At the Sept. 26 event Bridging Hope, which takes place at King David High School, Noah Bogdonov, left, and his parents, David Bogdonov and Elana Epstein, will speak about their family\u2019s experience with addiction. (photo from Bogdonov-Epsteins)<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to share our experience, strength and hope with addiction,\u201d said David Bogdonov about what he and his wife, Elana Epstein, and their son, Noah Bogdonov, will talk about on Sept. 26 at Bridging Hope: Science and Testimonial in the Fight Against Addiction.<\/p>\n
The Independent<\/i> spoke with the Bogdonov-Epsteins recently, to get to know them a bit before the event, which is being presented by Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, King David High School and Vancouver Talmud Torah.<\/p>\n
David is an engineer and works for a company that builds waterparks, while Elana, who has a social work background, has been a yoga teacher for about 20 years and a wellness\/spiritual coach for about 15 years. \u201cCurrently, I am supporting a ton of moms in the addiction community,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The couple has three sons. \u201cBoys R Us\u201d quipped David. \u201cNoah is the firstborn, at 28 years old; Tal is our second, at 24; and Benjamin is our youngest, at 22.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was in October 2022 that they became sure that Noah was struggling with addiction. \u201cBefore that,\u201d said Elana, \u201cabout three or four months before the \u2018awakened moment,\u2019 we knew that he had been struggling but he was telling us he had gotten it under control, not to worry, then it went downhill, crashing very fast.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe started in high school \u2013 not unlike the vast majority of kids in high school \u2013 using weed and alcohol,\u201d she said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t like it, but we assumed it was part of his teenage years and that he would grow out of it and come to his own realization of how to find balance in life and, sadly, that never happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
Initially, it was Noah\u2019s friends who tried to help.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey held an informal intervention and asked him to get it under control,\u201d said David. \u201cThat was in May of \u201922, and that\u2019s when we became aware of it, but he pulled the wool over our eyes and convinced us that he had it all under control. That\u2019s when we started to make sense of all the red flags we had seen for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Months later, when David and Elana were in Whistler, Noah was slower than usual to respond to a text message. \u201cI woke up one morning and said that we need to go home, something is not right. He was staying at my brother\u2019s apartment, who was away, and we knew. I said, we need to go, and we went, and we found him, and he was in dire straits,\u201d said Elana. \u201cBut, he said, \u2018I don\u2019t want to live like this anymore.\u2019 We asked, \u2018Does that mean treatment?\u2019 He said, \u2018Yeah.\u2019 We got the ball rolling, and he went right in, no hesitation, no more denial. He was ready, we were ready, and that was the beginning of the rest of his life.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been almost two years since Noah has been in treatment. He spent about 100 days at the Last Door Addiction Recovery Treatment Centre, in New Westminster, then was in transition housing, where he had a relapse that lasted two months, said David. It\u2019s been 16 months since Noah\u2019s relapse.<\/p>\n
\u201cDavid and I never stopped going to the weekly meetings, doing our own work,\u201d said Elana, even while Noah was relapsing. The Last Door has family group meetings, which they\u2019ve been attending regularly since Noah was two weeks into treatment, said David, calling their participation in the group a \u201cvery key element\u201d of their own recovery.<\/p>\n
Noah is working at Maintain Recovery, a sober living house, which he manages. \u201cIt\u2019s a common story for many recovering addicts to get immersed in the life of recovery,\u201d said David. \u201cThey often start to work in the organizations and so on. It\u2019s part of what keeps them clean and keeps them on the path, which is really wonderful to watch.\u201d<\/p>\n
David and Elana are being so open about their family\u2019s experiences because, said David, \u201cWe take quite seriously that part of the overdose crisis is caused by the stigma surrounding drug addition and we subscribe to the notion that addiction is a disease and should be treated like any other disease. You don\u2019t shame someone for having cancer, you shouldn\u2019t shame someone for having the disease of addiction. So, we are both passionate about that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me,\u201d added Elana, \u201cit goes beyond the stigma\u2026. I really feel like if there were more language, more community, more education, more connection around this, you know, if I had had someone \u2026 approach me and say, listen, this is what addiction looks like, your son seems to be starting down a path that gets worse before it gets better\u2026. In Noah\u2019s life, we had no knowledge of addiction, we did not know what it looked like, we were totally blindsided,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t have trauma, there was no story he was hiding and trying to make peace with,\u201d added Elana. \u201cHe was a boy who got caught up in using recreational drugs, like everyone else, [but] he was the one who was the addict who couldn\u2019t stop. The moment when, with Noah\u2019s permission, it became clear that we had a role to play in our community, where there\u2019s a lot of shame and we don\u2019t talk about it, so the kid dies. That\u2019s not, on my watch, ever going to happen. If I can touch one family\u2019s life because of our story, I will continue to do this till the day I die.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bridging Hope takes place at King David High School. Discussing the science of addiction will be Dr. Yaron Finkelstein, a professor of pediatrics, pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Toronto and a staff physician at the Hospital for Sick Children (known as SickKids); Dr. Yonatan Kupchik, senior lecturer and director, department of medical neurobiology, Institute for Medical Research Israel-Canada (IMRIC),\u00a0Centre for Addiction Research (ICARe), the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; and Dr. Rami Yaka, head of HU\u2019s School of Pharmacy. For tickets to the event ($18), visit register.cfhu.org\/bridginghope<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At the Sept. 26 event Bridging Hope, which takes place at King David High School, Noah Bogdonov, left, and his parents, David Bogdonov and Elana Epstein, will speak about their family\u2019s experience with addiction. (photo from Bogdonov-Epsteins) \u201cWe want to share our experience, strength and hope with addiction,\u201d said David Bogdonov about what he and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44967,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2551,22373,23449,62,63,23488,23487,3225,1559,1047,1997,23486,2225,4365,1558],"class_list":["post-44966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","tag-addiction","tag-awareness","tag-bridging-hope","tag-canadian-friends-of-the-hebrew-university","tag-cfhu","tag-david-bogdonov","tag-elana-epstein","tag-health-care","tag-kdhs","tag-king-david-high-school","tag-mental-health","tag-noah-bogdonov","tag-science","tag-vancouver-talmud-torah","tag-vtt"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}