Econoline Crush lead singer performs at Calgary Recovery day, opens up about becoming nurse to help addicts

“I thought I wanted to do some good things…I can remember I had a lukewarm Kokanee on my step and I just went ‘yuck’ and I never went back,” Hurst said.

Part of his recovery included going to AA and back to school at Brandon University at the age of 45 to get his nursing degree.

“How do we teach people to have better coping mechanisms? Especially when you have the alcohol companies spending millions and millions of dollars. You see this ad and everybody looks perfect and they are just awesome, they are having such a great time. How could that bottle of stuff be bad?” Hurst said.

Hurst talked about dealing with the trauma that often triggers addiction. Hurst says in his case, it was growing up with undiagnosed ADHD.

“Once I got my self esteem, I realized this is just a bit of glitch in the programming and you need to accommodate it. And it doesn’t make you a bad person,” Hurst said.

Also speaking at Recovery Day on Sunday was Bob Marier, best known as the “sobriety coach” for the late mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford.

Marier spoke about his own approach to addiction which emphasizes on “getting everything out in the open.”

Maurier said he’s impressed by the work being done at recovery centres in Calgary which focus on long-term programs.

“Calgary has the best services in the country. There is no other place like ‘Fresh Start’ that’s doing that much involvement to get people out of bad situation,” Marier said.

“This community is open about ‘we’ve got problems, we are working on them’ and that to me is the key to any type of good recovery…to have services,” Marier said.