LIFE IN THE FAST LANE TOOK ITS TOLL ON EXECUTIVE

Marie Bellavance was leading a fast-paced, high-powered life as a
marketing executive in Vancouver four years ago when she began to
drift into heavy alcohol use.

She was working 12-hour days and hitting a lot of galas and black-tie
events.

"It became almost an identity living that lifestyle which involved
alcohol and eventually drugs," says Bellavance, now 36.

"Somehow I managed to be very successful amidst my substance and
whatnot."

But the more she drank, the more she began to isolate herself. She
began using cocaine to keep from passing out.

"I was living in Vancouver with a very upscale lifestyle.

"I was continually getting phone calls from my mom, who would question
me. 'Have you been drinking again?' 'Oh no just a few here and there,'
I would say.

"All the while not realizing that drinking every day wasn't just once
in a while."

When Bellavance moved back to Victoria it became clear to her family
how desperate the situation had become as she continued to isolate
herself.

Her family contacted a professional and, in October 2007, staged an
intervention.

"Mom managed to get me to commit to an appointment. I showed up and I
had probably been drinking that morning," she says.

"I walked through the door and there were all the most important
people in my family -Granny, sister, Mom, Dad. I wanted to go and he
[the interventionist] said 'No, your family deserves this.'

"Then the intervention happened. It was deny, deny, deny. There was a
million reasons why I couldn't go away for six weeks. The addict and
alcoholic in me is going: 'What will I do? How an I going to live
without a drink?' "

But she did go to treatment.

She relapsed about a year ago. Bellavance says she was in an unstable
relationship and believes she went back to work too quickly.

She has since returned to recovery.

"It was the best thing in my entire life that could have happened to
me, ever."

Asked what she learned in treatment, she says: "That I was an
alcoholic. . I got to recognize many of the different facets that
brought me to that place."