When Anne arrived at Renascent in March 2005, she was 36 years old and exhausted from trying to hold her life together.
“I wasn’t a kid,” she says. “I’d had a long, complicated but sometimes wonderful history with drinking – lots of ups and downs.”
For years, alcohol had been woven into nearly every part of her life. As an actor, the late nights, celebrations, disappointments, and constant uncertainty of the industry made drinking easy to normalize.
At first, Anne believed she had control over it. She created rules for herself: no drinking before a certain hour, no drinking during work, only drinking certain amounts. But over time, those rules stopped working. “So much of my life was defined by drinking,” she says. “Looking forward to it, controlling it, planning around it.”
As her peers began to move away from heavy consumption, Anne found herself structuring more and more of her life around alcohol. Relationships, work, vacations, and even conversations about having children became filtered through one question: how would drinking fit in?
Slowly, the consequences started piling up. Auditions went poorly. Jobs disappeared. Panic set in every time she tried to stop drinking.
“Stopping was always temporary,” she says. “I’d go a few months without drinking just to prove I could do it, but it wasn’t about getting better.”
Eventually, her mother intervened and brought Anne to Renascent. On a walk several days into treatment, Anne stood outside an LCBO and plotted how she could sneak alcohol back with her. “It suddenly struck me how sick and ridiculous that was, and I started crying,” she says.
“A man asked if I was okay, and I said, ‘No. I’m an alcoholic.’” It was the first time she had said the words out loud.
From there, Anne immersed herself in treatment, the 12 Steps, and the recovery community around her. She connected deeply with the women in the house and found comfort in the structure, honesty, and support she received.
“Renascent sent me back out into the world prepared and ready for more,” she says.
Over two decades later, recovery continues to shape Anne’s life in ways she once never imagined possible. She and her husband, who is also in recovery, are together raising two teenagers who have never seen either parent drink. Recovery remains part of their family life through meetings, gratitude, daily reflection, and staying connected to the program that helped change everything.
“For several years following treatment, I made a point of returning to Renascent, staying involved in the alumni program and attending in-house meetings. To this day, I try to stay connected,” Anne reflects. “It’s been important to me to keep listening, keep talking, keep remembering. I want people to know they’re not always going to feel like this.
Things are going to change. Things can change.”
