Latest news with #CrackingUp
Vancouver Sun
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Vancouver Sun
'No one is safe': Sleep Country's Vancouver co-founder documents fight against crack addiction in memoir
Three decades ago, Gordon Lownds was living the entrepreneurial dream as a successful co-founder of the burgeoning Sleep Country business. At the same time, his personal life was a nightmare. While the then 48-year-old was in the midst of expanding the mattress business from a handful of stores in Vancouver to over a dozen across Canada, he was battling a full-blown crack cocaine addiction . Divorced at the time and with his family back in Toronto, Lownds got mixed up with Annabelle, a Seattle stripper with an out-of-control coke habit and libido that never quit. One day, during yet another huge fight about Annabelle getting clean, Annabelle asked Lownds to smoke crack in a bid to better understand the grip it had on her. Lownds did. And he liked it. Get top headlines and gossip from the world of celebrity and entertainment. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder. The next issue of Sun Spots will soon be in your inbox. Please try again Interested in more newsletters? Browse here. Six months later, he had moved from smoking crack to shooting up. After three years and $700,000 spent on drugs, Lownds decided he could no longer keep up the double life. He left Vancouver and signed in to a rehab facility in Toronto. Lownds, now 77, tells his high-speed, hedonistic and often harrowing story in his new memoir Cracking Up . 'What shocked me was that I couldn't control it, I couldn't stop it on a dime, and I thought I would be able to. Talk about sort of a gut punch, because I've always been in control, able to solve problems,' said Lownds, who now lives in Black Creek on Vancouver Island. 'I've had a bit of a riotous life, but nothing has ever sort of affected me in a significantly difficult way that I couldn't cope with it. All of a sudden, I've got this problem that I just have no clue what to do, and it's taken control.' Lownds first wrote Cracking Up a quarter of a century ago within two years of getting sober. 'I basically did it as sort of a cathartic sort of exercise, just to get my demons out on paper,' said Lownds. 'I didn't intend to publish it, for two reasons. One, my daughter was 17 years (old) at the time, and I didn't want her to have to suffer through that coming out in the public. And I was concerned about the impact that it might have on Sleep Country. I didn't want to mess up any sort of reputation of the company, so I just put it on the shelf.' What changed all these years later was Lownds was introduced to a publisher by a friend, and the publisher encouraged him to revisit his manuscript. With that in mind, he checked with his daughter, and she said yes. He also reached out to his Sleep Country co-founders Steve Gunn and Christine Magee. The trio sold Sleep Country in 1999 for $90 million. Lownds said, after it was all said and done, he made over $20 million. The three remained friends and Gunn and Magee even invested in Lownds' next venture, ListenUP! Canada, a hearing aid company that he began in 2003. The company expanded to 120 stores before Lownds sold the company in 2012. Last October, Sleep Country was sold to Fairfax Financial for $1.7 billion. 'I spoke to both Steve and Christine last summer about putting the book out. I just wanted to make sure that they didn't have any concerns about it. 'And they said, no, no, go ahead, it's 30 years later. There's nothing bad that can come back on Sleep Country,' said Lownds. The result is an unflinchingly honest, gritty and gripping cautionary tale about the damage drugs can have on anyone. 'What I found out when I started going to 12-step meetings is that, I would say, 90 per cent of the people in the meetings are not living on the street. So, they're normal people in very normal family situations, work situations,' said Lownds. What makes this story more interesting is that Lownds, despite his excessive use, was able to keep his drug use a secret from his colleagues. 'It was stunning to me at the time,' said Lownds. 'There's a phrase that they use called a high-functioning addict. And basically, I was the extreme of that,' said Lownds. 'The way I like to explain it is, I was a high-functioning addict, which means I functioned very well, but I was always high … I was able to carry it off until I could no longer handle the stress of it.' Terrified that people he worked with would find out, he decided to take a leave of absence and dry out. That leave was a mistake. 'I thought between May and September I'd be able to get my act together, and it just got worse as opposed to better. Because I didn't have to worry about hiding stuff,' said Lownds. Eventually, Lownds came clean with his partner, Gunn. Luckily for Lownds, Gunn was understanding and offered his support. After three months in treatment in Toronto, Lownds returned to tie up loose ends in Vancouver. That too was a mistake, as Lownds' return to the scene of his drug-addled life and a trashed apartment triggered him and led to relapse. He corrected quickly and got back into the care of a psychiatrist and dove deep into the world of 12-step meetings. With the book released, Lownds hopes those who read it will gain an understanding of the pervasiveness of drug addiction. 'I'm hoping that people (get the) message that this could happen any time, to anyone, in any sort of walk of life. No one is safe,' said Lownds. Dgee@
Calgary Herald
2 days ago
- Lifestyle
- Calgary Herald
'No one is safe': Sleep Country's Vancouver co-founder documents fight against crack addiction in memoir
Three decades ago, Gordon Lownds was living the entrepreneurial dream as a successful co-founder of the burgeoning Sleep Country business. At the same time, his personal life was a nightmare. Article content While the then 48-year-old was in the midst of expanding the mattress business from a handful of stores in Vancouver to over a dozen across Canada, he was battling a full-blown crack cocaine addiction. Article content Article content Divorced at the time and with his family back in Toronto, Lownds got mixed up with Annabelle, a Seattle stripper with an out-of-control coke habit and libido that never quit. One day, during yet another huge fight about Annabelle getting clean, Annabelle asked Lownds to smoke crack in a bid to better understand the grip it had on her. Lownds did. And he liked it. Article content Article content Six months later, he had moved from smoking crack to shooting up. Article content After three years and $700,000 spent on drugs, Lownds decided he could no longer keep up the double life. He left Vancouver and signed in to a rehab facility in Toronto. Article content Lownds, now 77, tells his high-speed, hedonistic and often harrowing story in his new memoir Cracking Up. Article content 'What shocked me was that I couldn't control it, I couldn't stop it on a dime, and I thought I would be able to. Talk about sort of a gut punch, because I've always been in control, able to solve problems,' said Lownds, who now lives in Black Creek on Vancouver Island. Article content Article content 'I've had a bit of a riotous life, but nothing has ever sort of affected me in a significantly difficult way that I couldn't cope with it. All of a sudden, I've got this problem that I just have no clue what to do, and it's taken control.' Article content Article content Lownds first wrote Cracking Up a quarter of a century ago within two years of getting sober. Article content 'I basically did it as sort of a cathartic sort of exercise, just to get my demons out on paper,' said Lownds. 'I didn't intend to publish it, for two reasons. One, my daughter was 17 years (old) at the time, and I didn't want her to have to suffer through that coming out in the public. And I was concerned about the impact that it might have on Sleep Country. I didn't want to mess up any sort of reputation of the company, so I just put it on the shelf.' Article content What changed all these years later was Lownds was introduced to a publisher by a friend, and the publisher encouraged him to revisit his manuscript. With that in mind, he checked with his daughter, and she said yes. He also reached out to his Sleep Country co-founders Steve Gunn and Christine Magee. The trio sold Sleep Country in 1999 for $90 million. Lownds said, after it was all said and done, he made over $20 million. The three remained friends and Gunn and Magee even invested in Lownds' next venture, ListenUP! Canada, a hearing aid company that he began in 2003. The company expanded to 120 stores before Lownds sold the company in 2012. Last October, Sleep Country was sold to Fairfax Financial for $1.7 billion.
Toronto Star
28-07-2025
- Business
- Toronto Star
Sleep Country Canada co-founder opens up about crack addiction, toxic relationship with stripper
As Sleep Country Canada was becoming one of the country's most successful homegrown brands, one of its co-founders was in the fight for his life against crack cocaine addiction. After 26-years sober, and in the wake of Sleep Country's $1.7 billion acquisition by Fairfax Financial last year, co-founder and former chairman and CEO Gordon Lownds is ready to tell his story. His new memoir, 'Cracking Up' — which hits store shelves on Aug. 17 — shares the story of entrepreneurial success marred by addiction. The brutally honest tale takes readers from Lownds's his first foray into entrepreneurship as a teen at the CNE, to building one of the country's most successful retail brands, to the depths of Vancouver's infamous East Side, to a Toronto addiction treatment facility. 'When I went to treatment I thought I'd be there for a couple of weeks, get fixed up and be back to work,' Lownds says. 'The first day of treatment they said, 'based on your usage, you're going to be here for three months; you're a hard-core addict.''
Hamilton Spectator
28-07-2025
- Business
- Hamilton Spectator
Sleep Country Canada co-founder opens up about crack addiction, toxic relationship with stripper
As Sleep Country Canada was becoming one of the country's most successful homegrown brands, one of its co-founders was in the fight for his life against crack cocaine addiction. After 26-years sober, and in the wake of Sleep Country's $1.7 billion acquisition by Fairfax Financial last year , co-founder and former chairman and CEO Gordon Lownds is ready to tell his story. His new memoir, 'Cracking Up' — which hits store shelves on Aug. 17 — shares the story of entrepreneurial success marred by addiction. The brutally honest tale takes readers from Lownds's his first foray into entrepreneurship as a teen at the CNE, to building one of the country's most successful retail brands, to the depths of Vancouver's infamous East Side, to a Toronto addiction treatment facility. 'When I went to treatment I thought I'd be there for a couple of weeks, get fixed up and be back to work,' Lownds says. 'The first day of treatment they said, 'based on your usage, you're going to be here for three months; you're a hard-core addict.'' In 1990 Lownds and a group of financial investors acquired Simmons Mattress Company alongside his business partner and the co-founder of Kenrick Capital, their boutique investment banking firm , Steve Gunn. Recognizing the lack of sleep-specific retail options , Lownds and Gunn co-founded Sleep Country Canada in 1994, recruiting Christine Magee to join them as a co-founder and the brand's public face. By 1998, Sleep Country Canada grew to more than 50 stores coast-to-coast . U nbeknownst to the other founders, Lownds was d eep in the throes of addiction, thanks to a toxic relationship with a Seattle-based stripper . Lownds had never been tempted by mind altering substances previously, suggesting he could count on his fingers the number of times he had been drunk. It wasn't until the addiction had progressed to include needles, after a near fatal overdoses and a brush with the law , that Lownds came clean to Gunn . 'I f the shoe was on the other foot, I probably would have ripped into him,' says Lownds, who retired in 2013 . Instead, Lownds's longtime friend and business partner did everything he could to get him the help he needed. 'H is reaction was a shock to me, and it was a very humbling experienc e,' he adds , fighting back tears. The Star recently spoke with Lownds from his home on Vancouver Island about the relationship between entrepreneurship and addiction, how he was able to manage a booming business with a debilitating drug habit, and why he's finally ready to share his story. I recently volunteered to review a book for a friend, and when the publisher found out who I was, they reached out and said, 'there must be a book in you.' I said, 'I wrote a book a long time ago as a cathartic exercise, but I put it on a shelf and never thought about publishing it.' She basically talked me into doing it. At the time, in 2002 , I was concerned about the collateral damage it might cause to Sleep Country, our partners, and my family. My daughter was 17 and I didn't want all that stuff out in public. About 25 years later, the potential for collateral damage is pretty much zero . Steve retired about five years ago, Christine has been Chairman of the Board for several years, and the company was sold in October. They have a new president, they're well established, and there isn't much I can say to hurt them. I spoke with Christine, Steve and my family to make sure they were OK with it. I also thought it might be helpful for people to understand that addiction can happen to anyone at any time. Absolutely. There is lots of research into entrepreneurs and mental health challenges. I was a workaholic at the time, but I never really thought about it like that. I guess for a workaholic work fills an emotional void, and a substance addiction does the same, so they very well could be linked, but it never occurred to me. E ntrepreneurs can sometimes believe they're invincible ; t hat was my mindset. I was able to cope with any problem in life, so it was inconceivable to me that trying cocaine might cause a problem. When I was 15, I went to the CNE to get a summer job, and I loved the energy and excitement, even though I was working 12-to-16-hour days. The next year one of the game operators got arrested and charged with cheating at the Calgary Stampede , and the company that runs the exhibition, Conklin Shows , asked me to run three games on my own. Benoît Robert's dream of an alternative to car ownership was born in the early '90s. I was in business at age 16, with lots of money at risk . In those three weeks in 1967, I made about $17,000. It was a great experience , and a great business education. I learned a lot about human nature, money, and greed. Then when I was 17 or 18, I hitchhike d across the United States. I left Toronto with $100, and I came back with $100, and in those nine months I never once slept outdoors. I decided that if the worst that could happen to me in life was washing dishes at a diner, which I did for a few weeks, I could live with that. I became fearless, and a lot of my early success in business was because I was willing to take a risk when most people wouldn't . Steve Gunn and I did a leveraged buyout of Simmons Mattress Company, so we understood the industry. Sleep Country came out of our frustration with the inability to increase market share volumes for Simmons because we were entirely dependent on department stores for distribution . T hey didn't do a great job marketing mattresses , so we came up with the idea of doing a specialty retail chain. Steve and I did a lot of research , and we ended up meeting with a company in Seattle called Sleep Country USA. W e gave them a carried interest in Sleep Country Canada so we could leverage their expertise and minimize our risk as startup founders . That company was founded by a husband and wife and one thing that really worked for them was using the wife as the public face, because 80 per cent of mattress decisions are made by women . Steve and I didn't want to be in the public eye anyway . We had been working with Christine Magee for a long time — she was a commercial banker for National Bank, who was a lender for a leveraged buyout we originated in 1989 — so she instantly popped into our minds. I remember sitting down with her for breakfast on Bay Street one morning and asking her, 'how would you like to be the mattress queen of Canada?' and the rest is history . I ended up getting involved with the ultimate femme fatale. Sleep Country USA introduced us to their marketing agency — they were the genius behind our jingle, 'why buy a mattress anywhere else?' — and I was going back and forth to meet them every few weeks in Seattle. That's where I met a stripper that I'd go hook up with when I was in town, and occasionally she'd come up to Vancouver where I was living for a weekend visit. Then one day she arrived with all her luggage, and her cat, and said 'I'm moving in.' I said, 'What? We haven't ' talked about this , ' and she said, 'let's just try it for a weekend.' ZenaTech CEO Shaun Passley says drone technology is 'something more sci-fi' these days being She overwhelmed me with attention, and I was working crazy hours anyway, so I thought maybe it would be OK. Then one day, two or three months later, I came home early, and she was messed up on cocaine and admitted to me that she had been a drug addict since she was 16. I tried to get her into treatment, but she kept giving it up. Finally, I said, 'I can't live with a drug addict, so you've got to go,' and she said , 'if you just try it once with me maybe you can empathize with how I feel, and how difficult it is to stop using.' I've known people who did cocaine and didn't have a problem, so I figured there was no downside. I didn't realize we were smoking crack , and I had an instantly positive reaction to it. F or a while we'd get high on Friday night and party all weekend, and then I'd go into work on Monday. Six months later , I was rarely showing up on Mondays, and realized I had a problem . I was a high functioning addict, but I was terrified that someone would find out. I was living a double life. O ther than the girlfriend and a few drug dealers, nobody knew. Since March of 1999. Entrepreneurs have a tendency to overlook signals that a normal person might pick up on , because we're so consumed with our business , so it's eas ier to fall into a toxic situation in our personal li ves. If you discover you're in a relationship with someone who has a drug problem, you need to understand you cannot help that person; they must be willing to save themselves, and if they're not, you need to get away from it.
The Age
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Choke on that, baby! Shooter McGavin fancies a stay at The White Lotus
'H acks has got such a brilliant following, and the actors I work with are just geniuses,' he says. 'My biggest regret is that I am not in the fourth season [now airing on Stan] much because I was shooting Happy Gilmore 2, but I am grateful they kept me around, it's up there with the best writing on TV.' When pushed to reveal which other shows he loves, McDonald doesn't hesitate. 'I was obsessed with The White Lotus – talk about a dream job.' It's no secret that The White Lotus is among the hottest contested roles in TV. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Carrie Coon – who played Laurie in season three – opened up about the competitive nature of the show. 'These roles are highly coveted by all of our friends,' she explained. 'Everyone auditions for The White Lotus.' According to reports, season three hopefuls included Woody Harrelson, Lily Allen and Evan Peters. And while McDonald might be part of a long list, in Hollywood, it's all about who you know. 'I actually did a show with Mike White back in the day called Cracking Up, it was a short-lived sitcom on Fox,' McDonald reveals. The 2004 series, created by White, was cancelled after just six episodes, but even then, McDonald could sense he was in the presence of greatness. 'He's got a real talent for human observation, I used to watch him on the set and be fascinated because we'd be taping something, and he'd rush off to the side, find a place that was quiet and then make these freehand changes to the script,' he says. 'There's a level of genius to Mike White that I'd love to be involved with.' The idea of Shooter McGavin checking into The White Lotus might seem far-fetched, but it's precisely the kind of inspired casting the show has become known for. Failing that, McDonald seems content with his lot in life. The enduring legacy of Happy Gilmore has turned him into a cult figure. During our interview, three people stopped to say hello or quote lines from the film – little wonder he is such a hit on Cameo, the website where people order personalised videos from celebrities. While also giving him a level of commercial appeal that makes him an attractive ambassador for companies such as Uber. The company tapped the actor to travel to Australia and promote its subscription service Uber One and its partnership with fast food giant McDonald's. 'I've always joked that Ronald is my long-lost brother, so I was the perfect pick for this,' laughs McDonald. The campaign features McDonald recreating scenes from Happy Gilmore, a savvy marketing move ahead of the film's sequel. 'Like I said earlier, Shooter is the gift that keeps on giving,' says McDonald, flashing a grin. Hard to argue with that.
