How Riley Bahl turned his life around
A change in behaviour
Waking up in a homeless shelter in Calgary one morning, Riley Bahl had no memory of trying to commit himself to the hospital the day prior while high on cocaine.
He was not suicidal, so the hospital could not take him. He threw a fit, had to be sedated then was driven to the shelter he was staying at.
The next morning, he bought crystal meth, then received a text from his mom that changed his perspective on how he was living his life.
That text message would mark his turning point.
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INFOGRAPHIC BY: KIRSTEN PHILLIPS
From junior high to high school
From the moment he started using, Bahl always considered his drug use an addiction, “everytime I used, I took it way too far.”
In junior high, the majority of Bahl’s friends were smoking marijuana, but his peers were not the only ones who impacted his decision to begin taking drugs.
His older sister did “a lot of drugs” before he had.
“I always kind of looked up to her, so I thought drugs were cool for that reason,” says Bahl.
His main goal throughout his party years was to get as drunk and high as possible.
“I was going to a bunch of high school parties and stuff and using like coke and molly and drinking heavily,” says Bahl. “But, I would always take it too far, so eventually people didn’t want to hang out with me and give me all those drugs.”
His mom, Stacy Bahl, slowly started to catch on to his change in behaviour.
“He wasn’t coming home, he was skipping school and he was just kind of being delinquent in his studies. And then, it was just questionable company that he was keeping,” she says. “It was like what are you doing, and why aren’t you doing the things that you love? He just wasn’t my Riley.”
Introduction to the hard drugs
During his second semester of Grade 10, Bahl was introduced to crystal meth, which was the drug he used during the peak of his addiction.
“I knew I needed help before I even started doing all the hard, hard drugs, like smoking crack and stuff like that. I went to rehab when I was just 16 years old, like maybe 10 days after my 16th birthday,” says Bahl. “I knew I needed help. I actually wanted help.”
This experience only lasted about three weeks in a 12 week program. He was kicked out of a Lethbridge rehab facility when he and another patient were arrested after sneaking out of their windows, stealing a bottle from a liquor store and getting caught trying to break into cars by the police.
“The treatment centre was like, you can’t come back. It’s voluntary, like why would you do that if you have any plan of coming back.”
After getting kicked out of rehab, he turned back to drugs, as he had not spent enough time in the rehabilitation facility to acquire the tools he needed to stay sober.
“I thought it was like, the harder the drug I was doing the more of a badass I was. So yeah, I started using meth all the time.”
The daily dose
By Grade 11, Bahl had dropped out of school and was living in downtown Calgary, using drugs daily.
However, his drug addiction affected more than just his education - it also affected the relationship he had with his entire family, which he had been very close to growing up.
“It was pretty brutal during my active addiction. I didn’t talk to my dad for like three years, because he is a police officer,” says Bahl. “I was getting arrested all the time too... So he didn’t like me very much for a long time, my mom didn’t like me very much but she was always willing to help. I had no family relationships with any of my siblings, at all.”
His mom found that it was more than just her relationship with Riley that was affected during this time.
“All of our relationships started to break down because of Riley’s addiction, because there were a lot of differences of opinions on how to deal with it,” she says.
Stacy will never forget the emotions that she felt during this time.
“I will always remember the day I felt when we were fighting in the kitchen, and he threw his phone and it smashed the kitchen window,” she says. “Just the anger, and the sadness, and the fear. And then just driving him to the children's hospital and saying to them ‘I don't know if he wants to hurt himself, but I know that he caused a situation and he can’t come home.”
IMAGE BY: KIRSTEN PHILLIPS
Rock bottom
Bahl’s turning point was when he was 17, after using crystal meth for about a year and a half, he realized “it was like [his] rock bottom.”
“I felt completely alone, like I had no family for a little while,” says Bahl. “Which is ridiculous because they were always willing to help, but I wasn’t willing to accept the help.”
During this time, Bahl tried to visit his parents’ home, where his father physically removed him from the house. He then tried to go into his neighbour’s house, who he had always been close with. She also turned him away, but was still willing to drive him to the hospital.
“[I thought] maybe I can go to the psych ward, because it’s easier to get into the psych ward than a rehab centre,” says Bahl.
Turning point
After arriving at the hospital and speaking with the nurses, they informed him that they were unable to help unless he felt suicidal, which was not his case.
“I started, like, throwing a fit. I was high on cocaine while all this was happening,” says Bahl. ”So, they sedated me, which was probably appropriate and then drove me to a shelter which I had been staying at [in] downtown Calgary.”
The next morning when Bahl woke up at the shelter, he had no recollection of the previous day's events.
“I ended up walking... I bought like, a little bit of meth, I got a little high,” says Bahl. “Then my mom messaged me for the first time in a week. At this point my mom hadn’t talked to me in maybe a month and I had been trying to talk to her and she just wouldn’t talk to me.”
Bahl’s mom offered to send him to rehab, but told him “if not, don’t even worry about responding to this message.”
She made this choice to keep the rest of her family safe, and assure Riley did not become comfortable in his way of life.
“It was a lot of guarding of my heart, because I was worried that I was going to get a phone call that my kid was just going to be dead somewhere,” she says.
After receiving this message four years ago, he went to the Alberta Adolescent Recovery Centre, a non-voluntary treatment centre.
His probation officer told him that he had to stay at the recovery centre for the entire eight month program, or they would send him to jail and he said “thank you.”
“This treatment centre said you can never use again, you can never drink again, you can use nicotine products,” says Bahl. “I was like, you know what, that's probably okay, I can live like that. And it worked, I practiced complete abstinence and I’ve been sober for four years.”
