Three months into his recovery, Bryan wrote a letter to himself. In part, it read:
“I am finally opening up to a simple thought. I am grateful I am an alcoholic. This in no way means that I am reminiscing about the ‘good old times’ in active addiction and excusing any of my past actions of reckless and harmful behaviour. It is now that I can begin to look back and differentiate myself from where I was before…”
A professional musician, Bryan says drinking was deeply embedded in the rehearsals, bar scene, and late nights of performance culture. “It gets you in the mindset for performing and helps you access a different part of yourself,” he explains. “At the time, I saw that as helpful.”
But over time, alcohol took more than it gave. “I kept refining my practice but was always crashing afterwards,” he says. “I couldn’t understand why.”
Eventually, he linked drinking to productivity — a belief that deepened his dependence. “It got to the point where, to get anything accomplished, I had to have a drink,” he shares. Hoping performance was the issue, he stepped away from music to try other pursuits, but during a particularly stressful period, everything unraveled.
“I drank myself into a manic state,” he recalls. “I quit school, crashed my car, got a DUI, spent a night in jail — and kept drinking.”
The next day, while walking a country road, Bryan was hit by a car.
“I woke up in a ditch, in a pile of snow. But almost by grace, things began to shift. A week earlier, I’d reached out to Renascent.” He entered detox, followed by Renascent’s Virtual Intensive Treatment Program. The format, he says, was transformative.
“Treatment is different for everyone, but the virtual option worked really well for me. It let me examine my addiction in the context of my real life.” When he experienced a minor relapse early in recovery, “I could evaluate what led to that slip — the triggers, the thinking, the environment — and use that insight to move forward,” he says. “Getting through that reaffirmed for me the value of treatment.”
As his recovery continued, however, Bryan suffered the first in a series of seizures caused by a brain hemorrhage from the accident. A long rehabilitation followed.
“I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy,” he says. “But I take grace from the chance to rebuild myself, not just from alcohol, but also cognitively and emotionally.” Today he’s back to making music and credits daily yoga, major weight loss, and rebuilding family ties as milestones, along with six weeks of continuing care support from Renascent.
“The duration of support made a big difference,” he says. “It helped me develop the skills required to understand addiction from a cognitive and social perspective, among other things.”
Asked what inspires him now, Bryan describes his efforts to recognize what’s special in the present moment.
“The most beautiful thing is just noticing how beautiful things really are,” he says.
“There’s humility in being able to change, and grace in appreciating what is.”
