Christine Grimard
Northern News Services
Published Monday, November 19, 2007

YELLOWKNIFE - As Fred MacDonald waters his plants, he boasts that they were nearly dead when he first got them.

By taking a few minutes every day to spritz them with water, he brought the dying plants back to life.

MacDonald also got a second chance at life. On May 5, 2005 he lay in the hospital contemplating his own death. MacDonald had been high and drunk for more than 40 years, living a nomadic life.

From what MacDonald can remember, his final 13 months on the street was him at his worst. He slept under a tarp in the summer of 2004, and spent eight and a half months of winter in an abandoned truck, high and drunk the entire time.

"At the end it became all I could do. It's all I wanted to do," he said.

MacDonald's life didn't start off like this. Adopted at age 4, he had a loving mother and father, although his mother died when he was 9. He was then put into the residential school system, where his safe life was pulled out from under him.

"It was the first place I ever experienced any form of abuse from my caretakers," said MacDonald.

When he got out of the residential school system as a teenager, he moved in with his biological mother, where he suffered more abuse at the hands of his step-father. For his safety, he was steered to another residential school.

At the second school, MacDonald was sexually abused. Overwhelmed by the situation he was in, MacDonald turned to alcohol.

"The drink seemed to help me block out a lot of my personal issues in life," he said. "When I drank, I didn't have these feelings of guilt and shame and inadequacy."

He started drinking at 16 and took any drug he could find. At his worst periods he was a crack-cocaine addict and a heroin addict.

"I was one of those guys, I lived life on the streets," he said. "Whatever was available to me I did. I usually got addicted."

What led from those addictions was an aimless life of crime. MacDonald was in and out of the court system on charges from minor theft to armed robbery and trafficking narcotics.

During periods of sobriety, MacDonald was able to get some trades training. But sober, MacDonald couldn't face the ghosts of his past.

"I knew that alcohol and drugs were not helping my life," he said. "I went back out and drank because I couldn't handle the stress and all the problems of life I didn't understand."

His substance abuse finally landed him in the hospital. But in hitting rock bottom, something switched in MacDonald's life. He wanted to live again.

MacDonald spent 12 days in the Stanton Territorial Hospital withdrawal management program, and lived at the Salvation Army for 10 and a half months completing their recovery program.

Though difficult times bring back the temptation, MacDonald has resisted drinking or taking drugs since that day.

"I know if I take a drink, everything I've gained in this world, it could be lost. It's so good to know there's another way to live."

Since his recovery, he has reconnected with his 18-year-old son who now lives with him. He's also grateful that his birth mother, now 92, is still alive so that he can make amends with her.

While a difficult part of MacDonald's recovery may be done, he says the process is far from over as he struggles to keep his life on track.

"Recovery is something you need to do everyday," he said. "You need help, you need other people in recovery."

MacDonald spends two hours a night with groups and working on his recovery. He has also thrown himself into community projects, working with other recovering addicts to show them a different path in life.

"There's a lot of people out there willing to help anyone who wants to put their life back together," he said.

MacDonald is certain he never wants to go back to that place where he was hanging on to life by a thread.

"I'm glad today I came to a place where I know if I want to continue my life I can't drink and I can't use a drug," he said. "I'm just grateful to be alive and free from my addiction."