For Tim Durling, the time he spent in his store in the Santo Palos in the Antoin used in play structures for children is more than a way of paying invoices.
It is what saved him from a life derailed by addiction.
“It probably spends too long here, but it is what was created as my safety blanket,” he said, covered in a layer of sawdust and sitting in front of a wooden house and wooden plane.
A little over 10 years ago, Durling was in the midst of drug addiction, in the police career and separated from his three children.
What began as a hobby to keep it busy when it began its recovery became the turning point of a better life.
Created Pallet Works NB, which is now more busy than ever.
A weekly support group that began for adolescents in Moncton has strengthened for nine years.
And has been reconnected with their own children.
Durling has told his story innumerable times to students in local schools and through their work as Addiction Minister.
“I keep my reality very close to me,” he said. “I don’t forget the people who hurts me … I don’t want to go back that way again.”
Eva Leblanc met Durling for the first time when a six -month recovery program began at Portage Atlantic, a drug rehabilitation center for young people.
He was 16 when he was in Portage, southwest of Sussex, and would meet with sleeping at least once a week. She said she was presented as “the fun” that could provide lightness to a tense process.
“It was like one of the first times that I had a genuine laugh in my program, which really caught me.”
The Tim Durling recovery path has led a carpentry business and a support group for adolescents, where it offers what was missing in their own life.
Leblanc, now 19, still contacts lasting every time he feels overwhelmed with his recovery.
“I felt accepted by him,” he said. “Being able to talk about that with someone who has passed it and who understands it to the bottom, really means a lot.”
Leblanc will be sober four years in November. He still attends the weekly support group that Durling offers for adolescents in Moncton every Tuesday at the North End YMCA in collaboration with the Anglophone East school district.
For nine years, Durling has dedicated his time to helping teenagers like Leblanc who are fighting addiction or at risk.
He calls The Chase support group.
“That is an expression of opium, where you are chasing that stop,” Durling explained. “You are always chasing that dragon and never caught it.”
Duration not only supports adolescents after they get sober, but also work to prevent them from falling into addiction.
He knows that, as with many who face addiction, their story could have ended differently.
Abuse in the heart of addiction
Growing up in Sussex, Durling said, “came from a good family,” he played competitive hockey and had many friends in sport.
When I was nine years old, he said, he was sexually abused.
“I had that trauma on the back of my head that just eaten,” he said. “An aggressive person made me a violent person. He just changed me.”
Durling said he reached an agreement much later in life with the fact that abuse was the underlying cause of his addictive behavior. This is what led to an addiction to alcohol in his adolescence, and a cocaine addiction in his 20 years that lasted 30 and 40 years.
He and his ex -wife possessed a bar in Moncton for 13 years, which said he allowed his lifestyle.
“It simply became a recess patio for me … drug traffickers, that’s where they left, that’s what they did,” he said. “It went from a recreation to a very fast need.”
In the early 2000s, Durling went to a rehabilitation center for the first time. His sobriety lasted approximately one month or two, he said, and then the cycle began again.
In 2014, when he was 44 years old, Durling hit what the rock bottom considers. It refers to that as his “summer of madness.”
He was unemployed, and although he was not considered homeless, he did not have a permanent place for calling home.
“I had fallen into that hole,” he said. “I had burned all the bridges. No one believed anything I said. No one loved me and I didn’t blame them.”
After a short period at the Southeast Regional Correctional Center in Shediac, he ended up in the police race for 30 days due to another position.
He isolated himself from his family and remembers that his little son asked him to be part of his life.
“My son was an age in which he was like, ‘Dad, where are you?'” He recalled. “There was also one side of me that I really wanted to be with my children and I wanted to be a better person.”
Determined to change his life, he moved with his parents in Sussex. That is where he observed hours of YouTube tutorials, teaching himself to convert old vanes into coffee tables into the garage of his parents.
For months, he sold rustic style creations online and finally launched Pallet Works NB.
Although his daily life was heading in a better direction, he said, his addiction is not yet.
Provide support, then find it for yourself
In 2015, Durling began to volunteer in Portage Atlantic. It was then that everything changed.
“I really felt at home,” he said. “When you listen to a child to share about their own trauma, you are like, ‘I can interact with that'”.
Durling said he made him think of his own trip and how he had not dealt with problems related to his addiction. He trusted the staff there, bought the programs in Portage and wiped.
“If I had not received that first opportunity, I don’t know where my life would be at this time because that changed life,” said Durling, who now lives in Shediac Cape with his four -year -old girlfriend. His Pallet Works store has been transferred to Saint-Antoine, about 34 kilometers northwest of Moncton.
Eva Leblanc describes Durling’s support as “a comfort blanket” and said that her transformation has led to the transformation of many, including herself.
“He dedicates his life to helping people, which is something that cannot be said about many people. It is many people El Salvador, in a way.”
