Legacy

In this episode, I sit down with Caitlin Morrison, Executive Director of the Matthew Perry House, to talk about the experience of loving someone through the illness of addiction — and what it means to carry that experience forward after loss.

There’s a version of this story we don’t talk about very often.

The one where someone you love spends years struggling, finally finds their way to recovery… and then is gone.

Together, we explore what families often carry behind the scenes: the early signs that something isn’t quite right, the cycles of hope and disappointment, and the emotional weight of trying to support someone you can’t “fix.”

This conversation also moves beyond the personal into something deeply hopeful — the work Caitlin is leading through the Matthew Perry House, a first-of-its-kind transitional housing initiative in Ottawa focused on long-term, community-based recovery. Grounded in the understanding of addiction as a medical illness, this model addresses a critical gap in care: what happens after treatment ends.

This is a conversation about love, grief, understanding — and legacy.

In this episode, we talk about:

• What families often notice before they have language for addiction
• The cycles of hope, relapse, and emotional impact on loved ones
• The limits of control — and what “support” can really look like
• Reframing addiction as an illness, not a failure
• Recovery, and the part we don’t often talk about
• The vision behind the Matthew Perry House and long-term recovery support

About Caitlin:

Caitlin Morrison is the Executive Director of the Matthew Perry House, carrying forward her brother Matthew Perry’s legacy by advocating for long-term recovery support. With a deep commitment to breaking down stigma and improving access to resources, Caitlin has played a pivotal role in the development of the Matthew Perry House Ottawa, a first-of-its-kind transitional housing initiative.

Learn more:

🌐 https://matthewperryhouse.ca

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/matthewperryhouse

🎧 Follow, share, and help these conversations reach more people.

Host/Producer/Writer/Director: Jenn St John

Editor: Andrew Schiller
Website: www.jennstjohn.ca
Follow along:
Instagram: @jenn_stjohn
LinkedIn: Jenn St John

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Transcript

PODCAST:                 The Shadows We Cast

EPISODE:                  Legacy

HOST:                         Jenn St John

GUEST:                      Caitlin Morrison

RUNNING TIME:   38:53

TRANSCRIPT

Caitlin  00:01

You want to help somebody, even if you know that sometimes letting go a little bit, letting the bad things happen, it seems like that is just so crazy to ever do. You don't want to lose that person's love, and that idea of putting hard lines on relationships, there's just too much for a lot of families when you're in it. It's not as easy as it might look to address it from the outside.

Jenn St John  00:33

Hello and welcome to the shadows. We cast a podcast about what we carry, the impact we leave, and the messy, beautiful reality of mental health. I'm Jenn st John, a writer, business owner and a mental health advocate who grew up in a family shaped by mental illness. Some of it was heartbreaking, some of it darkly funny, and all of it shaped who I am today. Here we're going to share honest conversations, stories from me, from you, and from those who have walked this road in different ways, through journal entries, letters from my mom and real conversations, we're going to pull back the layer on mental health, the tough parts, the moments that shaped us and how we move forward together. So grab a coffee, settle in and let's talk.

Speaker 1  01:17

You.

Jenn St John  01:24

Jenn, before we get started here, just to note that this episode includes adult themes, including addiction, mental illness, trauma and suicidal ideation, please take care in choosing when and where you listen, especially if you're in a sensitive place or you have little ones around. I also want to gently remind you that I am not a mental health professional. The conversations you hear on this podcast are grounded in lived experience, mine and the stories generously shared by others, my reflections, questions and opinions come from that place and not from clinical training. Our goal here is connection, not diagnosis, and this is a space for real stories, honest conversations, and the hope that in hearing them, you might feel a little less alone. So this episode is called Legacy, and when we talk about legacy, we often think about what someone leaves behind or in families shaped by addiction. Legacy can often show up differently. It lives in the ways that we learn to love without certainty, in the ways that grief and responsibility get carried quietly over years and sometimes in the work that grows out of loss, not to erase it, but to make something meaningful from it. Today's conversation sits right at that intersection between family grief honesty and the hopeful possibilities of doing something different. My guest today is Caitlin. Morrison Caitlin is the executive director of the Matthew Perry house in Ottawa, a first of its kind, supportive housing initiative that's focused on long term, community based recovery. Through her work, she is helping to carry forward her brother, Matthew Perry's legacy, not as a public figure, but as a human being who lived with addiction, spoke honestly about it, and believed recovery could be approached with more compassion and care. Caitlin brings both professional leadership and lived experience to this conversation, shaped by her role as a sister and someone who understands what families carry when addiction is part of the story. Caitlin, thank you very much for being with me here today. I really appreciate you taking the time for this conversation with us all of those same things. To you too. I always begin these conversations by reading a short excerpt from a journal entry or letter that is from my mom or myself. Today, I chose something that I wrote when I was trying to understand how to stay in my relationship with her during a really difficult time. So here it goes. I found out about enjoying Al Anon. This has been the sole reason that my dealings with my mom have been able to continue. I'm starting to grasp the idea of emotional states and the thinking pattern that associates them with the part of being human and not solely belonging to you. So for example, I'm not angry. You're not angry. You're in a state of being angry or feeling anger. I wrote that when I was 20 years old, and obviously I was dealing with a lot of emotions and a lot of feelings. By then, I'd already lived a long time loving my mom, and that came along with seeing her struggle with mental health and illness addiction that she wasn't dealing with at that point. When I was a child, she was the young, Fun Mom. There were changes in mood, there were shifts in how present she was, and there were moments that just didn't quite make sense to me yet. As a child, I didn't have the language for any of it then, and I just knew that something felt different, and I share this not to directly compare experiences, but to name something that many families recognize and go through, and it's that long before they have the language. They often are noticing things. So that's where I want. To start our conversation today, in that earlier chapter of your life, you as a young girl with your family, including your older brother, Matthew, growing up and just being a kid, my husband actually has an age difference 14 years with his oldest sister, so I know that you and your brother had an age difference as well. What do you remember most about him when you were a younger child.

Caitlin  05:23

Well, I mean, it's good that you're with somebody who's been in the same place, because they probably described it better than I have, and so you'll get it more. I don't know if anybody listening will be helped by that. There's, there's sort of an in between there, when you have a much older sibling, and also kind of half parental figure. And there's a certain amount of magic, I think, in the way that I looked at him, you know, being so big and cool. And then, in addition to that sort of imagined thing that I think any kid would do when they're little and they have a big sibling, he was just such an endearing and effervescent and funny and extraordinary person since first day I knew him, and people around the world know that now was almost like I understood that he was some kind of celebrity before I knew what a celebrity was, and this was well before anybody else knew who he was. He

Jenn St John  06:18

was just bigger than life, so natural when things did happen for him, you were just like, of course, that happened for him. Yeah. And so as you got older, when did you sense, because your brother was going through things, that when you were younger, you wouldn't have had an idea of what was going on the same way, I started to begin to see that things were different. When did that start for you? Or how did that look for you?

Caitlin  06:40

You know, it started before I really even knew anything about things like alcohol, drugs, any of that, and what it was, the way it started was not really any particular behavior or feeling, but it was more when he was in not the best place. He wouldn't show up for something. And so because he was that kind of magical person, those moments stuck with me a lot, because it was sort of looking forward to something with the excitement of, like Christmas morning, kind of looking forward to something, and then it doesn't happen. But I didn't recognize that it was part of any kind of issue,

Jenn St John  07:18

right? Because of the age differences on where he took his career, he was busy. He's doing things, so it's probably easier to mask that. It's like, okay, he's just busy. He can't be here, even though that absence has really felt for you, right?

Caitlin  07:30

Yeah. And I mean, he didn't really get into sloppy behavior, if that makes sense. He was very good at appearing to be entirely even keeled. And, you know, all the usual kinds of ways of talking and being for a very long time,

Jenn St John  07:46

right? That functioning part,

Caitlin  07:48

yeah, and even when I found out that he had been struggling and that he actually had decided to seek treatment, the first time he sought treatment, and knowing that that was kind of a thing for him, it took a long time for it to get to the point where it actually impeded things like the way that he acted, or his, you know, coordination, or some of the things that I think are sort of the more visible and audible signs of of use.

Jenn St John  08:16

Yeah, yeah, especially because, I mean, obviously it was my mom, so it was a bit different,

Caitlin  08:21

yeah, and everybody has

Jenn St John  08:22

a different experience, but at some point we go from that realizing something's different, maybe having some confusion around it, and then, as you say, there's more behavior or more things that start to show up that you're trying to wrap your head around,

Caitlin  08:36

yeah, and if it's your mom too, I think when you have that expectation of care that all kids have related to a parent, any even micro diversion from the way that you expect that to be and sort of a stable and predictable being is terrifying because it's a threat to your very existence and well being.

Jenn St John  09:00

Yeah, and you don't have the words for it just becomes all the things we know now, like your nervous system changes, the survival mode that you end up living in, right? Yeah. And one of the reasons that so many people connected with your brother's memoir, friends, lovers and the big terrible thing is because of how openly he did write about those cycles and how he dealt with the illness of addiction, which I thought was amazing. So one of the reasons I do this as well, I feel the honesty around this is so important, and it's such a starting point for conversations and things to hopefully change with the stigma and the shame and all of that. As he says it was decades of trying and relapsing and going in and out of treatment. And I can remember with my mom, like a couple of months before I wrote that journal entry, she had had lots of car accidents when we were younger, and of course, there was always, you know, substances involved. But for me, I definitely felt like this was going to be it. I. Had asked her several times to try to get help, just the impact it was having on her and having on us, as you know, again, very familiar story for families. But I was so hopeful that this was going to be it, and that this was going to be the change, and it wasn't. Unfortunately, she wasn't in treatment, and she wasn't ready to be in treatment. And I know that for me, at that moment, I really realized how deeply these cycles can reshape relationships when a loved one is dealing with this. And this is another pattern that families talk often about, is, are these cycles, you know, these periods of hope when things are improving, and then obviously the disappointment when that doesn't continue? I don't know how much that impacted you, but you saw him go through this. How was that for you?

Caitlin  10:45

Well, first of all, I was already impressed by the insightfulness of your journal entry for 20 year old, and then to know that that kind of thing was going on at the same time, incredible. So you're, you're an amazing person, I'll say that, but, but the, you know, I'm going to use this little kind of recent thing that I did. So several months after Matthew died, I had a meeting with a therapist who I see from time to time for anxiety and other things. And it doesn't matter, I see a therapist, that's fine, but I went in and I said I was having a really hard time, and what I had realized, what I had recently identified, was that in the work that I've been doing related to Matthew and about him, I spend a lot of time talking about all of the good and the wonderful things and how extraordinary he is, and I've had the opportunity to kind of live in those things and grieve those things and what I hadn't done, I realized, and it was listening to somebody play a ceremonial drum, that somehow led to this realization, but what I realized is that I hadn't addressed the negative things, the things that pissed me off, the things that I never felt like I could say to him because the right moment never seemed to be there, but it was all of the kind of beating your head against a wall thinking, why won't you just like, what like? How is this not the thing that makes you realize it. And I, you know, the car accident sounds very similar to that. And what my therapist recommended was a process of writing down, taking as much time as you need, but writing down a timeline of sort of bad memories, good memories, things like that, sort of writing down the whole relationship in that timeline way, and using lines to signify, you know, is this above the line, it was a good thing. And if this was blow, it was a bad thing. And it really does demonstrate those same cycles that Matthew, very eloquently, unlike me, talks about in his book, which is sort of moments of total admiration and love and often jealousy too, because his life was pretty freaking amazing. And when you have like assistance to do everything for you, you don't have to do all the adulting that people have to do. So the more you have to do that adulting, and somebody you love isn't doing that adulting, you develop a little bit of jealousy about

Jenn St John  13:20

that, a little bit of resentment there,

Caitlin  13:21

a little bit of like, you have no idea just how horrible going to the grocery store and having to check your bank balance can be, but it's okay that you don't get that fine anyway. That's an aside. But there were those moments where everything was great to the point where those totally normal feelings were there, and then there were the worry and bashing your head against a wall. And what I realized as I was making that timeline is that until I really started to learn about the realities of addiction and talk to people and get a sense of it's not just lack of control for the family member. You want to control someone, they want to control it as much as you want to control it. For control it for them. But it's a understanding the disease pieces of it. Until I got there, my reaction every time we got into one of those sort of slumps. And again, this isn't really something you can do with a parent as much as sibling, but was just to kind of back away. It just makes me sad. It makes me angry. It makes me all these things to talk to him, to be around and so those were kind of times where I would back off a little bit. And in hindsight, I'm a bit mad at myself for doing that, because I think, even though it doesn't seem like it, those are the moments when people most need the people they love around them. So it was a bit of a disservice on my part, probably, but we're all just kind of trying to figure out what to do.

Jenn St John  14:46

Absolutely we're all doing the best we can. I mean, the same thing happened in our family as well, and I do think that at some point you have to protect yourself because you love them, but they're not helping themselves right now, they have the capacity to do that. And I completely agree with you, in my 20s, starting to learn about it was a big part, but she still wasn't ready to deal with it. So you can only do so much on this side. You can love them, but you also have to love yourself. And there was a period of over a year that I stepped back from my mom, and yeah, it's an agonizing thing to do, and I don't think people who haven't had to go through it realize how difficult it is. And it's not a quick thing, it's not a quick decision. And obviously, if you're not trying to hurt them, you're trying to help yourself. But it's so unfortunate because it does usually come up in a lot of people's experience when they have a loved one who's dealing with this. We were fortunate on our side of things, because it was actually around that period of time that mom did, really for the first time, sought therapy and sought help, and she consistently stuck to it. But not everybody gets to that side, right? That's not everybody's story.

Caitlin  16:00

Unfortunately,

Speaker 1  16:01

yeah,

Jenn St John  16:01

we've just talked about it, but one of my big things too is I really feel that compassion and empathy is a starting point of all of this. But what do you think that some people misunderstand from the outside, when families are dealing with loved ones who are relapsing and who are trying and relapsing like what do you think the biggest misunderstanding is, or one of them, or

Caitlin  16:23

like, misunderstanding in terms of the families who are dealing with it, or people outside the family look

Jenn St John  16:29

people outside,

Caitlin  16:30

I think that it's very easy, well, somewhat easy as somebody outside looking in to look at a family who is Dealing with this, into sort of judge whether or not they're doing the right thing. You know, are you enabling your loved one too much? Are you being too harsh about wanting them to go and get support? You should kick them out if they won't listen to you, because that's the only way they'll learn. Everybody has their own idea of what the ideal thing would be. But when you're actually in the situation, it's a very different thing. A loved one doesn't just stop being a loved one because they are going through this thing, and it can be infuriating on so many different levels to not have any control over whether or not somebody gets help. It's a little bit like in a different kind of medical situation. If somebody were walking around with like a giant tumor on their face, and you were saying, Hey, you should go and get that looked at. And they wouldn't go and get it looked at, you would think, well, that's madness. We can fix it. And then you go, No, I like the tumor. I want the tumor on my face. Yeah. And it's that kind of conundrum of you want to help somebody, even if you know that sometimes letting go a little bit, letting the bad things happen, letting somebody go off and meet with people who are not great people, and do things that are not great things, it seems like that is just so crazy to ever do. There's this other part of it where you don't want to lose that person's love. Some of it is a self protection thing. If I'm too heavy handed about this, maybe they don't want to talk to me again, and I love them and I want to talk to them. And that idea of putting hard lines on relationships when you're trying to do it for somebody benefit is just too much for a lot of families.

Jenn St John  18:26

Yeah,

Caitlin  18:26

no, yeah. You know, I don't think there's any family that isn't doing their best. And when you're in it, it's not as easy as it might look to address it from the outside.

Jenn St John  18:37

Yeah, I 1,000% agree with you on that one. There's lots of judgment about lots of things in the world, but you have to think around, you know, the illness of addiction and mental health, it's quite high. It's a lot of you should, you should. So when I was doing some research for our conversation, and I read Matthew's book as well, I was interested in how he was talking about his recovery periods, like when he was going in and out, and he talked about surrendering to the winning side. He got to a point where he felt like he wasn't mired in the same battle anymore. Something had changed. And he talked about the tension that it's always there. The progress can be real, but the risk can still be real too, which he was very careful not to romanticize recovery, but when the shift was happening, you're on this kind of ride with them. Did you feel that shift? Was there a change in how you were able to not be so self protective anymore? Was there anything that changed for you?

Caitlin  19:35

Yeah, so when that book was written, he was really only in the early time of that sort of new perspective and new way of looking at things. And in that time, I remember we went from a relationship in which we would have serious conversations, and then there would be silly things, you know, half the time it was disgusting jokes about the colors that come out of him and the. Other Half the time we'd talk about life and things like that, and the way that you do but in the time, sort of as that book was being written, there was a lot more of insightful philosophical stuff that I think he was starting to think about, and it was reflected in some of the better thought process moments of the writing. But what was very interesting is that after that happened, once the book was already written, and he was out on his book tour, and those years thereafter, that for me, was the real change that I saw. He went beyond looking at his own recovery from a very internalized like I might have something here, it feels like I have an upper hand in this battle. Now that I previously was just barely any point to fighting it, I felt like I was losing it so much, yeah, but it went from that to very much starting to look externally and really started to think about how much he was elevated by the joy and the experience of other people. Some of that might have come from going around and talking about the book and then meeting with people afterwards, but it doesn't matter who you talk to. I mean, I had this experience, but everybody I know who knew and loved him had this experience too. Those couple of years, those last couple of years, sadly, but those couple of years, there was so much more of a kind of genuine How are you, you know, checking in on people, a desire to make other people the focus of his life. The thing that I think is similar in that regard, with him and with anybody else who lives with any kind of substance use or mental health issue is when something is attacking you from your own mind, you can become so fixated on your own mind and the things that it's doing and the things that it's telling you to do, and the fight that you're having with it, and all of that that you forget about looking around you forget about investigating other minds. And what I hear when I talk to other people in recovery other families, is is that once you learn to stop fixating on the battle in your own head, and you start looking at how you can lend a sword to people who are having that battle in their heads, there's such a relief to that. There's so much freedom to that that it doesn't seem so overwhelming anymore, and it feels good, and it's a different kind of happy to be of service. I saw him find that, and I'm so grateful that he was able to get to that point, because I think that it was probably the most meaningful time in his life. We

Jenn St John  22:36

had the same experience as my mom, and I know we talked about this when we chatted briefly before, but I feel like my mom was very similar. I know a lot of people use this term, but it's that victim mode where she was really stuck there for a long time and was that selfish lens of looking at life. And the same thing happened for us. We didn't know also that it was the last eight years of her life, but when she did get treatment, and she really made her wellness and her recovery the focus of her life. All of her relationships just flourished. My mom and my dad had not really been together. They kind of tried a few times, but the last, like 1520, years, they reconciled, and they were together, and she was back in everybody's life, and she was in her grandkids life. So she just loved her grandchildren. I think that my mom had that same chance for change, and took a lot of work to get there, but it was a very big deal for her to switch the lens of how she was looking through life every day,

Caitlin  23:34

and

Jenn St John  23:34

it had a really big impact on her.

Caitlin  23:36

Gonna say, I don't know if you had the same experience that I did, but for me, part of that was happiness for them, finding that, but another part was a new sort of relief, like a this is what we've always been after. This is the thing we thought we wanted our loved one to be well. But no, no, this is what it was, that connection that you didn't even realize hadn't been as close for them, as it was for you, and as you assumed it was, and then feeling that actual fusion,

Jenn St John  24:05

yeah, it brought up the same feelings for me when I was reading Matthew's book towards the end. Because I also was very angry when my mom passed away. I was so sad for her that she finally got to this place and and then she was gone. Yeah, and for those who get to that place, it takes so so much to do it. It

Speaker 1  24:27

was

Jenn St John  24:28

devastated. For her, I just thought, Oh, I wish she could have lived in that place for longer. For herself, she earned her way to get there. So that was really sad. I know that a big part of the reason why you're doing the work that you're doing is because of this amazing legacy project that you're working on, and all the work that Matthew was already starting like he was already doing, quite a bit based on what his memoir was talking about. Do you mind kind of taking us through. Two, the Matthew Perry foundation started, I'm not sure if it started beforehand or if it started afterwards. And then we can talk a little bit more about the specific projects that you guys are working on.

Caitlin  25:09

Yeah. So there were two Matthew Perry foundations. There is a Perry foundation in the States, and then there's us here in Canada. And the first of those was created down in the States, and that was started right on the heels of Matthew dying. But the idea was, from what I understand, this is, you know, a secondhand permission. But what I'm told, and what's really beautiful about what they did is they knew that he wanted to do something like that. They being people who were huge parts of his life. For a long time. They knew that he had been talking about eventually wanting to do something like that, and to turn this book and the work and just focus on other people to something that he could do to help. And so they were like, let's just do that for him now. Let's just do what he wanted to do anyway. And I knew I wanted to do something too, because I couldn't see a world in which I wasn't thinking about it all the time. And I thought, well, if I'm going to be thinking about it all the time, it might as well be the thing that I do at first. I was talking with the foundation of the US about, well, you know, Can I do something from here? That's the same, and we'll do it all together. And there were tricky bits in terms of figuring out, kind of how to create a multinational thing right off the ground and what to do. And there, you know, differences in terms of what people need based on where they are and what services already exist and that sort of

Jenn St John  26:38

thing. Absolutely,

Caitlin  26:39

we ended up doing it separately, and it meant that I had a bit of a learning curve and also a grieving curve, so I didn't really get into it for a few months. And then once I did, I had to bulk up my knowledge base more than I just had as a curious family member who wanted to know about it, and this was to really understand what's the situation in Canada? What is, you know, what are people missing? What are families dealing with? Like, I understand addiction as a disease, and I understand the generalities of it, but what are like the specific, exact things in the brain that happened, and how does it inform what we should be doing? So I did a lot of that for a while, and then it was about a year after he died, when we officially launched the organization here in Canada. And what we had decided, after all of those conversations with families and talking to people who know the data and kind of know what's missing and what isn't,

Jenn St John  27:36

yeah, the science of

Caitlin  27:37

all Yeah, all the stuff that, to me, were actually extraordinarily interesting conversations, but might be like paint drying to other people. After all of those, what we realized was that this sort of common through line between what everybody seemed to agree on in Canada that I spoke to and also what Matthew talked about a lot was that treatment is great, some treatment being better than others, but treatment in general, the fact that you can get help is a wonderful thing. However, there's a sense of living in like a protective bubble in a treatment world. And scientists showed us all the studies that said your brain actually can heal itself, but it takes, like, a couple of years to heal itself to get to the point where you can feel what you and I know is happiness or satisfaction or just being okay, to feel that naturally without a chemical, it takes a certain amount of time. And with most treatment, you go for a very specific amount of time, not very long at all, certainly a lot shorter than what the brain takes. And you're in a protective bubble, and it's all, you know, therapy and sharing circles, and if it's a nice one, massages and stuff like that. And then you go from that into all of the garbage things that were in the outside that sort of were part of broken relationships and the financial ruin, you name

Speaker 1  29:00

it,

Caitlin  29:00

that's all still living out there, and your brain still isn't working. And so that is the area where we thought, would Matthew approve of this idea, where we might be able to be helpful, is figuring out how we could support both the people who are in that I've been to treatment, but now what? How do I live in this place? And how do

Speaker 1  29:19

we help

Caitlin  29:19

people rebuild those pieces of their lives so that not only are they supported as they move toward that kind of aha moment that we were just talking about a minute ago, where you get to that incredible place, but also that once you get there, you've managed all of that the chaos has stopped being chaos because you've worked on it with assistance. And so that's where we decided we wanted to be. And, you know, if you think about it, we are kind of a brand new organization, and so we're working on it in a few different ways. We're looking at how we can address both the needs that people have on a day to day basis. You know, make sure they have a roof over their heads, making sure that we think about their families and their. Jobs, and there's all this stuff. So that's the person. Side of it is figuring out how to offer a longer term, more thoughtful approach to treatment that matches the brain's recovery pace,

Jenn St John  30:13

which is very different,

Caitlin  30:15

which is very different. But we also think about families too. My mom and I actually have been thinking and talking about a lot lately. I wish that I had talked to the neurologists and the really freakishly smart people who I talked to while looking at building this foundation,

Speaker 2  30:33

while

Caitlin  30:33

he was going through what he went through. I mean, I read stuff I kind of understood, but I wish I had understood as much as I did, and how could that help families who are going through it? Could we figure out a way to bring those really smart people to answer questions and we look at, how do we help families understand that what they're going through is real too, and also deserve support and they don't feel judged, either externally or internally, for just doing the best they can in the situation they're in.

Jenn St John  31:03

Yeah, absolutely,

Speaker 1  31:04

yeah,

Jenn St John  31:05

yeah. And it's such a ripple effect, because I think it's, I'm forgetting what it is. The number is this year, but if it's two out of four or three out of four, that one person the ripple effect of family, friends, co workers, colleagues, neighbors. I mean, that's a massive part of the population, and it's huge, and it's affecting everybody. And as I was saying earlier, taking that education piece to such a higher level, which I think is really important, because it's for the families, but it's also, as you were talking about, that judgment as well. It's also the people looking at us from the outside in and them getting the education as well, and ideally, that the ignorance will dissipate,

Caitlin  31:49

yeah. Ideally, there's something to be said for even if you're educated enough that you know it's not true. Some part of you always thinks this is a you issue, like, this is behavior problem. Fix it. Fix it. But somebody shows you a picture whenever the skin, a photograph of a brain, and is able to say, here is the exact spot that is having trouble, and here is the exact way that it's not working, the way that it's supposed to work. And just knowing that it's like, I'm not actually mad at this whole person. Yeah, it's like, this one piece, the mechanical failure, that's what I'm mad at, yeah? And it changes the anger into like, a, well, let's get behind the science of figuring that out, like, where's the wrench for that?

Jenn St John  32:37

And also in the system? I know you speak to this as well. If we look at this as a medical illness, which, in all the science is showing us that it is that changes from the very beginning, how it's treated, changes how the patient is treated, how you know all of that we talk about diabetes or heart disease or cancer in these ways, why can't we talk about this in this way? And I mean, I know we're not there yet, but I feel like the work you're doing with the foundation, that everybody at the Foundation is doing, it's getting us closer, which is so important.

Caitlin  33:10

I hope it gets us closer. I really, really do. And I mean, there are so many organizations working on it, and just like anything out there, I hope that we all get worked out of a job, like I hope that we all get solved out of having a job, one of my favorite things that, just in case anyone is a little bit interested in what science is doing right now, but one of my favorite studies at the moment is related to trauma in the brain and things like that. I won't get too into the details, because I actually don't know what has been published and what hasn't been published, so I'm going to be shady about it, but let's just say there are studies out there that actually have shown that you can identify a probability of the development of an addiction before anyone has ever taken anything in their life. Wow. And that in and of itself, I mean, people talk about prevention, and imagine being able to say from childhood to somebody who might need a little bit of extra support mental health stuff, let's figure out how to get that piece of that brain working correctly before anything touches it. That puts it way out of whack.

Jenn St John  34:14

Yeah, no, like the hair on my arms just stood up like that would be so life altering

Caitlin  34:19

for

Jenn St John  34:20

so many people, and that would completely change the game. So I mean, gosh, I hope we get there one day. That would be amazing.

Caitlin  34:27

Good.

Jenn St John  34:27

Yeah. So I really wanted to say thank you for having this conversation with me and everyone who's listening. I know it's not easy to go there, and it's really important, though, so I really appreciate it, and thank you for the work that you're doing with the Matthew Perry Foundation, and I know the Matthew Perry house is, is that opening soon in Ottawa, or what's the plan?

Caitlin  34:46

It's in a process. It's in a

Jenn St John  34:48

Okay,

Caitlin  34:48

permitting, and then yada yada yada,

Jenn St John  34:51

right? So it's still at that phase right now, yeah,

Caitlin  34:53

you know, and that that drives me nuts, because I'm an Action Jackson kind of person, so that's one of the reasons why we're thinking about all the other things. Things we can be

Speaker 1  35:01

working

Caitlin  35:01

on right this very minute. I want to thank you, because I have conversations like this sometimes, but it's a lot easier and more wonderful. And I'm sorry if I use the word wonderful. We're talking about hard things, but we're both talking about it, and that's really nice. So thank you for that.

Jenn St John  35:17

You're welcome. It's very nice to meet people who have lived similar experiences, because there's a understanding that exists absolutely so first of all, I just wanted to acknowledge and emphasize how grounding it can be to hear somebody speak from lived experience, especially when their story mirrors your own in meaningful ways. In this conversation with Caitlin, I was reminded of the relief that can come from realizing that you're not alone in what you've carried. That kind of recognition, that sense of being seen is part of what legacy can look like, too. Our conversation also is a reminder that legacy isn't only about what someone leaves behind. It's about what gets carried forward with intention. It's about choosing compassion over judgment, understanding over blame, and recognizing addiction as an illness that affects not just the individuals, but also the whole circle of friends and family around that individual. If there's one thing that I hope stays with you from this episode, it's that loving somebody through addiction is complex. It can be exhausting, and it is also a deeply human experience, and everyone involved, everyone deserves the language, support and care that's necessary. And while recovery is rarely linear, change is always possible, and it starts with how we talk about addiction, how we treat it, and how we show up for one another before we go. I also wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the work that Caitlin spoke about today, the Matthew Perry house, along with the broader work of the Matthew Perry Foundation, is focused on long term, compassionate recovery support, and it's grounded in the understanding of addiction as a medical illness and in care, not just for the individual, but also for the families. And if you'd like to learn more about the Matthew Perry house or the Matthew Perry foundation, you can find links in the show notes. It's very meaningful work. It's very important work, and it reflects the same values of honesty, dignity and hope that came through so clearly in today's conversation with Caitlin. Now if this conversation resonated with you, please feel free to reach out or connect through the show notes or on social media or at my website, which is Jenn st john.ca and that's Jenn with two Ns. Supporting the podcast by subscribing, sharing an episode or leaving a review, as you know, is one of the best ways to help these conversations reach more people. If something difficult came up while listening, please remember that you don't have to sit with it alone. In Canada, you can call or text 988 anytime for free confidential mental health support. You can also reach out to the CMHA crisis lines. And here in Simcoe County, it's one, triple, 88938333, or you can text 686868, and that will connect you to a trained volunteer through a Crisis Text Line in the US, the 988, suicide and crisis Lifeline is available 24/7, by call or text for anyone in emotional distress, not just for those in crisis, and for our listeners in Australia, you can call Lifeline at 13, 1114, day or night for free, confidential crisis support. Thank you for listening and for holding space for stories like these, and as always, thank you for being a part of this community. We'll be back next week with another conversation, and until then, take good care of yourselves and each other and keep finding your way forward.

Speaker 1  38:49

You.