Former Red Deerian shares recovery journey from drugs and crime, suggests possible solutions

“The story I want to tell is, some of us are salvageable. You can be that guy wandering those streets, homeless, dirty, engaged in that subculture, very undesirable, but they’re not all write-offs. There is a way out,” he said. “It is doable, recovery is attainable, it’s sustainable, and it’s there.”

THE JOURNEY

Growing up in Red Deer, Kokol said he was not faced with trauma like other addicts, besides parental divorce at a young age. However, he said without positive influences or activities, he began getting into trouble with the wrong crowd at 13-years-old.

“I’m not blaming my parents. I blame nobody. My parents may have been responsible for the home that I was raised in and pieces like that but that’s where it stops. I blame nobody. I am responsible for my own recovery and my own amends,” he said.

Beginning with drugs, some intravenous, Kokol said he was later kicked out of multiple public schools in the city and locked up, becoming a ward of the court.

At 18-years-old, he found success in the oil patch. He got married, promoted, and started his white-picket-fence life. Raising a daughter from a previous relationship whom he had sole custody of since eight months old. He says the mother returned and won the custody battle.

Kokol says that day, he gave up and walked away from his wife, home, and job. He says he turned once again to the wrong crowd: cocaine-pushers crowning onto the patch in the 1980s.

For the next 15 years, Kokol would indulge in drugs, from binging to daily use. Jumping from numerous jobs in the field and even completing detox programs.

THE DECLINE

Mired in drugs, Kokol says he returned to Red Deer in 2000, his old stomping grounds.

For nearly five years, Kokol said he was homeless in the city, jumping between crack houses to stay high and manipulating his parents when money ran out.

“I knew that the only way for me to stop was I was either going to die or go to prison,” he said.

Kokol even remembered the police, who knew him well, confronting him about his role in the drug world after getting into a violent altercation.

“This cop pulled me over and said, ‘look at you Tony, this is terrible, take a look at yourself, what’s with you? You used to be in management before. You’re going to die’. I told him, ‘look, I don’t care. It’s win-win for me. You don’t catch me, I just live this life. I do what I want to do, I do the drug of my choice, I don’t work, I don’t pay taxes, I do whatever I want to do. If you catch me, I’m going to be incarcerated and I clean up’,” he said.

And that’s exactly what happened.

Kokol was thrown in jail for forcible confinement in 2006; a drug deal gone wrong.

“I remember very vividly, I walked into that cell, I laid down, I put my hand behind my head, and I was done. I’m finally done; there was a sense of relief,” he said. “I slept for about three days and I wasn’t really all that bummed out. I knew this was my avenue out.”

It was there, in the Bowden penitentiary, that Kokol quit drugs, completed high school, got in shape, and dove into reading. Once released, he sought treatment for his addictions while staying at a halfway house in Calgary.

Clean for nearly one year, he relapsed upon meeting an old friend, reopening an unescapable obsession in his thoughts.

Back in the penitentiary, he was able to abstain from drugs once again. Heading to a halfway house in Red Deer this time, it was no easier to sleep in the rooms he previously used in. Relapsing, on the lam he went.

For the third time and last time, Kokol found himself in the penitentiary.

“I don’t know what it was, but something snapped in my head,” he said. “I had worse bottoms. I’ve overdosed before and woke up in an ambulance. But this bottom, that bottom was sufficient. It was the one that did it; it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

“I remember rolling over in my bed and I was like, ‘I got to try to embrace this recovery stuff’ because I met people in Calgary that had decades clean and they were as bad as me. They were junkies, they were street people, and I knew it was attainable.”

He began to take concepts he learned from former treatments like creating gratitude lists, praying, and removing himself from triggers, including inmates who would bond over glorifying stories of the drug world.

“I wasn’t looking at that group of people with contempt. It was just, I don’t want to hear the story. I’ve heard the story, I’ve told the story, I don’t find it attractive. I don’t find it humorous; I’m just done. I remember turning around and going back into my cell and buying a pop and a bag of chips and just watching a movie. I just broke away from most people and tried to walk my own path and I did.”

THE TURNAROUND

Returning to the treatment centre in Calgary, he engrained himself into the community on many levels. He got a job building the second centre, then as a client support worker for the drug treatment court and native addictions services, and earned his accreditations as a junior counsellor, all while living on the premises.

Helping various communities, including Lethbridge and Lacombe, he is today 16 years sober and remarried.

Passing through Red Deer, he said the city has been behind in treatment services in comparison to larger urban centres.

“I walked those streets, I walked those alleys and I’ve seen what’s downtown just a couple of weeks ago and it’s just so sad. I took so much from Red Deer. I was really a burden to Red Deer and I loved that place,” he said. “It was a great place to grow up and there was so much opportunity. The landscape of addiction is so horrific now, not only in Red Deer [but] anywhere you go.”

However, he says things are beginning to change with the new long-term recovery community placed in Red Deer.

READ: Operator for new recovery community revealed at open house

He added that recovery is a process, with many people having to go into rehab several times before achieving success; his own journey taking 20 years.

“Those people out there, that’s someone’s son, father, brother. When you get that close to it, it starts to become real and you don’t look at it with such apathy,” he said.

He stated families and entire communities must never give up on those battling addiction, just as supports are continued for those who develop lung cancer through smoking cigarettes or those suffering from obesity due to unhealthy lifestyles.

“As a society, we take pride or deem ourselves to be of high moral standing and an ethical bunch of people. I think that we have a responsibility to take care of people and it doesn’t matter what they do. Everybody has a right to quality of life. Yes, they’ve engaged in their drugs and yes, they put themselves in a bind, but it doesn’t mean that we don’t start supporting them,” he added.

RECOVERY ORIENTED SYSTEMS OF CARE

Kokol shared his support for the province’s current approach to addictions services and their long-term recovery-oriented systems of care, including their work with correctional institutions.

While he believes in harm reduction, he says there are problems with facilities like Overdose Prevention Sites, adding that abstinence and recovery are the truest way to help individuals.

“The narrative is, ‘let’s meet people where they’re at’, […] They’re not ready to quit and they still deserve quality of life and I agree with that,” he said. “The other half of that narrative is, ‘but let’s not leave them there’ and I think that’s where some problems lie. We’re leaving them there.”

Red Deer welcomes over 300 guests to first Recovery Summit; praised by province

He added that something has changed over the years societally that has lead consumption of drugs to be deemed acceptable.

“When I was using back in the 80s, for me to stick a needle in my arm, I sure wouldn’t do it in the open. I knew it was illegal and I knew I’d get locked up and I knew it was morally and ethically wrong,” he said.

“About two years ago, I’m down in Lethbridge and I walk into a shelter and on the steps of the shelter is this man shooting up this young girl in her neck and she’s crying. I hop out of my truck […] and they didn’t care that I was walking by them, they didn’t even look at me, and I thought, ‘this is the problem here’,” he said, noting a third girl was also consuming drugs intravenously on the steps.

“We’ve told those people that that’s ok. We’ve let it become ok and it’s not ok.”

“I think about young children now in Red Deer walking by that or driving by that and they see that. They’re going to get numb to that, they’re going to think that that’s normal.”

Kokol says the work doesn’t stop with the addicted; but must in fact begin in the home. He said parents must be educated on how their words and actions can impact their children, brain architecture, and how to respond to their own traumas so the impact of addictions and homelessness can lessen over time.

Finally, he said police must be given more funds, rather than cuts, to continue their enforcement of drug laws.

“Something changed during COVID where we’re not imprisoning people, we’re not doing stuff, there’s not a deterrent to these people. I wasn’t arrested, I was rescued, and that afforded that bottom that was sufficient enough for me to change. If we never allow these people out there to hit a bottom, if we’re just doing a rinse-repeat cycle of getting them in and getting them out and allowing them back doing that and not cleaning up the streets, then what are we telling them?,” he asked.

“I’m grateful for recovery to be able to give me the tools to navigate life and not run from it.”

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by Alessia Proietti

Former Red Deerian shares recovery journey from drugs and crime, suggests possible solutions

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