Jason Rivers
Special to Spur Ottawa

Chris Poulson has had a hard life. Abused as a young child, the shame drove him to act out in school and experiment with drugs, but after years of crime and addiction, an experience at Harvest House, a Christian rehabilitation centre, helped turn the tides.

Poulson kept the abuse a secret, even denying it had happened. By high school, his chronic bad behaviour was diagnosed as attention deficit disorder. The prescription he got didn’t help, in fact, Poulson credits it as his first exposure to drugs.

“Don’t keep a secret, because secrets keep us sick,” he says. “Take it to God. Take it to your pastor. Pray together.”

By Grade 10, Poulson stopped taking the medication, instead using weed, then alcohol, LSD, and mushrooms to cope. His drug habit led him to drop out of high school, lost him a job as a fiber optics salesman, and led to him getting charged with assault.

A glimmer of hope appeared when a couple he knew staged an intervention. They welcomed him into their home and offered him a fresh start in Toronto. It worked, and after about a year drug free he was on his feet and living back in Ottawa.

“That started a whole other monster in my life.”

“You’d think that being clean and not doing anything for a year would be a deterrent,” Poulson says, “but it wasn’t.”

He was miserable and working dead-end jobs. Then he met a friend who smoked weed.

“As soon as I got to know this guy and realized he was one of my neighbours I started hanging around with him all the time.”

After slipping back into hard drugs, he was injured at work and was given a prescription for narcotics.

“That started a whole other monster in my life. Not only am I smoking weed, drinking, and partying, I’m popping these pain pills like they are going out of style,” he recalls.

Fortunately for him, a urine test eventually came back tainted with cocaine. When he refused to look at alternate pain-management methods and his doctor cut his prescription, Poulson tried to rob a pharmacy.

“This is where my story takes a turn from a man addicted, to a man slowly in change,” he says.

“God was working miracles in my life, big and small.”

Sitting in jail, at 36 years old, he eventually asked God for help. About a week later, his mom called and told him about a spot available in Harvest House, south of Ottawa. After calling the centre, he was taken out of jail and checked in at the facility.

“When I arrived, I hung out with the guys who were new and who still wanted to get high.”

But one morning Poulson woke up with a need to share his buried secret. In his meeting that day, someone asked, “Is there anyone in the room who was molested?” For the first time, he opened up and when he did he says it took a huge weight off.

Harvest House founder, Bill Main, prayed with him, that his sense of shame and guilt would leave, and he spoke purpose into his life.

“After five years of doing that, he’s an amazing young man.”

“God was working miracles in my life, big and small. Sometimes I didn’t even see it. Being arrested was a miracle. If not then, I would have died,” Poulson says. “I started looking to God for all the answers. He touched my life and He rebuilt my relationship with my mom and dad.”

Poulson’ father, Glen, says their son was at a point where he could have overdosed any day, but faith in God saved his life.

“I love the fact that he’s found God to help him through a lot of his hardships,” Glen says. “After five years of doing that, he’s an amazing young man. I enjoy every second we have together.”

Today, Poulson is almost six-years sober. He works at Harvest House and is studying to be a trauma addictions counsellor. He says he has an amazing woman in his life and he goes into high schools to share his story of abuse, addiction, and freedom.