“I was struggling with addiction when I found out I was pregnant. The perinatal addictions clinic at St. Michael’s Hospital saved me”

I was born in Sarnia in 1999. My parents got divorced when I was two, and my brother, sister and I moved around a lot, eventually settling in Keswick with our mom. I never felt safe at home. Addiction runs in my family, and from a young age, I just wanted to get away. In 2018, when I turned 18, I dropped out of high school and moved to Toronto. I had no money and no credentials, and I couldn’t find a job.

I turned to sex work to support myself. Initially, I was careful. Living downtown with two other street-smart sex workers, I knew how much overlap there was between our work and drugs. For nearly two years, I wouldn’t even have a glass of wine. I needed to be able to make fast and smart decisions to keep myself safe. It wasn’t a great job, to say the least, but it allowed me to pay my rent and buy food.

In 2020, things took a turn. I started dating a guy who used drugs, and I began to dabble with cocaine and alcohol. A few months later, Covid hit. Like most other industries, sex work dried up. It was taboo to meet up with clients in person, and money became scarce. Though I had previously managed to keep my substance use under control, being locked down with nothing to do opened the floodgates. I started drinking and using cocaine alone in my apartment.

I became a different person, someone who couldn’t be trusted. I was asking friends for money all the time and lying about what I needed it for. Then I’d disappear to use. I lost friends, had no work and couldn’t pay rent. I decided to go back to my mom’s house in Keswick. Just before leaving town, I posted on Facebook asking if anyone wanted to party with me one last time. I got one reply, from a man with whom I shared some online friends but had never met in person. We met up that night, and he introduced me to meth.

I ended up staying in Toronto. For the next year, all of my focus went into drugs and my toxic relationship with this man. A decade-long meth user, he suffered from psychosis that often made him violent, and he was in and out of jail. He wouldn’t let me do sex work, and by April of 2022, I was evicted from my apartment. By that point, I didn’t have any friends left to crash with. I had only my partner to rely on for somewhere to sleep at night, so I put up with the constant fighting, screaming, paranoia and physical abuse. For months, we bounced around couches and seedy hotel rooms.

In June, I started feeling pain in my breasts, so I took a pregnancy test. It came back positive. I wasn’t surprised—I knew my body felt different. My partner and I didn’t discuss the pregnancy. We did what we always did: we got high. More than 12 years of using drugs had taken a toll on his brain. Nearly every time he got high, he became psychotic. It led to another violent fight, but now, knowing I was pregnant, I just couldn’t bear it. I left.

I was walking down Dundas crying when a stranger approached me and asked if I was okay. I told him that I needed a safe place to go. He walked me to Street Health, a harm reduction site at Dundas and Sherbourne. The nurse there confirmed my pregnancy and let me sleep in her office.

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When I woke up, I knew I needed help. At that moment, struggling with my addiction, I felt like abortion was my only choice, so I called Planned Parenthood to discuss my options. Then I went to see my doctor. He had heard about a perinatal addictions clinic at St. Michael’s Hospital, Baby and Me, and looked up the clinic’s schedule. It happened to be the day that the weekly program runs. He shooed me out of his office and told me to get to the clinic right away.

Abortion was still on my mind when I arrived. I had a choice to make between drugs and my baby, and at that point, it didn’t seem like I had the strength or wherewithal to make the right decision. I was an addict. I didn’t have a place to live, and I didn’t want my kid to grow up the way I did. I wasn’t going to raise a child in an unsafe situation.

I met with Erin Lurie, the doctor who leads the program. She explained that Baby and Me is a drop-in clinic that helps people who are using substances in pregnancy by providing meals, transportation, counselling and other services. It also offers on-the-spot ultrasounds, blood work, sexual health testing and safe use kits. When I brought up abortion, the doctor asked me what has become the most important question of my life: “I know that’s what you think you should do, but is that what you want?” When she told me that, despite my addiction, I still had the right to decide to have my baby, I burst into tears. I wanted my baby, and she said she could help me keep it.

I was prescribed Vyvanse, a stimulant used to treat ADHD, to help me gradually get off meth. I went to the pharmacy every day to get my dose, and that routine—which mirrored the ritualistic nature of drug use—helped me get clean. Every Monday, I’d get my urine tested at Baby and Me. By August, I was totally sober. But the city didn’t feel safe anymore: I’d broken up with my abusive partner, but he was still around, and triggers were everywhere. So I went back to Keswick.

My mom’s house had its own set of challenges. Alcohol was a fixture, and the environment was too intense for me to maintain my sobriety. I knew that, if I went back to Toronto, I wouldn’t be able to fight the temptations there either. I just didn’t feel strong enough. Still, I went back to the city in early September. In a way, I relapsed on purpose: I knew I hadn’t beaten my addiction but that I wouldn’t be able to get into detox or rehab if I wasn’t using, so I showed up at the clinic high and failed my urine test. They offered to send me to detox. I had another choice to make: I could say no and become the parent I didn’t want to be, or I could get clean and be the parent I always wished I’d had.

In mid-September, I went to detox at St. Joseph’s Hospital. Normally, one week is the maximum stay, but Baby and Me advocated for me to stay an extra few days so I could go directly from there to rehab. I spent three months at Street Haven’s facility, Grant House, graduating in late December. Rehab was a lot of work, but it taught me how strong I was and prepared me to fight to be the person I wanted to be. While I was there, a social worker from Baby and Me, Jasmine, recommended me as a candidate for subsidized housing with St. Jude Community Homes in Regent Park.

Related: “It’s life or death”: Harm reduction workers on Doug Ford’s decision to close safe consumption sites

One of the clinic’s goals is to make sure no pregnant mother has to live on the street. Because I’d put in the work and was motivated to live a healthy life, they thought I’d be a good candidate for housing. After leaving rehab, I got a set of keys to my own apartment. I felt like I was set up for success: an outreach worker from Breaking the Cycle—an initiative for new mothers who struggle with addiction—encouraged me to join the program postnatally, which I did.

My son, Wesley, was born on January 27, 2023, at St. Michael’s Hospital. Dr. Lurie was at my side for the delivery. Wesley was and remains a healthy little boy. Every week since his birth, we’ve attended Breaking the Cycle together. The program has a daycare, counselling and group therapy. At least once a week, I have one-on-one counselling while Wesley goes to daycare.

People say, “Once an addict, always an addict.” But I believe that, with the right resources, people can step into new roles. I’m constantly on guard and aware of my triggers because my son is my priority. I’ve built genuine relationships, made friends and modelled a healthy social life for my little boy. Next year, I plan to enroll in the University of Toronto’s Transitional Year Programme, an eight-month program for adults who didn’t finish high school due to financial problems, family difficulties and other reasons beyond their control. Once I finish, I’ll have guaranteed acceptance into U of T’s faculty of arts or science.

When I became pregnant, the only thing I cared about was meth. Now I know that the real high is helping others. Without the kindness of strangers, the city’s social services and my persistent desire to break the patterns of my upbringing, I wouldn’t be the strong, healthy mother I am today. So I want to give back: my plan is to become a registered nurse and eventually a nurse practitioner. Caregiving is my new addiction, and it’s one I never intend to quit.