{"id":3114,"date":"2021-06-15T23:38:07","date_gmt":"2021-06-15T23:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/salvationarmy.ca\/britishcolumbia\/gerrys-story\/"},"modified":"2025-05-26T11:23:48","modified_gmt":"2025-05-26T11:23:48","slug":"gerrys-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/salvationarmy.ca\/britishcolumbia\/2021\/06\/15\/gerrys-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Gerry&#8217;s Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span data-contrast=\"none\">Gerry lived in Ontario with a history of alcoholism that started at a very tender age of 12. As an adult, he was able to secure a good life working in the trucking industry and got married. But things just went south for him. He suffered loss, was in jail for a while, tried drugs and used alcohol as a form of escape. <\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;134233117&quot;:true,&quot;134233118&quot;:true,&quot;201341983&quot;:2,&quot;335559740&quot;:375}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"none\">With the advice of his mother and brother, he moved to British Columbia\u00a0to see if he could get his life back together\u00a0hoping things will improve. Unfortunately,\u00a0his bad experience came with him, the troubles, and the things that he did in the past.\u00a0As a result, he experienced homelessness. He accepted the fact that he needed some help, He reached out to The Salvation Army Addictions and Rehabilitation Centre in Victoria, BC and he was accepted in open arms.\u00a0<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;134233117&quot;:true,&quot;134233118&quot;:true,&quot;201341983&quot;:2,&quot;335559740&quot;:375}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"none\">Crucial to Gerry\u2019s recovery was his ability to stay at Victoria ARC for six months. A good change started to happen. It has not been easy but everyday he was learning new things like lessons in skills, recovery, self compassion and how to be a better person. It was up to him to catch up and keep on learning on how to treat other people, listen and with the help of TSA counsellors, he was abstinent and has been alcohol-free and is doing some volunteer work and is looking to pay the good things he received forward to others.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;134233117&quot;:true,&quot;134233118&quot;:true,&quot;201341983&quot;:2,&quot;335559740&quot;:375}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"none\">&#8220;You can\u2019t do it by yourself with illegal substance. If you think you can, you are fooling yourself. You can push it away, ignore it\u2026but it\u2019s not possible\u2026I tried. If you want to put your hand out there for any reason at anytime that you think\u2026put your hand out and ask. When I\u2019ve been here in Salvation Army, I\u2019m outside sometimes and people would come up. I asked and they said you just knock on the door. So as I was passing along, I did it, bit by bit.\u201d<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;134233117&quot;:true,&quot;134233118&quot;:true,&quot;201341983&quot;:2,&quot;335559740&quot;:375}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gerry lived in Ontario with a history of alcoholism that started at a very tender age of 12. As an adult, he was able to secure a good life working in the trucking industry and got married. But things just went south for him. He suffered loss, was in jail for a while, tried drugs [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3115,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"location":[],"class_list":["post-3114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Gerry&#039;s Story - British Columbia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/salvationarmy.ca\/britishcolumbia\/2021\/06\/15\/gerrys-story\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Gerry&#039;s Story - British Columbia\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Gerry lived in Ontario with a history of alcoholism that started at a very tender age of 12. 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