His journey to this point has been long and full of heartache. “At the start of COVID, I lost my mother and my son and my partner in the same month, so I kind of flew off the handle, and I didn’t stop at the one. I just carried on through the whole four years.”
Though he had completed a treatment program, grief overwhelmed any sense of progress. “It was alone feeling, like looking around and seeing family hugging each other, you know, and kids are hugging their parents. And I says, well, what the hell am I doing here?” Having struggled with alcohol since the age of 19, now 55; He relapsed the same day. “I said, oh, heck with it, I’ll go liquor store, buy one Mickey, wait for my ride. So I ended up buying four Mickeys. I said, ‘Okay. Then I said I’ll stop,’ but I didn’t stop.”
His health soon deteriorated. “I started having seizures, which I never did before, due to not eating. I was getting psychosis. I was talking to myself a lot. I got locked in the bedroom… thinking that faces were coming out of the walls, rats and snakes, spiders, everything.”
A hospital visit turned into a life-saving intervention. “I’m grateful for the patience that everyone had that had seen me the way I was. My brother had to come keep checking up on me to calm me down, and he says, ‘Remember that verse that Dad taught you?’ He said to me, in the Bible, that’s John 3:16. So I asked him to pray for me.”
From there, he entered a detox centre and eventually ended up in a long-term recovery program. “I said, ‘I want to really quit and go somewhere where I don’t know anyone.’” It was during this time that Marshall began to see the larger impact of his recovery. He began helping others in the program, specifically Elders who were experiencing “the shakes”. He saw these interactions as a glimpse into what his future could be if he did not take action. Meanwhile, his own losses continued. “While I was in rehab, I missed 34 deaths in my family… I only went to two funerals in that time. If I went home to every funeral, I wouldn’t have made it back. I always held the young ones that loved the elder that passed away… but no one held me up. Just the booze.”
When the opportunity came to move to David’s Place, he took it. “I’ve been here about three weeks now. I find myself laughing a lot more and less tension going across the chest.” He’s taken to new routines: “The morning readings are nice… I do my journalling every day… which I never used to do.” One of his favourite new habits? “I go to the pool. I don’t know how to swim, but I go in the hot tub and the steam room. Forty-five years of commercial fishing, I never knew how to swim. Ninety percent of us fishermen don’t know how to swim.”
Marshall has also reconnected with long-lost friends. “I reunited with some friends I never seen for 15 years… and now they are here… so that’s another reason why I chose this place. Nanaimo and David’s Place.”
His return to Nanaimo has helped him reconnect with family, too. “I get invited out to my nieces’ and nephews’ place for dinner… they said they really looked up to me for how far I’ve come in my life in sobriety.” In the few times he has been home, his sobriety had made him unrecognizable to his family, “I showed up, they saw me, didn’t recognize me. The only way they recognized me is through my laughter… or a smile.”
Now, Marshall is focused on staying grounded and giving back. “I might look into a support worker for a living… that’s what’s on my mind and my heart.”
He has one wish for the future. “Hopes is to see my younger grandchildren graduate… I just missed one granddaughter that she graduated and since I was still stuck in my addiction… I think she’s still kind of angry about that.”
Through it all, he holds onto gratitude. “I’m really grateful for the staff here at David’s Place for accepting me and how kind and the warm welcome that they have given me. It’s a refreshing morning and a refreshing evening time.”