Lesley McCuaig was born in the small town of Hubbards, Nova Scotia, Canada, and grew up with a very active childhood. Lesley remembers sports and music being a large part of her life from very early on, with the influence of her mother’s and neighbor’s piano lessons jumpstarting her interest in music.
Lesley: Growing up, I was always very ambitious. I always had a lot of sports and music on the go, and dance. I used to Irish step dance—like, competitively. And I played the piano, fiddle or violin, and also dabbled in the bagpipes, French horn, and trumpet. . . I just kind of jumped from one instrument to another. And then in my teenage years, I took on the guitar. Or in my late teens, early twenties, I learned how to play the guitar. So, music’s always been a big part of my life.
Sports is another that’s been a big part of my life. Skiing’s been a huge part of my life. I’ve skied since I was three. I’ve skied all over the country, and I’ve won third place in a national competition. Yeah. So, skiing’s kind of my real passion in life.
Growing up with her grandparents, parents, and two older brothers all in the same house, Lesley recalls having a very good childhood as the youngest and only girl of her family. When she was eighteen, Lesley went to school at Simon Fraser University for a year before transferring to KD University, where she spent three and a half years earning her Bachelor of Kinesiology. After working for her father for a year after college while deciding what she wanted to do, Lesley moved west to British Columbia. Though she initially moved west to be a ski instructor when she was twenty-three, she fell in love with the area and stayed in British Columbia for ten years, during which time she began to notice the “rocky” parts of her life escalating.
By the time she was twenty-one, Lesley recalls drinking every day, a habit normalized throughout school and even after, as she would often go out to drink with other ski instructors after work. However, her drinking became more isolating the older she got, and by the time she was twenty-nine Lesley was severely depressed and had lost contact with most of her family and friends because of her alcoholism. After she realized how big of a problem her drinking had become, Lesley went into a detox facility. Though she struggled with relapse after her first two stays, her third and longest stay at a two-month long residential treatment center helped her learn to live her life without alcohol. It was after a year of being sober that Lesley would begin to have auditory hallucinations.
Lesley went to the emergency room to find help, but an unwelcoming response from the staff there scared her into leaving. She was taken into custody under the Canadian Mental Health Act three times before she was able to be fully honest about what was going on with her. Upon this third time, in her early thirties, Lesley was finally able to be officially diagnosed with schizophrenia and receive the help she needed.
Hear Lesley talk about her experience below:
Lesley: I think that I used alcohol as a way to cope with the schizophrenia. Even though I didn’t know what I had at the time, some of the symptoms I was feeling I could mask with alcohol. But I think that I was an alcoholic before I developed schizophrenia.Although some of her early symptoms began during her time drinking, Lesley also points out that her auditory hallucinations did not begin until she was sober. The medication she is using does help dampen some of her symptoms and helps her manage her schizophrenia, but she does still have auditory hallucinations, though not as intensely as before.
She describes her auditory hallucinations below:
Lesley: I would explain that I can be thinking about anything: Why is the sky blue? Why is the grass green? I can still hear the voices as I’m thinking, so I know it’s not my thought process. It’s like hearing something, listening to the radio as you drive. You’re concentrating on driving, but you still hear the radio. And for me, it’s like I concentrate on life, but I still hear the voices.Because the medication Lesley takes has not completely silenced the voices she hears, she has had to put in a lot of time practicing how to ignore them and treat them as “residual sounds”. Though it is not an easy task – especially when the negativity of the voices clashes with her positive personality – Lesley has made significant progress in learning how to cope with her hallucinations.
Lesley: I’ve come to terms with the fact that I was sick when I did those things, and they aren’t really indicative of me as a person. They were more indicative of me as a sick person. And I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’ve done some pretty—when I look back on it now, I can laugh at some of what I’ve done. But it’s still painful for some people who know me well to come to terms with the fact that I’ve done such things. . . Sometimes I still think deep down in my gut, “That was real. That had to have been real.” Because it felt so real at the time. But when I rationalize it, or when I put like the facts down on a piece of paper, it just doesn’t add up. So, then I come to terms with the fact that, “No, that wasn’t real.”More recently, Lesley has gone back to school to earn her Masters Degree in Counseling Psychology, completed a peer support training program through Peer Support Nova Scotia, and spoke through media in Atlantic Canada about mental health advocacy surrounding World Schizophrenia Day, which she would like to continue to do more of. Because she is unable to live completely independently, Lesley lives in an apartment connected to her parents’ house with her Black Lab, Shiloh, and is looking forward to finishing her Masters degree through her practicum work. She still enjoys skiing, as well as golfing, sailing, and hiking with her friends and family. Though she would still like to find something to silence the voices completely, Lesley most wants others to know that she is not defined by schizophrenia or alcoholism, and is happy to be in a good place in her life.
