People First Radio – August 08, 2024

People First Radio – August 08, 2024

How do people find strength in their journey to sobriety? This conversation from People First Radio brings together tender family moments and hard truths about addiction in a way that feels surprisingly down-to-earth. First up, Edmonton writer and mum Carissa Halton talks about the shock of sitting in the audience at her 17-year-old daughter’s high school graduation. She thought grad was all about dresses, hair appointments and tight ticket counts.

Instead, a principal’s speech about parents planting “seeds of hope” in their children suddenly had her in tears. Carissa recalls the years of reading bedtime stories just to “get through the day”, rocking crying babies for a moment’s peace, and feeling like “a border collie on a balcony” desperate to be out in the wider world. She now sees those small, sometimes grudging acts as powerful attachment work that shapes a child’s brain and resilience.

She also worries about how mobile phones quietly steal parental presence, arguing that parents need to be clearer with kids: are we checking a recipe or scrolling social media while they’re asking for us? The episode then jumps back to 2014, where former host Kevin Midbo speaks with physician and author Dr. Gabor Maté about addiction, trauma and community responsibility.

Using the Buddhist image of the “realm of hungry ghosts” – beings with “large empty bellies” who can never be filled – he frames addiction as a desperate attempt to soothe deep emotional pain rooted in childhood experience and social disconnection. He challenges the idea that addiction is genetic, pointing instead to “multigenerational trauma”, especially in Indigenous communities, and slams a society that punishes people “for having been abused in the first place”.

Together, these conversations ask a simple but powerful question: what might change if we took seriously both the tiny moments of care in families and the big structural supports people need to heal?