By Colin McGregor
Seven days a week, alcoholics seek the company of their peers to battle their cunning, baffling and powerful addiction. It’s an international movement, with meetings in 180 countries.
On a typical Friday, I found 201 meetings in Quebec on the Alcoholics Anonymous website. Most are held in French, but there are meetings in English and Spanish too. From the Magdalen Islands to Kuujuarapik, from Magog to Rouyn-Noranda, their starting times begin at 7 a.m. and go on until 11 p.m.
Sylvain Simard openly and fully admits his alcohol addiction. He has worked in the rocket-fueled world of Quebec radio for over 35 years, as a broadcaster and an administrator. He was notably director of the popular Radio Énergie network for a while. In 2011, he launched a talent agency, Le Gérant. And for much of this time he was a major problem drinker.
He traces the history of his illness in his book Le diable sur mon épaule (The Devil on my Shoulder). How was he able to finally shake his alcohol problem?
In the media world, drunken nights (les soirées bien arrosées) are pretty common. Sylvain’s life seemed wonderful. But behind the scenes, things were very dark.
His father was a controlling alcoholic; his mother, a tolerant saint. Sylvain’s problems with alcohol began in 1984, when he left the family nest to study communications at Cégep de Jonquière with a childhood friend. “Three days after my arrival, there were initiations,” he writes. “I didn’t pass the first trial. My punishment was to chug a big can of beer. I came to realize that my body could handle large Labatt 50 cans at will.”
Overdrinking became his favorite pastime throughout Cégep and into his career. He suffered frequent blackouts. He fell asleep in public places on several occasions. His charm and his competence at his job saved him from the worst consequences of his behavior.
Sylvain frankly and emotionally describes his highs and lows. He experienced a horrible tragedy at age 26 when he lost his wife and their coming child to a medical emergency. That sent him into a spiral of depression that lasted for decades. He was lucky to escape alive.
All the while, the devil on his shoulder whispered to him that he was a good-for-nothing nobody, and that booze would solve all his problems.
He hid his alcoholism from most of his entourage. In the book’s preface, his friend and client, Quebec broadcasting megastar Isabelle Racicot, admits: “I worked in close collaboration with Sylvain for 15 years, and never did I suspect that he had a problem with alcohol.”
Sylvain explains that “99% of people were very surprised when I came out as an alcoholic. My family knew, but I never drank during work hours.”
In July 2018, his friend the former football player Étienne Boulay, and his in-laws, found him at a resto-bar in an advanced state of drunkenness. They took him to rehab the very next day. Finally, he admitted that his addiction had led him to lose control of his life.
In his younger days he had been to A.A. meetings with his father. On his first night at the rehab he attended his first meeting as a participant. He recalls: “Sitting in the back of the room, I spent all 90 minutes of the meeting crying. A guy and a girl also in rehab sitting beside me tried to console me, but I couldn’t contain myself. I emptied myself completely.”
In agreeing to check in to the Maison Jean-Lapointe, a well-known Montreal rehab, he says: “It changed my life. Everyone has their doubts. But I quickly found that I’d made the best decision of my life.”
He isn’t the only person to have ever fallen into the clutches of alcoholism. Statistics Canada says that 10 Canadians die of alcoholism every day. Two thirds of these are men. Around the world, alcohol causes 3 million deaths per year.
The consequences were devastating for Sylvain. “You can’t minimize the effects of this terrible illness. For a long time I denied my alcoholism despite its constant presence in my life. I also was in denial over the health problems it caused me: stomach and intestinal woes, headaches, obesity.”
He continues: “As much as I loved to laugh and have fun, alcohol often kept me in a very somber place. My circle had to endure my mood swings, my impulsiveness and my rudeness towards them. The thing I found the saddest when I got sober was to realize how much I’d minimized and understated the nastiness I’d made others live through.”
Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom to realize you’re in trouble. That’s what happened to Sylvain Simard. And yet he survived.
Once out of rehab, he openly admitted his alcoholism, and started to post about it on social media. An editor at a publishing house read his testimonials and convinced him to write a book, which has been well received. “The goal of my book is to help others, to show them how to beat alcoholism. It’s been a privilege to write it.”
Reading this book, we learn that we shouldn’t always listen to that little voice urging us on, especially when it’s the devil on your shoulder.
Le diable sur mon épaule by Sylvain Simard
Published by Performance Édition
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