nail on the head. I don't know that even. I've spent enough time really considering what impact there is on the families right now who are seeing. I never even considered that the Isolation rules would affect and separate a dying person from their family. I didn't even consider that. And personally, I have no idea what I would say to a family that's going through something like that. Is there a little message of hope that you can share?

What I can say is we're doing what we can to connect families. So if anybody would like to participate in an online support group, we're making those available. We have a lot of our counselors who are also having difficult times because they're working tirelessly. We have a lot of people that volunteer with us who are nurses and doctors and they're working the front lines and they're exhausted. But we are creating some ways for people to get supported. You know, what I do know from doing the work that I've done over the years is there is light at the end of the tunnel and I wouldn't be doing what I do now if that wasn't the case. And yeah, I just.

I don't know.

I'm not really good at these interviews. I often think about all things I could have said and wish I said. I'm a believer from like when I turn on the news, I, you know, I get angry and I get fearful and that. But then when I look and I hear the stories from our community of how people are getting through and how people are supporting one another. One of our participants last night offered to do a little cooking video to show people how to cook Japanese food. And I'm just so moved by that, sort of like your podcast. I'm moved by, in difficult times, people wanting to help others. And I believe that's how, whether it's for bereavement or anything else, I think if we can all think of what we can do to make the world a better place and to help other people, we ourselves will be better and will heal from any traumas we may have had. It just brings out the best in people.

I really appreciate everything you're doing here, Joshua. And as soon as we wrap up here, I'm going to ask you a couple questions on how I can help and support with the bereavement program in general, but specifically here related to the COVID 19 and we're going to make sure to share a link to your website so people can contact you on the show. Notes here. What is the easiest way for people to reach out? By the way, how would people find you?

If they have a question or if they need some help, just email us at infompcarry. So C-A M P K E R R Y.org because our team is very small, we're still trying to get our website updated with the latest information. But right now we're in the process of we're just trying to focus on getting these support set up this week. So yeah, that's the best way. Just contact us by email is the best way at this point.

And I'll put that email on the show notes as well. Joshua, thank you very much for coming on here. I know you have lots of work to do over there and I want to keep in touch with you. So thanks again for coming on the show.

Thank you very much for having me. I hope it helps somebody.

I'm sure it will. And everyone out there listening to From Rock Bottom to Rocking it right now. I hope you have a Rockin it day. Keep strong, remember about those random acts of kindness and remember that bereavement is a real subject that you can get help with and reach out to Joshua whenever you have a moment.

As soon as the show's done, check.

It out and please share this episode. Bye for now. Have a Rockin it day.

And that's it my friends. For this episode. We will see you next time. Please send me an email, say hello, give me some feedback, let me know what you think, give me some tips and suggestions. I'd love to hear from you. Also, please share this episode with whoever you think needs to hear it. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, doesn't matter. Just get it out there. I really appreciate it. And we'll see you next time on From Rock Bottom to Rockin it have.

A Rockin it day.