TRUDEAU ENDS HER ALTERED STATE

Recovery Came After She Quit Illegal Drugs and Accepted Her Mental
Illness

Quitting marijuana was an essential part of Margaret Trudeau's
recovery from mental illness, she told reporters Tuesday in Owen Sound.

The drug was "an escape" from the isolation and frequent depressions
of bipolar disorder. Trudeau's disease went undiagnosed for more than
30 years, she said at a news conference to launch a new
round-the-clock Grey-Bruce mental health crisis line.

The former wife of jet-setting '60s, '70s and '80s Canadian Prime
Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau was also to speak at OSCVI Tuesday
night about the stigma of mental illness, barriers to accepting the
disease and finding treatment and her own journey to overcome bipolar
disorder, sometimes still called manic depression.

"My own recovery has been so wonderful. I have come from being in a
most dark place to being in a life that I just love," Trudeau said.
"Every day I wake up so happy. Six, eight years ago I would wake up
just furious that I had woken up at all because how was I going to get
through another day."

Trudeau was 22 and 30 years younger than her husband when she married
the sitting prime minister in 1971 and moved to 24 Sussex Dr. The
marriage shocked the nation and the young bride's well-scrutinized
associations with such rock stars as the Rolling Stones often
scandalized Ottawa. They divorced in 1984.

Trudeau's "acting out" was partially rebellion against being so young,
caught in a political life, isolated from her family and friends and
unable to discover herself, she said. He erratic behaviour also led to
suggestions she may have been manic depressive.

Her first episode with the severe depression associated with bipolar
disorder disease came soon after the birth of the couple's second son.
People said it was "baby blues." She got no help, except family
support, and there were no crisis lines to call like the one launched
Tuesday.

"I just couldn't stop crying and there didn't seem to be any reason
why I should be crying. I had a beautiful baby, I had a wonderful
life, I had a fabulous husband and a two-year-old who was just full of
joy and life and I was just overwhelmed with sadness," Trudeau said.

"I had the additional stigma of thinking that I couldn't get help
because I was the prime minister's wife. Baloney. If I had got help,
my future and the future of my family would have been greatly altered
because it was a long and difficult journey that I went through
without help."

The Mental Health Crisis Line of Grey and Bruce, staffed in Ottawa
(call 1-877-470-5200), is a partnership between the Grey-Bruce Branch
of The Canadian Mental Health Association, Grey Bruce Health Services
and the Distress Centre of Ottawa and Region, which coordinates 150
volunteers to answer crisis and distress calls anonymously 24 hours a
day, every day, all year.

The service replaces the former crisis and distress lines, for which
it was often difficult to find enough volunteers to cover advertised
hours, Hazel Lyder, CMHA Grey-Bruce's crisis line coordinator, said
after the news conference.

Trudeau said it wasn't until she was hospitalized for the third time
in 2000 that she accepted she needed help and became serious about
getting it. That followed Trudeau's death, as well as the death two
years earlier of their youngest son Michel in an avalanche in British
Columbia.

Mental health research and treatment have vastly improved in recent
years, but that won't help people who don't accept they have an
illness and seek treatment.

"The real problem to overcome is the stigma, getting people to talk
about it, to accept. For me the biggest lesson in life no matter what
you're talking about , what you're dealing with, is acceptance. As
long as you're in denial, there won't be any solution," Trudeau said.

"When I finally did get the proper treatment and accepted that I had a
mental health issue, my life turned and it's that that I want to share
with people."

Her holistic treatment includes medication to control the chemical
imbalance, therapy and counselling, proper diet and exercise -- and
avoiding cannabis, she said.

"To me it was very easy being an old hippy to abuse marijuana and I
didn't realize that the marijuana was, in fact, triggering me into
mania. Every time I was hospitalized, which was three times, it was
after smoking way too much," she said.

"I look at it now and it's all so clear to me so my first decision was
no more abuse," she said. "No more altering my mental state."