photograph bydave gillespie108 toronto life December 2018Later, I opened China Blues, at King and Church, with my
business partner, Craig Howard, who was also my lover. He
was endlessly charming and loved the big life: limos, drugs,
fancy hotels, Maseratis, silk suits and recklessness. China Blues
was the kind of place where Mila Mulroney and Hilary Weston
would come sauntering in, dripping in ermine and pearls and
minks. Stars everywhere. Liza Minnelli was on the mend from
rehab. She asked for a “cranberry juice” with a wink, so I put a
shot of vodka in it. Everyone who worked in the kitchen drank ,
and heavily. Probably half the kitchen staff across the city used
coke in those days.
I lasted at China Blues for only a year before I started at
Notorious on Yonge in Rosedale. Customers would send me
martinis, and they’d line up and I’d pound them back, right into
blackout. I’d wake up the next morning and not remember a
thing. The night in 1992 when the Blue Jays won their first World
Series, I had about 10 double martinis and maybe a gram or so
of coke. I had the TV on in the restaurant. It was packed. Every-
body was watching the game. The drinking continued until I
was apparently on Yonge Street pouring Champagne —the good
stuff, not prosecco—down the throats of hot guys. My staff
locked me out of the restaurant because I was completely out of
control. When they finally let me back in, I poured a bottle of
liquor over my hostess’s head.
Despite the occasional fun, the work began to make me nasty.
I despised clients and the industry. I was angry, the stress
mounted, and I worked just to tread water. A friend turned me
onto heroin in ’92. It was bliss, better than sex, better than love.
When you’re high, you look out the window and feel sorry for
anyone who isn’t you. Pain gone, everything gone. It was the
best hiding place in the world.
For the next four years, I was using heroin off and on, though
mostly on. I didn’t use needles; I’d just snort it. Like cocaine,
heroin balanced out the booze. I’d have a bottle of wine in the
morning to get me going, sip vodka throughout my shift at work,
keep another bottle of vodka beside the bed at night, and do
heroin as needed. I was warned—you do three dances with this
lady and you’re stuck with her. And I thought yeah, yeah, I can
handle this. But after taking a few trips around the dance floor,
I was lost. I’d get my junk delivered to the back door of the
restaurant, and would run downstairs with a hundred-dollar
bill and do a quick line. I did a little every day.
I tried to stop, but the withdrawals were too painful. There’s
the heaving, the lack of sleep, the shakes, the shits, the rattling
in your head. It was like something living inside me, like in
Alien, and I’d do anything to feed it. But I didn’t have to whack
an old lady on the subway, thank God, because I could cook.
The last time I did rehab was 1996. Once again, it didn’t take.
Then I started working at Sarkis Restaurant, on Richmondnear Church. My heroin dealer and I used to do an under-the-
table exchange: free drugs for a dinner of Filet Mignon Saigon
and Burmese Shrimp, with good wine, followed by some fabu-
lous cognac. We were sitting down, on New Year’s Eve, 1996,
and he said, “I can’t sell you shit any more.” I said, “Are you
fucking kidding me?” He handed me a piece of paper with a
doctor’s name on it and said, “Go see this guy and get on his
methadone program.”
It was at frigging Brimley and Sheppard in a strip mall full
of housewives hooked on Oxy and criminals fresh out of jail.
But methadone was the perfect substitute. It gave me an opioid
high, but at least I wasn’t out scoring heroin, grinding myself
into dust. By the early 2000s, I had weaned myself from
a hundred milligrams a day to three, and then dumped my“I’d have my heroin delivered to the back door
of the restaurant, and I’d run downstairs with a
hundred-dollar bill and do a quick line”
Couillard, now 65, is the head chef at Bellwood,
a rehab facility in LeasideGREG_COUILLARD_SEND.indd 108 18-10-30 1:55 PM