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Eighteen-year-old Cade Hansen’s love for music inspired his roles in the theatre as a youth, his performances in choirs and bands as a teen, and his plan to study music production after finishing high school.

Along the engaging young man’s musical path, though, were detours caused by his struggles with addictions and mental health. The mainstream high school he was attending didn’t intervene sufficiently to get him back on track, and like many young people in that situation he was in denial that he needed help.

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“You are not worrying about yourself. At that point, especially as a youth dealing with depression and stuff like that, the whole drug abuse and then teenage depression, it just becomes one dark messy blob,” Hansen reflected about his past. “There had been a lot of inner demons I was battling at the time.”

The North Vancouver teen from a close-knit family was battling anxiety, suicidal thoughts, and an addiction that had morphed from alcohol and pot, to pharmaceuticals like Xanax and Percocet, then to cocaine. After too many emergency visits to the hospital, he was determined to get back on the right path: He enrolled two years ago in Mountainside Secondary, a unique alternative high school that offers a variety of in-house supports including a doctor, counsellors and musical therapy.