CAMH Is My Lifeline

Noah’s life has gone from hectic to hopeful in just under a year.

“My life was hectic; I was using drugs,” recalls Noah, now 18. “I was hanging out with the wrong crowd, and I never knew how to say ‘no.’ I used and used and used. I was a boy crying for help.” Street drugs, speed and marijuana were taking their toll on his health. His parents struggled to find him the care he needed, but there were limited options in Canada and nothing seemed to work. Even a “terrifying” trip to a U.S. rehab centre when Noah was just 16 couldn’t set him on a healthier path.

As troubling as his drug use was, it was just one part of his problem. At 18, Noah went through his second frightening psychotic episode, the first having hit him years earlier.

“I was delusional,” says Noah. “I was thinking people were after me who weren’t, and thinking things were happening that weren’t. I had all these conspiracies in my head, and they were terrifying at times but they weren’t true.”

Fortunately, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health gave Noah an option when it opened the Irma Brydson Youth Inpatient Unit. This full-service hospital program, committed to caring for youth 14 to 18 who are living with both mental illness and addiction, is the first of its kind in Canada.

Today, Noah is free of drugs and feeling healthy.

“CAMH turned my life around,” he says. “I’ve never had more supportive people in my life who weren’t related to me. Here, they’re family.”

And Noah has redefined his interests. He speaks highly of his younger brother and parents who encouraged him to get help and stood by him while he did. (He likes snowboarding, music and “hanging out with my family; I love them,” he says.) And he’s focused on earning his high school diploma so that he can study psychology at university; he’s already been accepted into the program of his choice. Then, he’ll be able to help people like him; he knows he’ll bring a great deal of compassion and understanding to the role.

Looking back, he sees the delusions that once tormented him fading away. “They’re not real, quite frankly,” Noah says with a slight laugh. “They’re not real and it feels great.”

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