There are many ways to come to grips with addiction and recovery. Julie Lys, the Northwest Territory Metis Nation's wellness coordinator, takes a spiritual approach.
"In 2017, when I started this wellness program through the Metis Nation, I really wanted to focus on the spiritual health because in the healthcare system, we focus mostly on physical and a bit on the mental health, but not on the spiritual health," she said. "I really believe that spirituality is part of the solution to addiction."
Lys, who worked as a nurse for close to 30 years before taking on her current role, is based in Fort Smith, and runs her program out of a building known locally as "Mabel's" SA国际影视传媒� because it used to belong to a woman named Mabel.
There is a significant drug and alcohol problem in the community of just over 2,200 people, Lys said. In fact, it's hard to miss.
"It's a big problem, and it's getting to be a bigger problem because of the drug dealers in town," she said. "It's right in your face. It's a different level of activity than we've seen before. It's really scary for a lot of people in the community."
Lys believes many residents turn to drugs and alcohol as a means of coping with past trauma SA国际影视传媒� and more recent trauma, such as the wildfires that devastated the territory last year.
"Wherever there's trauma, there's often an increase in addiction after," she said. "We've had a lot of trauma between Fort Smith and Hay River, and even Fort Resolution SA国际影视传媒� the fires, the floods.
"People are traumatized and they're shaken up, and they're trying to cope and they're scared. If your way of coping is to have a drink or do some drugs, it just escalates."
To combat the growing drug and alcohol problem around town, Lys offers a range of addiction and mental health-related programs, tailored specifically to Metis culture.
"We start all of our programs with a smudge and a prayer and an introduction to each other," she said. "Whether we're making sashes, or beading, or doing art or having a talking circle, that's how we start everything.
"We do full moon ceremonies every month, which is like a women's ceremony of getting together and talking and healing," she added. "We built a sweat [lodge] in the back yard... We have sweats usually once a month.
"The idea is to bring back our ceremonies that help us heal and give us strength."
There are numerous mental health and addiction-related supports available across the NWT, and many of them take different approaches.
Lauren O'Keefe, a certified counsellor who was formerly based in Fort Simpson but now operates a private business called Wildflower Wellness Services in Yellowknife, practices what's called "narrative solution-focused therapy."
"The nice thing about narrative solution-focused therapy is that it creates a safe space for a client to tell their story," she said. "It tends to be more brief. A person can find within themselves the strengths and solutions to move forward in their life and to practice the things that we talked about in therapy quite quickly."
O'Keefe is also a licensed art therapist, and has seen benefits through that method as well.
"Art therapy is a really nice way of deepening your story, or deepening the session or allowing for exploration of things where the words aren't quite available to you," she said. "That might be something that you find difficult to talk about, or something that you're not even really consciously, cognitively processing yet. Art is a really beautiful tool to start to explore some of that and put meaning to some of your experiences."
Ultimately, there is no one solution for addiction. Everyone's situation is different, which means that what works for one person may not work for another. The most important thing is getting help SA国际影视传媒� and there's plenty of it out there, according to O'Keefe.
"The treatment for each person has to be really individualized based off of their own personal triggers," she said. "Support is out there.
"There's free government programs available through the community counselling program [in Yellowknife]," she said. "That's a same-day access program, so you can talk to a counsellor the very same day that you decide to call in and receive support services. There's lots of great supports available through non-government agencies as well. There's the Arctic Indigenous Wellness Foundation, there's the Tree of Peace. Depending on where you are, there may also be wellness supports available to you locally through your band [if you're Indigenous]."
