Families in Recovery

They were stacked against Bernie Fox from his infancy at a Toronto housing project.

When he was a month old, Bernie slept soundly after his babysitter, paid in booze by his alcoholic parents, spiked his milk bottle with wine.

"My mother would say he was the best babysitter we'd ever had," says Bernie, who, at 52, is a recovering alcoholic and drug addict.

Despite decades of abuse and personal struggles, he has turned his life around.

On the brink of death, he checked into detox after downing his last drinks - mouthwash, rubbing alcohol and stale beer.

Bernie was referred to Seven South Street Treatment Centre for Substance Abuse in Orillia. That was 21 months ago. He's been sober ever since.

Now, he and his wife, Heather, offer a safe haven to other recovering drug addicts and alcoholics in their Front Street home.

"This helps me," he says.

* * *

It was a role of the dice in the "jungle."

On the street outside a Toronto housing project, Bernie's younger brother, Brian, was struck by a car.

His father, who worked with the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, asked the driver to settle the matter over a case of beer.

"Alcoholics are very resourceful when it comes to their addictions," Bernie says, sitting at his kitchen table across from Heather.

Four decades ago, his father and the driver binged for two days while his brother languished without medical attention.

"Brian was never the same," Bernie recalls.

Mentally delayed, Brian is now 50, and lives with his mother in Stirling, Ont.

"He's never had a drink."

But his parents' vice infected Bernie.

Source: Teviah Moro at the Packet and Times