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S u n d a y O c to b e r 3, 1 99 9 Oakville Beaver Weekend 3 Counsellor' s experiencegives others ` By Sandra Omand SPECIAL TO THE BEAVER to was so polluted with alcohol. After escaping from the treatment centre and finding himself sitting in the car with a case of beer from the Duty Free Shop, Harkins said he finally stopped and asked himself what he was doing. He never opened the case of beer. Instead, Harkins phoned Dick as soon as he got home and asked to return to the treatment centre. He has been sober ever since. A year later, in April 1991, an industrial accident at work ended his career as a construction painter and left him in chronic pain. So, at the age of 41 Harkins attended McMaster University where he obtained a diploma in Addiction Studies and the Employee Assistance Program. He also became one of the first gambling counsellors in Canada and is a certified SASSI trainer (a program designed to assess if a per son is at risk for addiction or suicide). He has been the coordinator of a 90-day in house program with a focus on addiction for the Salvation Army in Hamilton and has worked as a con sultant for a non-profit organization in Mississauga before deciding to open up his own practice in 1998. "I saw the downside of the non profit agencies as not being profitable to the suffering drug-alcoholic depen dent in society. They weren't there when you needed them. I refuse to have any kind of a waiting list." Harkins said in the average time it takes people to get into a government funded program they could be dead. "I believe that there are too many fingers in the pie, there is too much bureaucracy within the disbursement of those funds getting back to the people who need it." "You need help when you ask for it," said Harkins. "I'm on call 24 hours a day." Harkins said contracts with com panies like Boeing Toronto and affili ations with various CAW locals allow him to provide a high level of service at affordable rates and to hire addi tional counsellors. Furthermore, Harkins said charg ing clients (he has a sliding fee scale) forces alcoholics to be responsible, something they avoid for the most part. Courage to Change is located at 2330 Lakeshore Road West and can be reached at 905 469-6338. H is nose has been broken more than a couple of times and his voice is raspy from the many cigarettes he smokes, but to his clients he is a saviour. Jim Harkins runs Courage to Change, an addiction counselling ser vice in Bronte for anyone with alco hol, drug or gambling problems. But what makes Harkins special and gives him an inside edge on many of his colleagues is he has "been there, done that." Up until May 30, 1990, the 53year-old Oakville resident suffered from an alcohol and gambling addic tion. Now, Harkins uses that experi ence to help pull others up from the pit of addiction and guide them through the difficulties of post-addic tion life. A client, who agreed to talk on the condition of anonymity, felt without Harkins' service he would be back into what he calls the "deep, dark hold" of alcoholism and drugs. "It's very important for me that Jim's been there, and I can be with someone and share and no longer be alone, and that there is someone who has gone through the process, felt the feelings I'm going through," said the 36-year-old client. Until he turned his life around two years ago, the client had abused drugs and alcohol continuously from the time he was 14-years-old. Raised in an affluent Oakville family, the client said he "had it all," right up until the combination of the two got him kicked out of the electri cal engineering program at university. He saw psychologists and sociolo gists, but said they treated him with kid gloves and he would hear what he wanted. With Harkins, however, it was different. "In Jim's case, what you get back is the truth about yourself and a lot of times that sucks because it's not what you want to hear." Harkins does not hesitate to shy away from the truth about himself, either, and unflinchingly reveals the grim details of his addiction. His first wife divorced him and he lost all rights to his daughter (they have since reunited) as a result of an addiction to alcohol and prescription drugs. Photo by Ron Kuzyk Jim Harkins stands outside his Courage to Change addiction counselling office in Bronte. It also cost him his second mar riage which lasted seven months. "By the 80s I was consuming anywhere from 80 to 120 ounces of Vodka -- a gallon of vodka a day," said Harkins, who had an absentee rate of 35% from his job as a con struction painter. "I could walk Douglas, led by Marlene Darche now his wife, decided to do something. Working behind the scenes with an EAP (Employee Assistance Program) administrator, named Joan Dick, an action plan was put into place. "He was one of the worst cases I've ever had to deal with because he Before going Harkins said he downed three quarters of a 40 ouncer in an hour and stuffed every pocket in his coat full of miniatures for the drive. "I walked straight up the steps of the treatment center and blew a 4.7 into the breathalyzer," said Harkins. "H e w as one o f the w o rst cases I've ever had to deal w ith because he had so m uch alcohol in his system it had replaced his blood. " -- Joan D ick, retired E m ployee A ssistance P rogram a d m in istra to r had so much alcohol in his system it had replaced his blood," said Dick, 66, now retired. Finally agreeing to be assessed, but still denying he had a problem, Harkins was driven by a CAW (Canadian Auto Worker) representa tive to the Bry-Lin Treatment Center in Buffalo. "I was chemically dead and walking straight as a die." The detox process was not an easy one for Harkins who found himself in a padded room after assaulting a female nurse and two burly security guards. Dick said medication that would normally work on people would not work on him because he straight as a die, but if you got close you'd know, so I learned how to dis tance myself so people couldn't smell my body." He ended up in the hospital in 1989 on life support, bleeding from every orifice with alcoholic hepatitis, but still he continued to drink. Finally, coworkers at MacDonald- First S tar's F am ous ~ Nutrition Seminars ~ Feeling confused? Information overload? Holistic Nutritionists Lianne Sparling and Darrell Hails show you simple yet effective ways to improve the health of you and your family. October 19th - Eat Your Way to Health October 26th - Prevention is the Key to Good Health November 2nd ~ Weight Loss Naturally November 9th - The Importance o f Detoxification Location: Quality Hotel, Bronte Rd. & Q.E.W. 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