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Winter 2008/09 | Vol 12 No 2

Focus

From second chance to Second Cup

An extraordinary story of sobriety and success

By Elizabeth Scott

In the 1970s Frank O’Dea called the dirty downtown streets of Toronto home. That’s where alcohol and abuse had led him. No one then could have imagined that this desperate man would one day co-found a multi-million dollar coffee enterprise called the Second Cup. Or that he would be awarded the Order of Canada.

O’Dea is indeed no ordinary “Joe.” His story is both incredulous and inspiring, one he relates in painstaking detail in his book When All You Have Is Hope. He has received honorary degrees and other accolades for his international philanthropic work and is part of the Transforming Lives stigma-busting campaign led by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto. After 37 years without a drink, 10 of which were spent in intensive therapy, O’Dea is a man who truly understands himself and his life: where he was, how he got there and how his choices affected his life journey.

Indeed, O’Dea is so honest in his book and in person about what society often dubs as shameful that his dramatic story and insights are at times breathtaking. That’s certainly how I experienced it when we met in his office with a bird’s eye view of northern Toronto. His recovery reminds even the most cynical and tired among us that the most seemingly desperate situation can be overcome.

It’s been several years since O’Dea sold his interests in the Second Cup, which opened its first shop in 1975, but he now heads a green building solutions corporation with offices worldwide. His private plane is parked at a nearby airport (“I’m involved in lots of things,” he says). Simple but impressive trappings of success decorate his office: A replica six-foot blue marlin (which he caught on a deep-water expedition, then released) swims high up across the wall behind his desk.

But recovery isn’t easy, says O’Dea. “Lives can be turned around, but to change you must first recognize that there’s value in changing, that you can be something other than an alcoholic,” he says. O’Dea’s turning point came in 1971, two days before Christmas on a freezing Toronto street corner. Alone in the cold, he said to himself out loud: “If I don’t change I am going to die.” He couldn’t rationalize that life on the street, panhandling and sleeping in shelters or on park benches was working anymore: “I couldn’t trade off my soul any longer,” says O’Dea. “That’s what I seemed to be doing.” Since that moment of truth, no alcohol has crossed his lips.

O’Dea began drinking at 13 as refuge from the pain of loneliness and the trauma of sexual abuse. In the spring that same year, a woman three times his age who worked on a political campaign with his father attacked O’Dea after a party. Three other men also took advantage of Frank in the ensuing years: “At times I felt as though I were wearing an invitation on my forehead, a sign visible to sexual predators that said ‘Attack me!’,” writes O’Dea in his book.

The sexual abuse and subsequent abandonment by his father – when O’Dea tried to tell him what had happened with one of the men, someone his father knew – added to his heart-wrenching emotional pain, which alcohol soothed. But the desire for alcohol spiraled out of control: “If you’re an alcoholic, once you start, you can’t stop,” says O’Dea. “Until you either pass out or run out of money or run out of resources. It just becomes an obsession to drink more and more and more. “It’s what I need now. It’s my way, nobody else’s.”

In his recovery today, O’Dea owns complete responsibility for his addiction and for where alcohol led him: to about 17 accidents involving drinking under the influence – some of which were very serious – and, ultimately, to his father’s request that O’Dea leave home “for the good of the family.” Yet there isn’t a hint of blame in O’Dea’s demeanour, only gratitude for the help he got that cold December day when he turned his back to the street and made a phone call: “Very early on, the self-help group showed me by the example of others that I could be sober and happy,” recalls O’Dea. “I developed a vision of myself as someone happy. And vision is everything.”

“Lives can be turned around, but to change you must first recognize that there’s value in changing, that you can be something other than an alcoholic.”

So how can health care providers help those struggling with alcohol problems to find a new vision of themselves? They can stay focused on supporting the person and they need the patience of Job, says Frank. “Some will get it. Some won’t. Most won’t. Don’t worry. That isn’t your job. You cannot live for somebody else.”

As for Frank, he stays focused on delivering a message of hope, having now accepted the reality of his past: “I would never have been able to talk about my story if I hadn’t spent so much time in therapy,” he says. “I still bear the effects of sexual abuse and always will, and there’s nothing that will stop that. That’s OK. That’s life. Do I cope well with it? I guess I do. My life is OK, but you’re never free of it.”

To counter those effects, Frank contributes to a variety of causes: “The beauty of philanthropy is, when I sit in my chair at home late at night, before I go to bed, sometimes I wonder about my life and I think I made a difference.” Now that’s a life worth hearing about over a second cup.