In the 5th Grade, Todd Rennebohm's anxiety was so bad he was diagnosed with a stomach ulcer.
As a child, he experienced sexual trauma. Then, at 13, he began to drink heavily. By 16, he was experiencing depression. In the last few months of high school, he struggled to get out of bed and barely managed to function.
His struggles with mental health continued after he graduated high school, left his hometown of Indian Head, and moved to Regina, where he was abused and harassed by a much older female manager at his work.
"That's when my depression really kicked in, especially when I drank. I was binge drinking two or three times a week."
Rennebohm describes himself as a sad drunk, finally able to let out the emotions he refused to acknowledge when he was sober. While drunk, he began frequently uttering suicidal threats.
"Every time I got really drunk, the feelings would come out, I couldn't hold them in, but I also liked it because the next day, when everyone was sober, no one would talk about it. I got to get really drunk and express my emotions, but I didn't have to deal with any consequences or any awkwardness."
Soon after, he joined a band and started playing a lot in bars, usually around more drinking and alcohol. After the band broke up, he and his girlfriend decided to move back to Indian Head and buy a house rather than rent.
"Around this time, my depression was sort of turning into anger, and in my family, a lot of the men have anger issues because it's so old school, that's just how they learned to express their anxiety and depression," Rennebohm said.
"I really hated that, it was such a gross feeling. I'd rather be depressed than angry ... I just woke up mad all the time. I'd take it out on inanimate objects. If I burnt supper, I'd flip out and smash plates."
But Rennebohm always blamed his anger on external issues, such as work or co-workers, and bounced from job to job. Eventually, he found himself at a stable job that paid more, but he was still miserable.
"Fifteen years ago, I kinda 'manned up' and went to the doctor and asked for help. That's when I started medication for the first time. I was about 30 years old."
While on antidepressants, after a while, he felt like he needed more help and started seeing a therapist and a counsellor.
"I felt like I was being proactive and doing what I could. Of course, I was drinking and smoking pot all the time and not doing any of the work the therapist was giving me. In my mind, I was thinking, 'I'm taking medication; why aren't I cured? Why aren't you curing me?'"
Psych ward visit
Finally, one day, everything came to a head, and he snapped. Hopping into his car during lunch, he drove into the country without knowing where he was going. Eventually, Rennebohm's father and wife convinced him to go to the psych ward in Regina.
"...that was a really big step for me. Like, 'I'm in a crisis. This is going to take a lot for me to ask for help to the point that I'll need hospitalization for my brain' especially for men 15 years ago. That was a big step."
After sitting in the ER for hours and talking to countless nurses and aides, a nurse finally told him he was in luck because a psychiatrist was in the hospital that night. Ultimately, he told Rennebohm to keep taking his medication, keep seeing his therapist, and made Rennebohm promise he wouldn't hurt himself.
Then, he told Rennebohm to leave.
"He basically said, 'I'm not going to admit you unless you've attempted suicide; we're not going to admit you.' Having suicidal thoughts isn't enough of a reason to admit me ... they basically just told me to go home.
"...I felt embarrassed. I felt like I went to the hospital and I had a hangnail, and they were like, 'put a bandage on it and go home' … it perpetuated the stigma and made me feel stupid that I even went and looked for help. Like, clearly, I'm just a p***y … that was pretty devastating for me."
Over the next year, Rennebohm believed he was fine. He thought he'd get better if he took the pills the doctor told him to take. But he didn't.
During that year, his suicidal thoughts evolved into an obsession with his death. He explained that when you're first at the hospital, they'll often ask if you have a plan to commit suicide or harm yourself.
"It didn't matter where I was during the day; I had a plan. Whether I was at home, whether I was at work, whether I was on the way to work or at a friend's house. It didn't matter where I was … every night, I was pushing knives against my throat, against my wrist, against my chest. I had places at work where I could hang myself. I was obsessed with it."
Eventually, after almost a year to the day of being turned away from the emergency room, it culminated in Rennebohm attempting to claim his own life.
"One day, I snapped again, and I don't know if it's psychosis or trauma to my head, but I don't remember it exactly. I only remember fighting with my wife. It wasn't even fighting, she made a remark, and it made me snap.
"I just started punching my face as hard as I could, banging my head against the countertops and against walls."
His wife fled with the children and called Rennebohm's brother and sister, who came to try and save their brother's life.
"...at this point, I grabbed a knife, and I was like, 'I've practiced enough; I've been revving up for this moment. My brother came after me, and I swung the knife at him and cut him."
After Rennebohm's brother successfully stopped his suicide attempt, Rennebohm's sister-in-law phoned 911, and the RCMP arrived.
Then, all hell broke loose.
RCMP called in
"They thought my brother was trying to kill me or something. They didn't know what the hell was going on. They kinda figured it out, and they were trying to handcuff me. But I got my hand out, and I grabbed one of the cop's guns … I was begging, yelling at them, begging to shoot me," Rennebohm said, describing his subsequent hogtie at the hands of the RCMP.
The RCMP took Rennebohm to the hospital in Indian Head, where he was placed in an ambulance and driven to Regina. He arrived in Regina again a year after he was turned away, this time handcuffed after a suicide attempt, after swinging a knife at his brother, and strapped to a gurney with two RCMP officers at his side.
"I'm in the ER, strapped to a gurney, and I can hear them talking, even then, debating whether or not they should admit me."
Eventually, they decided to admit him.
Rennebohm stayed at the hospital for a few weeks, where at one point, he upset the staff, and they took away his bed. He spent the night locked in a room with a mattress on the floor and observed through cameras.
"I constantly heard security called while I was there," Rennebohm said regarding his two-week stay.
While at the hospital, Alcoholics Anonymous tried to reach out to him, but he shooed them away, believing he wasn't an alcoholic. But eventually, he did try to stop drinking, but he also made an effort to amp up his drug use, as he believed they were natural antidepressants.
Rennebohm eventually started his own business and began to improve. Then he stopped socializing and felt trapped by guilt and shame over activities he had partaken in that Rennebohm felt were against his moral code.
"I just smoked or drank by myself, at night, in my garage, alone."
Then he read in the paper that the Regina health region was cutting 20 jobs, and 12 of them were psych nurses.
"...my jaw dropped. Because I was like, 'what the f**k?' I went there and asked for help, and they turned me away because of not enough beds or staff. When I was there, they had so few staff that they were constantly calling security to de-escalate … I was just so upset, and I wrote a letter."
Rennebohm wrote about his life for the first time and began to send it to different newspapers. Eventually, it was picked up, and within a day, he was swarmed with news media from Regina.
The letter Rennebohm wrote was shared over 100,000 times.
"That was kinda the start of my advocacy … but I was still drinking and using. I was not in a good place. I was putting pressure on myself to keep advocating."
Rennebohm organized a rally in front of the legislative building, and a week later, the pressure he put on himself caused another incident at his home.
"I ended up getting so drunk, and I was in the garage having suicidal thoughts again, I was just like, 'f**k, here we go again.' I came to the house, out of the garage, and I sat at my computer, and that's the night I wrote the first draft of my kid's book, and honestly, I think, in a way, it was almost a suicide note.
"Once I was done typing, it was all blurry because I was very drunk and out of my mind, but I didn't know what to do. I actually had a brief moment of clarity, and I woke my wife up and asked for help.
"I said, 'I'm going to hurt myself, I'm going to die tonight, you have to help me.'"
At that time in Saskatchewan, several young Indigenous girls from Northern Saskatchewan had taken their lives within the same weekend, so the government was pushing the 811 number.
"My wife called the 811 number, and it was a Friday night. They were like, 'we don't have a counsellor in until Monday.'"
Rennebohm remembers his wife finally asking, "What's the fg point of this fg number?" at which point they told her to take him to their local hospital, where Rennebohm spent another night.
Finally, Rennebohm was pushed by his doctor to detox and go to AA and a treatment facility.
"My doctor basically saved my life."
That night was the last time Rennebohm drank alcohol.
Recovery begins
Rennebohm was allowed to detox at the hospital, started attending AA meetings, and started seeing addiction councillors who finally got him into the Pine Lodge Treatment Centre in Indian Head following a three-month, white-knuckled wait.
"It was the hardest month of my life probably, it was scary and hard work, but it was the most wonderful and rewarding month at the same time. I was so grateful for them."
After getting a new job in Regina, Rennebohm noticed his depression was almost non-existent. He had the odd suicidal thought but wasn't obsessing over it anymore.
Though his anxiety was still pretty bad, he stayed on his medication and kept talking to his councillor. Eventually, Pine Lodge asked him to speak to new clients once a month before they offered him a staff position.
"And it was amazing, people really connected with me because I had life experience, I knew what it was like to be an addict."
A fire forced the centre to close, COVID-19 kept Rennebohm at home, and he decided to continue with the children's book he had been working on for four years, that he wrote the night he quit drinking alcohol.
"I kinda wrote it because my kids didn't know much about this stuff, about what I was going through. There has got to be a way that parents can start up a conversation about mental health before they experience it in their family. Then if something like that does come along, they already have a grasp on what's happening."
After finishing the book, he was still bored sitting at home and decided to continue his advocacy work through a podcast,.
"...it was going to just be a series of eight episodes and talk to people in Saskatchewan, but it just kept going. I loved doing it. I'm talking to people all over the world, I have over 82 episodes, and I have another 10 recorded.
"I've talked to Robin William's son, survivors of the Columbine shooting, I've spoken to people who were on Love on the Spectrum, like, It's freaking amazing.
"About a year ago, I was still having anxiety, and it kinda came to a head again this spring … I had a bad weekend, I had a panic attack, and I spent the night in the hospital just on observation, and shortly after that, I got on the list for an ADHD assessment."
"I always thought it [ADHD] was like you can't focus, and you're hyper. And it's like, throw that out the window. It's way more than that."
After his ADHD diagnosis, Rennebohm discovered that his anxiety, depression, addiction, and everything else were the symptoms of ADHD.
"Now I'm actually being treated for the actual cause of all this stuff and no longer trying to cure symptoms," Rennebohm said.
Between starting ADHD medication and the diagnosis, Rennebohm feels free, finally having answers.
Answers are life-changing
"Between that, and the coach, it's been life-changing. I still get anxiety, but ADHD isn't curable, it's hardwired … It's going to be inevitable that I still have anxiety, but I have better tools. I can come at it with a better strategy than I did before. I can make sense of it better. It doesn't spiral into depression and drinking."
As Rennebohm progresses with developing strategies for himself and continuing his advocacy, he is still determining how mental health care could be changed in Saskatchewan.
"Unfortunately, Saskatchewan has the highest number of DUIs, it's got the highest numbers in Canada for spousal abuse, and I think it's all tied into the mental health and not getting the help they need. They don't think they need help. They think they're just angry and drinking.
"Two years ago, a young guy went to the hospital asking for mental health help, and two hours later, they found him floating in Wascana … that almost happened to me 15 years ago, and it's still happening? People are still getting pushed away?
"We're all under the stigma … you don't even realize you're hurting, and that's why you're behaving this way; you're not going to find those supports."
Changes overdue
Rennebohm believes the mental health system is overdue for an overhaul.
"There has to be universal mental healthcare. I can't afford personal counsellors and therapists, so I had to use the healthcare system, and it's horrible for rural people. I have to drive 40 minutes to another small town to see someone.
"I know it costs so much money, but the more you invest in mental health, the more you get that back in return. You're not paying for addiction issues, and for the last three years, we keep breaking the record in overdoes, but the government will not fund Prairie Harm Reduction. Some of it, but not the safe injection site part, which has been proven, with science, that it actually helps.
"But it's the stigma, it's idealism, it's ignorance. It's a beast. I've done a few rallies and protests, and it felt like I did nothing."
Rennebohm has spoken to MLAs, the minister of Mental Health and Addictions, and everything else in between.
"I'm just going to be boots on the ground and help people one at a time. That made me feel more fulfilled than the protests and rallies … having mothers buy the book, people listening to the podcast, listening to other people's stories, and going out speaking. I think if more people were doing that instead of trying to get everything changed all at once, I think that's how you end the stigma.
"Go out and talk."
