Canyon Creek author Rod MacKay has worn many hats. He has been a tire man, mill worker, trucker and the owner of several businesses. But, there is one hat he is glad to be rid of; that of the addict.
For over 25 years, MacKay has battled his addictions, and he lays bare his life experiences, both good and bad, in his autobiographical/self help manual “Addicted to Life.”
The book graphically details his life as a young boy in logging towns on Vancouver Island, helplessly watching his mother move in and out of abusive relationships, to his coming of age that included all manner of drug abuse then depression and ultimately to thoughts of suicide.
By the middle of the book, MacKay and friends are on the move to northern Alberta, Slave Lake, and the reader is shown that you can’t escape your demons by simply changing your place of residence. In MacKay’s case, what he was running from wouldn’t catch up to him for another 20 years or more.
There are just enough good things happening to author MacKay during his trials to punctuate just how bad the disease of addiction is: The reader cheers for him as he gets another business venture up and running, then feels his pain when he nearly blows his marriage in a moment of drunken infidelity.
Throughout all of his confessions, the spectre of addiction lurks in the background.
He is hiding his drinking; he is stoned around his children. He details blacking out at family gatherings, only to be told of his misdeeds by an embarrassed family the next day. Potent stuff, to be sure. So potent, in fact, that despite the support from family, his addictions might have got the better of him. But then something happened.
One of the projects Rod had been working on was a DVD called “Northern Ravens Nesting.” Rod had come across a family of hatchling ravens while working a tank truck route near Red Earth. He became strangely involved with the process and would photograph their progress daily.
He created a slide show presentation and was prepared to take the project to market when something very strange happened to him.
“I had a spiritual awakening,” says the author, referring to his most recent and successful stab at kicking his old habits. This time, he says, it’s for good.
He had taken his project to a bookstore in Edmonton, eager to have publishing guru Kathleen Mailer help him turn his DVD into a book. What came out of his chance encounter with the publisher would change his life.
“She told me that publishing the book on ravens was not what god intended me to do,” says MacKay. “She put her hands on my shoulders and started to read me. From my childhood to my present-day struggles with addiction. She saw an eagle on my shoulder and said god wanted me to make a change and start helping others with their addictions.
She could see me standing on a mountain with an eagle on my shoulder, sending out a message of hope to the world.”
Like most self-help manuals, MacKay’s book is heavy on self affirmations and positive thinking. He touches on ‘religion’ only insofar as his belief in a higher power is concerned but never does the book come off as preachy or pious. The reader gets the feeling that his experience with god is a very personal one and not a textbook study.
MacKay says he is a very spiritual person and has a great belief in a higher power, but stops short of advocating. “I don’t follow a religion,” he says, but his message “is that we can all have a positive change in our lives.”
The bizarre twist to all of this is when MacKay relates his chance meeting with the psychic in Edmonton with his long estranged (and now dead) father. Evidently, his father had a giant eagle tattoo on his back, and a small dot tattooed on his ear, representing an eagle flying far off in the distance. He now feels that his father, in death, has become an ally rather than an antagonist.
Regardless of what circumstances brought him to his current place, readers are left grateful for his return to sanity and joy.
The book stresses the usefulness of treatment and the importance of family, but never really delves into the methods employed by MacKay on his journey to recovery.
Perhaps MacKay knows that readers enjoy the morbid curiosity and vicarious experience more than a shoehorned approach to self help.
Either way, it’s a spooky but encouraging read about the dangers of addiction and the power of love.

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