From Homelessness to Triathlons: an Alberta Woman’s Fight to Overcome Addictions

Ariel Hornstein was a middle-class teen from a good Calgary home when she started smoking crack cocaine. Years of struggling with her weight and low self-esteem had brought her to that point and she eventually ended up living on the streets. At the heart of her addiction, she says, was an inability to process emotion, and like many in her situation, she coped with the pain by using drugs. For some, addiction comes in the form of food, shopping, and gambling, she said. “Everybody knows somebody who struggles. And it may not be with drugs; it may not be with alcohol.”...