The Ben Mulroney Show - Addiction and the holidays from the voice of someone who knows

Episode Date: December 30, 2025

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Tools that make it possible to go from tax question to client comms in minutes. Get better answers to tough questions. BlueJ. AI for tax experts. Yeah, welcome back to the Ben Maloney Show. My name is Mike Ben Dixon in studio for the next couple of days. is Ben's producer, Mike Droulet. So welcome back.

You know, interesting as I was going to break or we were going to break. I think one of the bigger stories of 2025, certainly in the sort of realm of entertainment and whatnot, but got a lot of people surprised was, you know, the murder of Rob Reiner. And his wife, yeah. And acclaimed director, actor, comedian and his wife. And then you learn later, of course, it was his son, Nick. and then you start to learn a little bit about the severe mental health issues that he was dealing with. And then there's reports of how many times he was in and out of rehab.

There's various reports, but it was, you know, over a dozen times. And, you know, you also read other sort of celebrity encounters with rehab facilities. And I use that term in quotes because I think there's so many varieties of treatment as it becomes, it comes to addiction. But, you know, I'm thinking of, you know, Matthew Perry as an example. If you read his book, he talks a lot about the different treatments that he went through and the different facilities and how some of them are enabling and some of them are not. And some of them, you know, have different, obviously, ways of looking at addiction versus others and going to facilities overseas versus facilities in North America. And so I'm really, really actually excited to welcome our next guest because there has been so much to see. discussion of late, Mike, about addictions, about treatment facilities.

Alana Stearns is here from the Canadian Addiction Treatment Centers. Welcome so much to the program. Thank you for coming in. Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here. And so tell us, tell us a little bit about what, when I first heard that you guys were going to start, you know, you guys advertise with us, I think that's worth sharing. But I've heard your commercials on this radio station.

And when I heard the first round of commercials, I sent a note to our sales rep and said, hey, I just wanted you to know, I think these commercials are extraordinarily well executed. They're really home hitting, if that's a right word. So if we could, I'd love to play one of your commercials so that we can get the audience up to speed. Play that commercial, Joy. The savings you've been waiting for are finally here. It's the Canadian Addiction Treatment Center's blowout sale with huge savings. Savings on office essentials.

Save the coffee mug for coffee. Save on breath mints. Save the excuses to slip out for another. Save on all staff meetings you slur through. Save on whispers from coworkers. Save your embarrassment for the office party you can't remember. Save worrying about the team lunch. You can't remember.

It's so effective because it takes you in sort of a positive sense saying you think it's going to be one thing and then it makes that turn into reality. saying, you know, oh, look at all these things you're saving on, but you know what you're also saving on because of these demons that you have that you're not dealing with. That's right. It really hits an emotional chord because it talks about the actual costs of addiction and what it takes away from your life and from your family. And as someone in recovery, I'm an open book. I can talk anything you want about my own recovery and my experience. but I have, in that ad, I have done all those things.

And I would term it, I would term it functional alcoholism because I thought that I was hiding it and nobody could tell how bad things were getting. And eventually things just get worse and worse and compile until you actually seek some help. How long do you think you were an alcoholic, functioning alcoholic? Obviously, as a, probably as a child, obviously you weren't, I mean, you weren't drinking as a kid. But how long do you think you had, how many years of just alcoholism did you have to deal with? So I personally believe that I, this is not everybody's story. Everybody comes from a different place.

But I personally believe that I was born in an alcoholic. I think I had a very young age. Alcohol did something for me that it might not have done for necessarily other people. It gave me like a tremendous sense of ease and comfort. I had anxiety. I had big emotions. And I think going through my life, I always, I was always like a hard drinker. Like I never could just have one. Like I, if I thought I could

have one, it would always be like, you know, four. And then eventually I just started drinking more and more. And so I would say that the functional alcoholism is having an unhealthy relationship with alcohol being. And then eventually it progresses to the point, like you kind of pass a line of no return where it's very progressive in nature where when I wanted to stop, I couldn't stop. And then we repeat the cycle over and over again. So I try to stop and then I couldn't stay stopped. And then when I'd start again, things would get worse and worse. Consequences would mount bigger and bigger and bigger.

And so eventually, I can no longer distinguish sort of the truth from the lie. And I just had to drink morning, noon, and night. And what was the thing, that thing that made you say, you know what, I need help? Or did you have an intervention from family members? Definitely my family was involved. So I'm a mother in recovery, a single mother in recovery. I have three kids. I have, you know, for all intensive purposes, if you looked at my life, you think it was big and beautiful and amazing. And yeah, I could no longer like face the day. So I think that my family definitely noticed the consequences piling. I started being unable to work, unable to, you know, get up in the moment. morning without having a drink, unable to socialize. I was very much isolated, you know, very depressed, very anxious. And it's really hard. I have a loving and supportive family, but they knew nothing about the disease of addiction. And so they're, you know, middle class educated, but

they thought like this doesn't happen to people we know. And the truth is, is that we know that it does. Some people just hide it better. And there's so much stigma around it as some sort of moral failing, but it's not. This is an actual disease. And I think one of the really good reasons why, great reasons why we're talking about this right now is it's, we're in the season. And as you were saying, so many people try to white knucklet around Christmas and New Year's. And it's, I mean, you see it. You've lived it. I have lived it. Yes, I can remember many, many Christmases. Um, where, you know, it wasn't good. It wasn't good at all.

You know, I think, like, I'll just have one and I could never stop at one. You know, I'd be two bottles in and the last person out of the party and making a big fool of myself. And I, you know, I... But at the same time, though, would you also say, like, this time of year? Yeah. And this isn't going to come across the right way, but I'm going to say it anyways. Yes. for for for alcoholics

Christmas and holiday period is a little bit like Marty Graswell because you can go to someone's house and it's going to be okay to drink because everybody at that party is drinking that's right and so you look forward to and I say this in quotes the holidays or any excuse

to go it's going to be okay for me to drink two bottles of wine today because everybody else at this Christmas party or this family gathering is going to do the same that's right Yeah, it gives you an excuse. And so the holidays are not just, it's, it's an uncomfortable time for people, but for alcoholics, it's a bit of a Mardi Gras Super Bowl period. That's right.

Not trigger. It's a great time because you can go out and not be the, the weirdo alcoholic. You're like, oh, it's, it's celebration time. Right. It gives you an excuse to continue to drink beyond a point of no return because there's flowing alcohol everywhere. It's romanticized. It's part of the fun and the ambiance of a of a. It's almost and we'll talk more about this when we come back. But it's almost as though it's like, hey, it's okay to get drunk now because this is the holidays and everyone's doing it. So you get a bit

of a pass. And for alcoholics, that's like a lottery ticket that you're walking into a party with to be perfectly fair. That's right. So we'll talk more about that. I'm sorry to interrupt you, Atlanta. We will talk more. Atlanta Stearns is in studio with us. from Canadian addiction treatment centers. You've heard their commercials on the Chorus Network. They're phenomenal. This is an important discussion. There's so many different angles.

And we do want to talk a little bit about what is the work that you guys do? What do we do with someone that may be suffering today that is listening to us, that doesn't know what to do, that is afraid of admitting it, that is afraid of rehab. We'll talk about all that and much more. It's the Ben Mulroney show. My name is Mike Ben Dixon. That's Mike Droulet.

As I said, Elana Searns is here. A lot more to talk about. Stay with us. Ben will be back Friday. Mike Ben Dixon and Mike Drolay sitting in for Ben Mulroney on the Chorus Radio Network. Joining us in studio is Alana Stearns from the Canadian Addiction Treatment Centers. We've got a pretty wide-ranging discussion that we're having right now about everything to do with addiction and, trying to get sober, et cetera.

You know, when you hear stories, we talked about the, the Rob Reiner one as an example, the Matthew Perry. I'm just bringing up names that are sort of,

you know, people would know. Where they go to rehab or seek treatment and it doesn't take and there's many, many, many attempts at it.

People listening don't quite get that. That's fair. But maybe you can talk a little bit about why it's so difficult to recover. I think, you know, there's a couple different factors.

One is definitely readiness. So I think that you can be motivated by family or, you know, friends or loved ones. But you can't be forced into it. To go to treatment, exactly. But I think that motivation can change once you're in treatment. So you can be motivated by family and then start to become intrinsically motivated for yourself. So I think if you are a family, if you are like a family member and you know, someone that's suffering, I definitely think encouraging them to go to treatment is the best way.

But this, sadly, is a relapsing disease. And part of that is because the disease is so powerful. And without being able to treat the underbelly of it, like for the mental health issues, the trauma, the things that have been building up underneath it through clinical counseling and all the program services that inpatient treatment offers like CATC, You're really not getting to the root cause of it, right? Yeah. And how many times in your personal experience did you go to rehab?

So a part of why I do the work that I do is so that hopefully my story helps someone else not go through what I went through. But it took me a really long time. I went to six different treatment centers. You know, my parents tried everything, the states, all over the place. Over how many years those six different centers? Five years. Wow. Yeah.

Yeah. There's a point where things just stop, like, getting better at all. Things just get worse and worse and worse. And the progressiveness of this disease is that, like, I can't stop at all. So I'm just, at the end, I was just drinking all the time. There's a lot of people who can't understand that whole, the disease element of it. They don't understand if they're not, if they don't have that. Right. Why can't she just stop? She's a mother. She has kids. Yeah. And the truth is that I love my kids more than anything. But I could, like I had something that had control over me. And it changed my personality and it changed my behavior. And it just wanted me to keep going.

So they say that this, you know, they talk, you might have heard this in recovery terms about like DOC drug of choice, whether you're an alcoholic or an addict or whatever you are. But I believe you never had it. I never had a choice. Like, it was very primal. Like, it was, it was something that I could not stop. And do you feel, you know, folks that are, you know, people that are listening right now and have heard your commercials, et cetera, I mean, it is one of those things that can be a difficult conversation to have with a loved one.

And, you know, I've thought a lot about this. And I often wonder whether or not, you know, family members need a different approach. And what I mean by that specifically is not, you know, shaming them or saying, hey, this has got to stop. You got to fix this or you got to fix that. And more of, hey, we need to have a conversation because this is this is probably destroying your life. And what I mean by that is you probably were way harder on yourself internally than anybody on

the outside could have been. Absolutely. A tremendous amount of shame and guilt. tremendous. And part of that is what kept me so sick for so long, right? And most people don't understand that part of it. I don't think. I think a lot of people think, oh, there's an alcoholic, you know, they don't care about anybody. They're just going to get drunk and blah. And most people don't understand the massive amount of obligation for lack a better term or time that it takes for you to be an alcoholic. It takes up an extraordinary

amount of your brain inventory to maintain it. Always. Yeah. So even when I wasn't drinking, I would be thinking, like, when can I get my next drink? Like, is it five o'clock? Is work done? Like, how can I sneak in a drink at lunch? Like, can they, yeah, just whenever. And so what would you say to someone that, you know, that is a loved one that isn't an alcoholic or isn't addicted that may have someone in their life? Would you suggest them, listen, maybe you need to take a different approach. Maybe you need to understand more about what this person is dealing with on a daily basis and that their life isn't like, yeah, it's difficult.

It is a family disease, meaning that it does, you know, I might be the alcoholic, but it absolutely ruptures and, you know, causes damage to all relationships around me. And so, you know, I just want to say, like, one of the things that we do at CATC is we also support the families. And I think that's a very important feature. So if you call our admissions department, you will hear about how we can support you going through this process with a loved one. I also think that leading with love

and care and compassion is always the way to do this. If we come at a sufferer with judgment, anger, all the things we may be feeling because of how they've been showing up, we're most likely to get defensiveness. We're most likely to push them away. And also they're in a level of denial. So I think asking them, you know, just trying to stand in their shoes and really ask them these questions.

Like, have you noticed this? I wanted to ask you, and we're joined by Atlanta Stearns with the Canadian Addiction Treatment Centers. What is the biggest, what's the biggest enemy for an alcoholic? What is that thing that will get you off the sobriety path? I think not treating the underbelly of it, meaning like not. But is it a person? Is it family? It could be.

There are many triggers, many, many triggers. It could be, I mean, life ebbs and flows. And sometimes it ebbs more than it flows. And if you're an alcoholic, you're most certainly maladjusted to dealing with life on life's terms. And so what happens is that you can't function when things aren't going your way. And so even, you know, you just, you can't, you can't handle things. And so everything feels intense and emotional and anxiety producing. And you don't have good coping skills.

And the only way that you can really cope is by, you believe is by taking a drink or a drug. And how hard is it for people that are listening right now and they don't know, how does it work? Can you call your organization and someone will find you a treatment facility? Do you need deep pockets to have the proper treatment? How does that aspect work? Yeah. So at CATC, we have three different treatment centers. And they're all similar and unique at their own rights.

They're very beautiful, peaceful places to recover and get well. We suggest getting away from all the work and family and, you know, the city, which could lead to more stress and just taking that time to really focus on yourselves. It's a 42-day program, right? Yeah, it's a 42-day program. It is, you know, it is private pay, but it's also, you know, people die from this thing.

Like, this is a fatal disease. So when we talk about savings, what we're saving as a life. And I know that my life, you know, I'm a grateful alcoholic. I'm definitely everyone is deserving of recovery. But the effects of being in sobriety and the effects of me working a program of recovery is that my kids recover and that my mother sleeps at night and that I'm able to show up today for this important talk and have meaningful conversations. Well, listen, we appreciate you coming in and chatting with us today.

I know it's a difficult, well, not difficult time. It's just an interesting time to have this conversation. A lot of families are getting together over. the holidays and gathering. So we do appreciate you coming in. Your commercials are great. I've already said that. But for those that are listening,

it's the Canadian Addiction Treatment Centers. Go and check out their website. If you have questions, there are folks there to answer those questions. They can even ask for me. They can ask for a let? There you go. Get me that woman that was on the radio.

Thanks very much for coming. I'm happy to help in N-July. Thank you for having me. Of course. My name is Jordan, and I'd like to invite you to join me on the Canadian Gothic, a podcast covering stories of Canadian crime, mystery, and the offbeat. The Canadian Gothic blends the spirit of late-night talk radio with the depth of a documentary film and applies that approach to both developing stories and historical cases.

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