Brendan Hughes on Crohn’s disease, grief and community outreach

00:00

[Clipped opening fragment.] And we are on. Thank you very much for coming. You’re here on the Mental Health Radio podcast, In Conversation With, and we’re in conversation with Brendan Hughes. How are you, Brendan?

Hey, Ward. Yeah, long time no see. Good seeing you again.

Excellent. The reason I started this project way back, three years ago, was that I was suffering with my mental health. I was pretty down, depressed, had all kinds of anxiety and depression. I decided I had to do something for myself, so I started the Mental Health Radio group on Facebook. Right now we’re at 190 people. The biggest thing we like about it is that we get to play lots of great music. There are about 29,000 songs right now. But we also get to talk to wonderful people like Brendan Hughes. Thanks for doing this, Brendan. I appreciate it.

Oh, shucks. Get out of here.

Don’t worry, the bill’s coming your way.

I guess you can see my blushing through my stubble here. That’s probably why I didn’t [unclear] today.

That’s right. Yeah, exactly. Hard to be blushing.

01:15

My biggest thing is we’re going to talk about mental health. I’d like to interview each and every person involved in the group, or anybody interested in doing this. As you can tell, Brendan seems quite well now. He’s very much involved with outreach up in Victoria and stuff like that, but we’ll get to that part.

We met years ago. I believe we figured it out to be somewhere around 2005, if I remember correctly.

Yeah, I believe that was about the time frame. It’s close.

So almost 20 years.

Jeez.

I know. You’re getting old.

I thought doing my taxes today was the worst reminder of my day.

Since I’ve known you, from the Radisson days, you’ve gone through quite a bit. I think it’s quite a success story. If you don’t mind, I’d like to tell your story, if you’re up for it.

Absolutely.

02:17

Okay. We’re going to start with your medical diagnosis, because to me any kind of medical diagnosis, like my three heart attacks, is a big thing. With you it was Crohn’s. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that?

It’s funny. It’s medical and mental and spiritual, and your relationships and loved ones. It’s all wrapped up in one component. I think the hardest thing for me was acceptance. I knew it would come with a lot of adjustments, a lot of lifestyle changes, including diet and exercise. It was almost like trial and error. I didn’t know what to do at first. It was all overwhelming, and all these things were getting thrown at me because I didn’t want to accept it. I didn’t want to accept that I was defective, that I had this big, scary autoimmune disorder. I knew it would mean all kinds of changes. I wasn’t ready for that.

I had all these booklets and fun facts: “Oh, you’ve got IBS, you’ve got Crohn’s.” It was shortly after my resection, when I had about 30 centimetres taken out of my small bowel, that I knew I wasn’t really going to be the same again. My journey, like everybody else’s, is different, but I can only speak to what I went through at first. It was complete shock.

03:43

Denial and wanting to rebel. I was 22 at the time, and I still had my friends and party lifestyle. I wanted to go and make irresponsible decisions. It interfered with my ability to go out and make those poor decisions, so it forced me to become healthier. At first it was trial and error. I had to reduce fibre, popcorn, coffee and, unfortunately, hot sauce, my absolute favourite thing in the world.

You and your hot sauce. Even looking at it would make my stomach go, “Oh, I was going to put that in his belly.” I don’t understand.

But that wasn’t all you went through around the same time. You went through, as you call it, loss and grief.

04:55

Yeah. Shortly after I made the trip from Ontario over to Canmore, where we met, I’d finally nailed down the diet and exercise. I was starting to feel pretty healthy again. I was in the hospitality industry, working front desk at a couple of different hotels, and that’s where I met the love of my life, Paula. God rest her soul. We had about two years together. She was the love of my life. It was the most amazing feeling and the most amazing gift I think I’ve ever been given, to have been able to fall in love genuinely. I’m very lucky to have felt that.

We met and almost instantly knew we wanted to get married. We had friends, this whole circle of support and community. Everything felt like bliss. I stepped into this realm of perfection. I knew my life was going to be okay. It was really exciting. I was really happy to live the rest of my life with this woman.

06:23

Just as quickly as she entered my life, unfortunately, she had to leave us early. It was tragic, a loss that hit very deep, not just for me but for the entire community. It wasn’t expected. It’s still hard to tell the story because it’s almost different every time, but it took me a while to get through the stages of loss and grief.

The situation was an unfortunate accident with a tree. It fell in a park while we were playing disc golf outside with some friends. It was a beautiful day, like any other day in August. We were having a picnic, some drinks, and a freak, strong gust of wind came out of nowhere. It blew the tree down and took her life. It was ground-shaking for everybody. This life that I thought I’d manifested so wonderfully and beautifully was swept from under my feet. I had to rely on the support network of friends and family around me. That’s when we all came together. It didn’t happen overnight, obviously, but I went through a lot of different stages.

That was a loss for me too. I knew her, but I didn’t know her as well as you did. I loved her a lot and thought she was an amazing human being. The grief came. I don’t know what I would have done. You’re a brave man, and I give you kudos for doing well with it now.

07:49

Like I said, it didn’t happen overnight. Everybody has different responses to trauma and events like this. There’s no right or wrong way. You could read all the books and do all the practice and therapy attached to it, but there’s no shortcut, no quick fix around it. You just have to go through it.

Absolutely not. That gets into what I think is an amazing success story. The next time I caught up with you, you were in Sidney. What were you doing in Sidney?

08:52

A whole bunch of time happened between the transition from Canmore to the Island here. I call Vancouver Island my home. It’s a great trade-off. I traded the mountains for the ocean, and I’m not surprised or dissatisfied at all. I think that was one of the best moves I’ve made. Luckily, we had life insurance on the house in Canmore, and I was able to secure the property here on Vancouver Island. That was one of the smarter things I’ve done. There have been a lot of dumb things, but that was one of the nice things.

Between that transition, I want to talk about the freeze, flight and fight stages of my life. I know a lot of our listeners, and even you, have probably heard of fight or flight. I think there are others, like fawn and [unclear], or I don’t know, some other F-word. Let’s focus mostly on the freeze, flight and fight transition.

09:42

The freeze is what I did at first, with the shock and disbelief. I was completely incapacitated. There wasn’t much energy for fun or enjoyment, and I didn’t even want to get out of bed. I was finally able to make a tea and get back to bed, then go down to the street, collect the mail and go back to bed, then go to the grocery store and back to bed. Eventually it was two steps forward, one step back.

Then the flight stage happened. I made a fantastic mess of my life. It surprises and amazes me that I’m still alive today, because I was escaping and avoiding, drinking and sabotaging, outright replacing my own friends, replacing them mostly with women, falling in love with the idea of love and trying to replace Paula. All my loved ones got pushed to the back burner. It was a sad, unfortunate situation. There were a lot of distractions, and then I went travelling. I started pretending and parachuting in and out of people’s lives. It was self-destructive, but I didn’t realize that at the time.

As a radio host, you can appreciate this: the song that really reminds me of that transition in my life was “The Pretender” by the Foo Fighters.

One of my all-time favourites. It’s amazing.

The Pretender is bittersweet for me because it reminded me why I was exhibiting the behaviours I was. It finally caught up to me on Vancouver Island. I realized, “I am the pretender. I’m not being true to myself here. This is scary.”

11:26

More on that later. That transition was scary for me because I lost a lot, not just Paula. I felt the world owed me something. It took me a long time to ground myself and realize that I owe the world something. That led into my fight. I was finally able to confront the deeply rooted issues and seek therapy. For the first time I was able to collect and organize my thoughts. It was like a cognitive lightning bolt that snapped me out of believing the world owed me something. It was time for me to give back to the community.

I remember I was a screening officer at Victoria International Airport. I saw a passenger in line who didn’t appear well. He seemed to have a lot of mental health struggles in that moment. He had cigarette butts soaked in urine in his pocket, and I had to do a physical search on him. He was struggling. I realized this person just wants to go home and get to his loved ones too. He has every right to be there, like every other passenger in line.

If you spend a couple of minutes speaking to him, you get a glimpse of who he really is. He was like you and me, speaking normally, just a bit scruffy and rough around the edges. He had every right to be there. I saw the dismay of other passengers saying, “I hope I don’t get to sit beside that guy.” I felt sorry for him. That made me want to give back to the community and start helping people.

12:53

That’s when I became a correctional officer, as an officer figure. That was an interesting story, but maybe for another time.

I was going to say, we’re going two or three podcasts here.

We’ll head back into what I think is the success story, where you are now.

Totally. Again, another transition. It was that fight moment when I knew, now is my time. Even though my experience being a correctional officer at the jail wasn’t entirely successful, it led to a greater and bigger success story, which is where I am now.

14:31

I’ve been doing outreach for the BC government, with the Ministry of Social Development, for just over a year now. It’s opened me up and made me realize everyone has their story and their ways of dealing with trauma, homelessness, mental health and addiction. It’s all wrapped up and intertwined in this crazy mess, but everyone’s story is unique and very different.

It’s not a one-size-fits-all silver-bullet solution for everybody. I’m finally learning that by giving back and understanding everyone’s story, a solution should be carefully tailored to each individual. I like the way my community is coming together and addressing these issues, because these problems aren’t going to go away. They need intensive work and planning, careful planning, health, mental-health nurse practitioners, counsellors, programming. All these things are very complex, but I’m finally seeing the chain and how it’s all completing and coming together.

It’s a beautiful story. It’s given me everything I’ve spoken to you about. I’ve taken that with me, very dear and in my heart. Hat in hand, I can take it forward and help others who have hopefully gone through something similar.

16:39

I hate to interrupt you, because I want to do a couple more podcasts with you. This is the stuff I really want to touch on. I just wanted to introduce you to the group itself. If you meant “hat in hand,” hopefully it’s not that ugly one you’re wearing right now. Hopefully it’s a different hat in hand.

Don’t show it so everybody can see it now.

I really thank you for doing this, and I want to have you back. I want to get more involved in what you’re doing and your mindset as it is now, and what kinds of things you can see that maybe we can do with the group, or even as individuals, going forward. Thank you very much, and we’ll talk soon. I hope… Pleasure, Ward. Thanks so much.

Thank you, Brendan Hughes. Have yourself a good night, everybody.