The Ben Mulroney Show - High functioning addicts -- an expert look at the Sleep Country co-founder story

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Yonah Budd If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You know, with the chair and everything. Ask your doctor for Wagovi by name. Visit wagovi.ca for savings. Exclusions may apply. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you so much for spending time with us and don't forget we've launched a YouTube channel so all you got to do is type in Ben Mulroney show and there you can see my ugly mug anytime you want along with the grading voice that I like to bring to radio. Yesterday I had what I feel was the most satisfying and one of the proudest

moments I've had in my short radio career in that I was able to share a story wide across this country that I really wanted so many people to hear. We all know Sleep Country Canada, don't we? Of course we do, because we remember the jingle. Sleep Country Canada Buh-bye mattress anywhere else Yeah, exactly. But it had to start at some point.

Somebody started this company, and one of the people who started it was a man by the name of Gordon Lowndes. And in 1996, he was out in Vancouver, start at some point, somebody started this company and the man, one of the people who started it was a man by the name of Gordon Lownes and in 1996 he was out in Vancouver living alone, his family, he divorced his wife and he was living out there and he came across and met someone he called was a femme fatale and that woman turned out to have a crack addiction, which eventually became his burden to carry as well. And he came on the show yesterday to talk about his descent into addiction

and his resurrection, if you will, into recovery. It is a heck of a story, and he was candid, and he was honest, and it was emotional. And I really, after we did it, I thought, I kind of want to get the perspective of somebody who helps people through addiction. And so we've invited Jonah Budd back to the show. He's chorus addictions and counseling expert,

and he was also part of our political panel this week. Jonah, welcome to the show. Thanks, Ben, I appreciate you having me. Okay, so I want to play some of the moments of this interview for you, and then we'll talk about them on the other side, all right? Here is Gordon talking about trying cocaine for the first time.

Let's listen. So my introduction to cocaine was basically smoking crack with her. And the instant that that happened, my brain just exploded. And what I now understand is that people's body chemistry is different and people react differently to different drugs. And my body chemistry reacted extremely positively to the stimulus of the cocaine.

And it was, you know, literally sort of the best feeling I'd ever had. Yona, you probably know more about this sort of thing than anyone I know. When you hear someone talking about brain chemistry and different reactions by different people, what do you think? Well, first of all, his introduction to cocaine was big boy stuff.

Like, snorting it is one thing, smoking it's another, uh, smoking crack cocaine is described to me by hundreds of my patients over the years as one of the most euphoric moments in their life. And then they begin to chase that forever, uh, until such time as they find some recovery. So, uh, it grabs you almost instantaneously. You can become addicted within a couple of days. Doesn't take a lot of consumption to get you there. Yeah. You can become addicted within a couple of days. Doesn't take a lot of

consumption to get you there. Hit a rock for, you know, steadily for 24, 48 hours and you're pretty much looking for it now until you go through the process of trying to get clean. Yeah, look, he was really honest and he said like the woman that he was living with was an exotic dancer. He called her a femme fatale and I think he talked about, I think he was really excited about this very sexy woman and the sexy life that they had together. And then this supercharged that sex life. Yeah, glamorizes the whole thing.

And when you're doing drugs in this particular case, crack cocaine, like the whole world is perfect, right? At least for that minute or two or five or 10. And you know, it's often that the people I talk to that are trying to deal with this type of addiction found it through a toxic relationship of one sort or another. So this is not uncommon. And it just glamorizes the whole thing. You stay up late at night, you can go out and party.

I'm sure she liked to go to clubs and stuff and he probably wasn't used to that. So this fuels the whole thing. You stay up late at night. You can go out and party. I'm sure she liked to go to clubs and stuff, and he probably wasn't used to that. So this fuels the whole thing, right? Yeah. You don't eat so much. You're sleeping late. It's like a whole kind of rock star lifestyle without the rock star part.

Yeah, and here's the thing. In this next clip, it's hard to fathom that while he was living this wildly unproductive life, he was also very productive on the other end, building out a company that now is ubiquitous in Canada, sleep country Canada. And he referred to himself as the highest of high functioning addicts.

Let's listen to how he described it. And when I was completely messed up and I couldn't show up anywhere, I would tell people in Toronto that I was in Seattle. I would tell the people in Calgary that I was completely messed up and I couldn't show up anywhere, I would tell people in Toronto that I was in Seattle. I would tell the people in Calgary that I was in Toronto. And it was like a white knuckle charade is what it was. You know, I kept things going. Yeah, he somehow managed to keep,

stay on the rails for a while. But that must be a very common description of, you know, people who are trying to hide their addiction and they're trying to be the best versions of themselves outwardly. Sure. The whole concept of lying, stealing and cheating comes along with that addiction. And you start showing up to places, not showing up to places, saying you're one place and not another. You know, he calls himself high functioning. I would question, I don't know the man, so I can't really opine on it,

but I would question how productive the functioning was. Sure, he might've covered his butt from place to place, shown up to a meeting once or twice, but was he really making the kind of high level, creative decisions that one needs to make to grow a place like that? Or is he just supporting the team that was around him that did a great job?

But you can make it, you can show up to work, you can call him for some sick days when it's been too rough. You can take a hit in the morning, probably make it through till noon, 1 o'clock. You can create a lifestyle around it. Many, many do. And they do it for 20, 30, 40 years sometimes. Well, he did it for 1,000 days. I'm glad you mentioned how long this can go on, because his was

what feels like a relatively quick roller coaster. The highs of the highs right down to the lows before coming back up. And let's listen to the moment where he believed he hit that the lowest of the lows. I went from smoking crack to injecting cocaine within about a year. And basically people have asked me, how far did I fall? And the answer is I fall all the way down.

And so I ended up trolling through the back alleys of the downtown East side of Vancouver, which is a notorious drug haven, looking for my next fix. I didn't even know that you could inject cocaine, Yona. Oh, absolutely. It can be, you know, it can be watered down, so to speak. It can be melted and cooked so that it's injectable. Pretty much most drugs can be injected. That's that's now you're now you're amping it up one more level from smoking it, right?

Yeah. So he obviously was got tired of chasing the smoking rush. Someone said, hey, try this. Hit it in his arm once and then wow, Hey, try this, hit it in his arm once and then wow, this is like the most unbelievable thing in the world. But that takes you into that whole world of injecting, you know, users, injection users, you know, users that are intravenous users, and you have to deal with all kinds of because, you know, social diseases and so on that can be transmitted. It really is a position of low,

but I'm not sure what he means by rock bottom, because rock bottom should have been him groveling through a garbage can looking for a needle or something. Well, I think at one point he was arrested as well, and I think that was probably. There you go. But like, this was a very short thousand days, very, very quick, just under three years

before he got clean. But I think it would have been. Ben, Ben, three years of doing this stuff is a long. Oh, no, no, no, I'm just, I'm saying relative to the 30, 40 years that you talked about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then three years of doing this stuff is a long time. I'm saying relative to the 30, 40 years that you talked about. But I think it would have been even shorter if his family had been around. His family was living out here in Toronto and so they had no idea. I want to play you the moment that he told his 14-year-old daughter and wife about his

problem. In my last week in treatment, the doctors had been telling me I really need to come clean and tell my daughter and my ex-wife what my problem was. So I went and had dinner with them. As soon as I said, uttered the words, I was a crack addict. My daughter, who was 14 at the time, completely broke down, ran out of the room and said she never wanted to talk to me again. And my wife basically said, you're a bastard, get out kind of thing. So a good

part of my recovery and a good part of the reason that I've waited so long to publish this is that I was concerned about my story basically doing more damage with my family and my friends, and also the potential collateral damage it might have in terms of the reputation of Sleeve Country. So, Yona, we're going to talk about, I want your thoughts on that on the other side of this break, but I just want to say how happy I was to end the conversation with him knowing that his 14 year old daughter, who was so upset with him at the time, he now lives with her in Vancouver on the West Coast. So clearly he has repaired that bridge. So we'll talk about that on the other side.

Yonah, don't go anywhere. More on this incredible story when we come back right here on the Ben Mulroney Show from Coast to Coast to Coast on the course radio network. This podcast is sponsored by better help. If you've been following the news, like really following it, you know how exhausting it can be politics, conflict, uncertainty, it's a lot to carry. And for many men, there's this expectation to stay calm, stay in control and not talk about how it's affecting you. But the truth is, you're allowed to feel overwhelmed. You're allowed to say, I'm not okay right now, and trust me, I have been there.

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you've always dreamed of in stunning BC. We're curing cancer here. Are you in? Apply now at jobs.bccancer.bc.ca. Welcome back to the show. Right now we are continuing to revisit our conversation with Gordon Lownes yesterday, the founder of Sleep Country Canada, who while he was building that business, was also fighting the demons of addiction. And we're doing this through the lens of an expert in addiction.

We were talking with Yona Budd, he's chorus addictions and counseling expert. Yona, thank you for sticking with us. A pleasure, Ben. By the way, it was an amazing interview. You did a great job. Oh, thank you very much. I was really happy to do it.

I was happy to share it with the listeners of the show. So before the break, we heard about how hard it was for him to come clean to his family who was living on the other side of the country. They had no idea this was going on. Family was very angry, but it does appear like he has rebuilt those bridges. So I guess what I wanna hear from you, Yona,

is for those people who are out there who are keeping a secret like that, what do you tell them about the value of owning it in front of the people that matter most to them? Well, I think it's invaluable. I think once you've come clean to the people in your life that care about you, love you, and somehow might try to hold you accountable,

you now have someone that is as a lens on you versus people that may not care and people who are out of your life. You said that he was in Vancouver, they were in Toronto. If you know, out of sight, out of mind, very difficult to see that someone's in a bad place. Once you come clean to the people in your life that matter, your wife, your kids, your family, your parents, whomever, then the rubber hits the road. Now you can't, it's like quitting smoking and then trying to smoke again around your friends like, I can't buddy, I thought you quit. It holds you accountable and I think that's tremendously valuable.

We do that in treatment and therapy. We introduce the family early on in treatment to make sure that the support systems are consistent with what we're teaching, providing, and putting in place. So, huge play. The people in your life that matter, huge part of recovery. Yonah, let's talk a little bit about one of the aspects of his story is that he decided not to go down the route of the 12-step program. And there are a lot of people out there who believe that it's that way or the highway. What's your what's your perspective on different treatments for different people? So, in my practice, we, we talk a lot about and teach a lot around smart recovery, which is a kind of a more academic approach to recovery. There aren't steps in particular. 12-step doesn't resonate with a lot of people because it has a religious overtone, some spiritual peace, and it's you know damning. It's damning if you don't meet up to all of the standards. But for a lot

of people it's life-saving. But understand that both of those programs are support programs for substance abuse and such. It's not therapy. You's not therapy. You're not dealing with the demons that cause you to do what you do, which is what we do, what we specialize in. Why do you do what you do? It doesn't matter what you do,

whether it's crack cocaine, alcohol, weed, gambling, sexting, texting. If you're trying to make yourself feel better, we wanna figure out what the triggers are to do that. You don't get that in those types of programs. So I think therapy combined with good support programs like 12-Step or like smart recovery, it's a tremendous combination.

One without the other, maybe you can do therapy without the support, maybe not. Certainly I don't think you can do the support without the therapy. And I wanna go back to one of the things that we talked about off the top of this conversation was when Gordon Lowndes sort of made a pronouncement about his brain chemistry and how his brain

was one of those brains that reacts in the most, I guess you could say, the most positive way to the drug, which is not a good thing. And I'm of the opinion that because we're learning more about the brain every day, I think there's a, there's so many different reasons why people become addicted. There's so many reasons why people go down that rabbit hole. There's so many pressures that are unique to that person.

And therefore it makes sense to me that there are different unique treatments for each person. Yeah, a thousand percent. There's no one treatment program that suits everybody. Certainly in our practice over the decades that we've been doing it, each person is treated differently. Everyone has different triggers, everyone has different backgrounds and life stories and so on.

Different drugs affect different people. When I had tried cocaine back 40-odd, almost 50 years ago, I was the kind of guy that would do cocaine, sit on a couch and don't want to see anybody Hide in the room and please everybody you go away if I was to smoke a joint I want to go around and talk to everybody. I know people that smoke a joint They want to stay in their room and hide they do a line of cocaine and they want to go party on yeah So, you know your chemistry is a big part of it You're not gonna genetics is a big part of it and lifestyle and surroundings is a big part of it

but obviously he was receptive to, his brain was receptive to the drug and triggered something in him that took him to a place of euphoria and he just kept chasing it. Lastly, Yona, are stories like this one, are they helpful in the sort of the fight against addiction generally to have stories out there

of people who've overcome? Does that help? Oh, 100% bill. I've been you know, that interview he did yesterday probably saved I don't know 30 lives. And and him telling that story because he's a prominent person and the story is so well known now. Saving thousands of people. Yeah, people have to know that you can do it. And you don't have to be living in a cardboard box to be strung out.

You can do it while living in an ivory tower, driving a limousine. Yonah Budd, I wanna thank you very much for joining us. I really appreciate your insights on this. Appreciate you too, Ben. Have a great one. You too. I wanna hear from you.

Please give us a call here at the Ben Mulroney Show. We wanna hear from you. Were you ever in recovery? Are you in recovery? What path did you choose? Was it a 12-step program? Was it something else? And I'll ask you the same question that I asked Yona Budd.

When you hear stories like Gordon Lounds, when you hear how far he fell and the journey back, does that help you? Does that inspire you? Do you need to hear stories like that to model the behavior that's gonna get you to a place of recovery? I don't know a whole lot about that space, but I have heard from a number of people that one of

the hardest days in recovery is that first day where you have your senses, they've returned to you. You are completely in control of your senses, right? You've detoxed, you're not on anything anymore. And for the first time, you are completely connected to the ruin of your life. Alcohol, drugs, they're able to either have you look somewhere else or just move past it and not care. But in that moment, the veil is lifted, the fog has parted, and you see the damage that you have done.

And in that moment, that is when an addict has to decide, am I going to continue down this path or am I going to return to the behavior that got me in this place in the first place? So give us a call, 416-870-6400 or 1-888-225. Talk, we want to hear from you. Addiction is a disease that affects an entire family. It's not just... And in this case, Gordon Lownes' case, that's really interesting. It didn't affect his family because of the distance, and he kept that distance.

I think his family could have probably helped him. I think knowing if he knew he was disappointing his daughter, for example, who at 14, he broke her heart when he told her that he was an addict. And it's so nice to see that he's been able to rebuild that relationship and in fact lives with his daughter today. The story yesterday was that his ex-wife, who was living with the daughter, was at his graduation, if you will, from treatment. So you can come back from these things. It is never too late. Gordon Lown said, everyone is capable of

and is worthy of redemption. And I hope if there's anybody listening who needs to hear that, I hope they hear it because you don't have to do this alone. There are services out there. There are resources out there. I genuinely hope that on this Canada Day weekend, if Yona's right and people heard that and maybe made a right decision instead of a bad one, then that makes me very proud indeed. But give us a call, 416-870-6400. Mike Drolet, you set up that interview.

I wanna thank you very much for that. Yeah, well, that was fascinating. Was that not a better interview than you thought it was gonna be? Because he was so honest. Yeah, I mean, when I first heard the story, the headline, I thought very sensational, right? High functioning guy who built a huge Canadian brand

all while being pulled down by these demons. I thought it was going to be very sensational. It turns out it was very human. It was very, anyone could connect to that. Well, with your history, because you were, you worked in entertainment for a long time. You saw a lot of people and you heard, there are so many stories in the entertainment world about people going down that rabbit hole

and losing their lives and not being able to recover. The fact that he was able to turn it around was just remarkable. The fact that he was able to turn it around and the fact that he was so willing to share, to share this story, and I appreciate that he wanted to wait until his family was able to digest this.

But a lot of the stars in Hollywood, they keep that to themselves. Unless it's a public meltdown, unless there's a public crisis, they keep Robert Downey Jr. very forthright about it.