Hutchinson’s journey one of resilience, hope

Addiction sent April Hutchinson to a very dark place. After multiple tries at rehab, she finally found a place of hope. Today, she has a much healthier outlet — powerlifting — for her mental health. And she’s excelling at the sport.

(Photo courtesy April Hutchinson).

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Content warning: This story touches on topics including child abuse, alcoholism and suicide. If you are in emotional distress, please reach out for support. In Canada, resources are available at www.crisisservicescanada.ca or 1-833-456-4566. In London and area, phone or text Reach Out, 24/7, at 519-433-2023.

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4 a.m. A phone rings. April Hutchinson’s father answers to find a nurse on the other end telling him that his daughter might not make it. She is four hours away – and his only companion for the drive is the fear about what happens next.

“I didn’t know how to stop. You can’t describe to anyone the feeling of trying to stop and you cannot. You cannot describe what your body goes through. That feeling led to me trying to take my life. I overdosed on pills and booze. I woke up in the ICU unit on a breathing tube. I almost didn’t make it. I remember coming to and hearing the nurse saying to my dad that he needed to come down right now.

“I just remember thinking, ‘Oh my God, I need to get my shit together for myself, for my poor dad, for anyone and everyone who loves me. I cannot keep doing this.”

Just four years later, Hutchinson has lifted herself from those days of despair to become one of the nation’s top powerlifters, an outspoken advocate for women’s sport, and someone happy with her place in life – all thanks to a level of personal resilience that she celebrates to this day.

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She was an athlete from the start. Toronto-born, London-raised, she remembers her father waking her and her brother up at 6 a.m. to get to power skating lessons on time. There was also ringette, and softball, and basketball, and tennis, and track and field. She was always the fastest runner, often beating the boys. She had a shoebox full of ribbons from city competitions, and she was proud of each one.

You get the picture. She was a born athlete.

But off the courts, ice, and fields of the city, Hutchinson was fighting to survive inside, struggling with addiction from early on in life. She started drinking at 12 years old to cope with sexual abuse she suffered when 5 or 6.

“I liked the way (alcohol) made me feel. It took away all my worries, especially going through puberty and all the changes that come in life at that age. I always used alcohol as a confidence booster. I know I could have gone further in sports, played college ball or done other things, maybe even some scholarships. But drinking hampered that.”

Describing herself as “very much a functioning, functioning alcoholic” throughout her young adulthood, she worked as a surveillance agent at a casino and still played the role of an athlete, dabbling in sports, staying fit, and eating right.

She woke up every morning the same way. Today, she told herself, was going to be the day she quit drinking. Today was the day she would ween herself away from this drug controlling her and start a new life.

By afternoon, however, the shakes would come, and she would return to the drink.

“I couldn’t look myself in the mirror. It was the shame I felt just from treating myself badly. I would just disappoint myself. It was horrible. It was a cycle of me continuously beating myself up and feeling bad because I just couldn’t quit. I did horrible things when I drank. I wasn’t the same person. I had no morals. I had no care for anyone else. I didn’t care who I hurt.”

There was a breakfast one morning with her father. She remembers looking down at the table, unable to make eye contact with him.

‘April, you’re not even looking me in the eye.’

‘I can’t, dad. I just feel horrible.’

At her height of drinking, she went through a box of wine throughout the day. Then she started to notice changes. Her body couldn’t handle the strain as she aged, and so as she entered her 40s, the booze was, as she described it, “pickling my body.”

She tried rehabs. They didn’t work.

She remembers it all too well. “When you drink and you drink, it just gets worse and worse. Even if you quit for a certain amount of time and you start drinking again, your body goes back to the way it was as if you were drinking that whole time. My liver enzymes were through the roof.”

In 2019, her doctors said if she didn’t stop drinking, she was going to die within one or two years. But Hutchinson didn’t need an intervention by medical professionals or family and friends to bring her drinking to her attention. She knew she needed help.

“I was slowly shutting down and dying. I knew I was very ill. I could feel it. But I didn’t know to what extent. I definitely think my background in sports and being healthy let me live longer than I should have. It let me get through that.”

She tried to quit on her own, wean herself off, but it seemed impossible.

“It was horrible. I was going through withdrawal and the shakes and all that stuff. It was too much. That’s when I ended up trying to take my own life. I just didn’t want to live anymore.”

(Photo courtesy April Hutchinson).

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This next part might seem like a non-sequitur in this story, but promise, it will be important later.

Powerlifting isn’t exactly what you think. Yes, the sport showcases raw, brute strength, but there is a lot more to it.

Competitions involve lifting weights in three primary lifts:

Squat | Athletes lift as much weight as possible by squatting it from a rack. The goal is to reach a full squat position where the crease of the hip goes below the top of the knee, and then return to the standing position.

Bench press | Athletes lie on a bench and lift a barbell off a rack. They must lower it to their chest and then push it upward to full arm extension.

Deadlift | Athletes lift a barbell from the ground to an upright position. This movement tests overall strength, particularly in the lower back, hips, and legs.

For casual observers, it’s important to differentiate powerlifting from Olympic weightlifting, where athletes perform two lifts – the snatch and the clean and jerk. Both of those lifts involve lifting weights overhead. In powerlifting, there are no overhead elements.

Powerlifting has strict rules and regulations to ensure safety and fairness. Judges carefully assess the lifts to ensure they meet the standards for each movement, evaluating on strength and control.

Take the bench press, for example. In powerlifting, athletes must have their feet flat on the ground and, when they take the bar off the rack, they pause at the top for two or three seconds, get command, then bring it down to their chest, let it sit there for a couple more seconds, then back up.

Sanctioned competitions are divided into age, weight, and gender classes to ensure athletes compete on an even playing field. That part will also be important later.

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When Hutchinson walked out of the ICU, she was renewed – but not cured. She continued to drink a bit longer, but by September 2019, she entered rehab one last time and completed her work in 21 days. She has since not only been sober – she’s been a new woman.

Looking back today, Hutchinson compares her previous self to ‘Fun Bobby,’ Monica’s boyfriend from the television show Friends, whose fun personality was tied to him being an alcoholic.

“People loved me because I was ‘Fun April.’ Little did they know I was drunk all the time. So, when I got sober, I was now my true self, which is a beautiful thing. I have no masks to wear. I literally can live each day. Not to toot my own horn, but I think I have good integrity and morals. I’m a good person. I’m always trying to help someone. I’m very empathetic and a compassionate person. I wear my heart on my sleeve. If something makes me happy, I cry.

She continued, “My whole everything has changed, even my tastes in food. I’m not as insecure. When I was drinking, I was insecure and felt unworthy. I had no self love. Now, I’m actually more outgoing. I’m true to myself. I’m strong willed. I’m independent. It’s all so different. I treat myself with respect. And I didn’t do that before at all.”

That doesn’t mean painful memories don’t linger. Hutchinson was 25 years old and in the grips of alcoholism when her mom died.

“I still have a lot of regret there. I wish I got sober before she passed away. She tried her hardest to get me sober. She went to Al-Anon meetings. She worried about me all the time. There’s still a part of me that thinks I probably made her get cancer because of all the worry and the stress she had in her life. It has taken me a lot of therapy to get over that.

Hutchinson continued, “I feel like I wasted a lot of my years, for sure. But then I think, I’m really happy today. Look where I am now. Maybe I wouldn’t have had this if I hadn’t gone through what I did. Every action, everything you do has a consequence or reaction. Your path is really changed by one split decision. I’m happy where I am today.”

During her recovery, Hutchinson still turned to her mom for support.

“My hope was my mom. Even though she had passed away (by time I decided to get sober), I thought to myself, ‘Who am I sitting here wasting my life when my mom fought so hard just to see another day when she had cancer?’ She was athletic, too. She was a beautiful person who always took care of herself. She loved life. She had to suffer a lot before she had brain cancer. So, I thought, ‘Who am I to sit here, take my life, waste it away like this and not want to live when my mom would have killed for an extra day or an extra two years.’”

“When I need strength, my mom is my hope. When I pray, it’s my mom. She’s my angel.”

(Photo courtesy April Hutchinson).

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In sobriety, Hutchinson found a new obsession – one far healthier and closely tied to her personality.

Fresh out of rehab, she started heading to the gym as a means to keep fit. To focus on something. There, she rediscovered powerlifting.

She had previously dabbled when pursuing mixed martial arts with former UFC fighter Chris Clements. The London-based Clements – who once knocked out an opponent in three seconds – saw the workouts as a way to build up Hutchinson’s strength and explosiveness during a three-month sober window. He was right, as she took to the sport quickly and landed in a cage fight on her 40th birthday.

Post-rehab, her coach, Stefan Perras, turned her back to powerlifting. It gave her something competitive, something progressive, something that she could never perfect.

It also fit her personality even better than she even knew.

“One of the things I discovered is that I’ve always had OCD. The alcohol numbed it, but it came out when I got sober. A lot of major athletes have OCD; it was why I was so good in sports growing up, I always had to be number one. And when I started powerlifting, I didn’t do it leisurely. I decided if I’m doing it, there’s no halfway. It’s all or nothing.”

Everything in her life got in line behind powerlifting. When given a choice between a night out on the town or a night in the gym, she picked the gym. Every time.

Even when COVID shut down the world in March 2020, Hutchinson kept lifting. She went from training in the gym to training in Perras’ garage. Five times a week. For two years.

In November 2021, Hutchinson stepped out of the garage and into her first-ever competition – the Canadian Powerlifting Union (CPU) Regional Powerlifting and Bench Press Championship.

That’s a rarity, as it usually takes years of competing to get to the biggest stage. But she had the qualifying numbers. So, to regionals she went. Six months later, she won gold at the 2022 Nationals-Masters 1, then headed to the International Powerlifting Federation (IPF) North Americans and Worlds over the next few months.

“It was so crazy,” she said. “What’s really amazing is the fact that my body was shutting down in 2019. Then, in 2022, I did all that.”

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Hutchinson is a pain to play boardgames with, as you might guess. But you get that with a lot of competitors. She is driven by the need to be the best, a need to strive toward a goal.

“With powerlifting, it’s a mental thing. I need to walk into the gym and not be stressed with something. My squatting, specifically, is very mental. So, if I am doing a squat, as soon as I change my mindset or lose my focus on anything negative, it drains my strength away. I have to be in the right head space when I go into the gym. If not, if I go in angry or I bring my problems, it’s going to ruin my whole workout.”

She continued, “Being an athlete, if you want to be your best, it is a 24-hour job. The gym is only part of it. Nutrition, sleep and water, all these things, you need to be aware of all that at all times. If I wake up from a bad sleep, my workout isn’t going to be good that day. You have to make that effort outside the gym, too, to be successful.”

Powerlifter bodies go one of two directions – mass or muscled.

The majority of powerlifters tend to have higher body fat percentages, lower vascularity, and no concern for symmetrical appearance. They have muscle mass, but those muscles may not appear defined. They are big and strong.

Hutchinson, however, strikes a different silhouette. She has crafted a lean, athletic, defined body closer to a competition bodybuilder. It’s not the right way or the wrong way, she explained, it’s just her way.

“Your body is your own body. It’s unique. Every body is like a machine, and you’re going to have to give it different things. You’re going to have to treat it differently than anyone else’s body. So, don’t compare yourself to the next person because it’s going to be a totally different ballgame.”

She doesn’t eat anything crazy: Balanced meals with protein. She has a glass of warm water with lemon and pink Himalayan salt in the morning before coffee, and then again in the evening. There’s a meditation app sometimes, and a hard rule on turning off screens a couple of hours before bed. (“Trust me, I can go down that rabbit hole where I’m diving into Instagram cat videos. I love it. But then I don’t sleep. So, get off your devices.”)

It seems to be working. At Masters and Open Provincial Powerlifting Championships in September, she squatted 369 pounds, benched 176 pounds, and dead-lifted 474 pounds.

And, yes, it’s OK if you’re exhausted even reading those numbers.

Scary thing is, she knows she has more in her.

(Photo courtesy April Hutchinson).

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She would rather be known for the weight she lifts as an athlete than the weight she carries as the voice of her sport. But circumstances won’t allow for that.

In August, Canadian trans powerlifter Anne Andres won first place in the Female Master Unequipped category at the Western Canadian Powerlifting & Bench Press Championships. Andres’ total score was 597.5 kg, more than 200 kg over her opponent. Andres, who transitioned 20 years ago, also set the Canadian national record for women’s deadlift.

Yes, the events leading to that paragraph are as controversial as they sound.

Trans athlete policies are evolving around the world, often with national policies clashing with those of global governing bodies.

Canada has one of the more open policies for trans athletes. According to Athletics Canada, athletes ‘may select the category that best reflects their gender identity and sense of self.’

This puts Canada – and Canadian athletes – at odds with most federations. Organizations like World Athletics, World Aquatics, and International Cycling Union ban transgender women from competing in elite female competitions if the athlete has gone through male puberty.

Canada’s policy risks Team Canada’s participation in the elite events or disqualifying the country from even hosting the events.

It is no different when it comes to powerlifting.

In Canada, the sport has two main governing bodies: the Canadian Powerlifting League (CPL) and Canadian Powerlifting Union (CPU). Only under the CPU rules are athletes allowed to ‘participate in their expressed and identified gender category.’

That rule, however, only applies to ‘domestic grassroots’ events, meaning events held in Canada with Canadian athletes. For world body-sanctioned events, Canadian athletes must follow the rules of those associations, which are far more strict than the CPU and require testing. That part came about after increasing pressure from governing bodies and athletes.

“(The CPU) has gone rogue. They are the only federation existing in the world that says any man can come in and identify as a woman. Does that mean I could go in and identify as a junior or a senior and go crush those records?” Hutchinson said.

“I would rather not lift than to have men in our sport. It’s completely wrong. It’s not about me. It’s about my nieces having sports in 20 years. It’s about kids having sports.”

In addition to generating controversy by participating in the women’s category, the 40-year-old Andres has also been criticized for harassing online posts making fun of female lifters’ abilities and appearances.

All this has put Canadian women’s powerlifting at the centre of a global discussion, one featuring everything from level-headed debate to immature trolling.

Hutchinson’s passion and ability to articulate her points has made her a go-to for national and international media on the issue. Her attention is getting attention. So much so, that the CPU threatened to suspend Hutchinson for a television appearance in August where she called Andres “a biological male.” She is still awaiting that ruling.

“I’ve never said anything mean. I’ve never incited hate. I’ve never been disrespectful,” Hutchinson said.

Beyond the CPU, Hutchinson has become a vocal advocate for all women’s sports, to the point that fellow athletes are turning to her for help.

“What’s happening is that (these organizations) are not listening to their own athletes; they’re listening to me because I have a voice and I have a huge following and I have media I can have call me up whenever I want.”

She continued, “A small minority of pro-trans (supporters) are helping to erase women’s sports. This has nothing to do with the LGB community. I love the LGB community. I’m a huge supporter. It’s the T that has basically hijacked it and demanded that they go in women’s sports and locker rooms and change rooms and bathrooms. It’s bullshit, and it needs to stop.

“People are pushing their own agenda. Can’t you just keep it down to sport and biology? I don’t understand why you’re bringing personal feelings into this.”

The spotlight has taken its toll on Hutchinson.

Beyond mentally taxing, her weights are also down almost 80 pounds this year. She has been harassed online – and in person. Even stalked. To each incident, she has responded.

“It’s so important to out people who do that. Don’t let them silence you. Take screenshots and out them online. Call the police on them,” she said. “I wasn’t sleeping much when I first started this whole fight. I remember someone first called me a ‘bigot.’ I was like, ‘What? I’m not a bigot.’ I was so offended, but my friends said, ‘April, you’re gonna get called names so many times. Just let it roll off your shoulders. It’s not a big deal. It’s just a word.’

“I know who I am as a person. I’m a very loving, kind person. I want no ill will towards anyone. I just want fair sport. I’m not anti-trans. I’m pro-woman. I’m pro-sports. Even if I wasn’t lifting, I’d still be fighting because it’s important to do this for the female sports.”

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“I’m not just good for my age,” laughed the 47-year-old, who competes in both the Masters (40 years old and older) and Open (any age) categories.

It has been a whirlwind ride for Hutchinson, an incredible four-year run that started in an ICU. It’s a story of resilience that even she needs reminders of from time to time.

“Sometimes I get really down on myself, and my boyfriend is like, ‘You realize what you’ve accomplished, right?’ I put a lot of pressure on myself to be number one and excel all the time. I didn’t get gold at Nationals, and I was pretty depressed about that. It took some time to get over. It’s just the way I am.”

Canadian sports, especially those that take place off the ice, struggle for national support at the amateur levels. The stories get somewhat absurd when hearing about athletes like Hutchinson buying their own uniforms to compete for Team Canada.

She has found some sponsorships to support her efforts, including Hustle Clothing and supplement companies here and there.

Working with current coach Christian Caissie, her near-term goal: Compete in the North America and World championships, along with the Commonwealth Games, in 2026 when she turns 50.

“I want to crush all the records. That’s my goal.”

While addiction may be in the rear-view mirror, its memories and lessons remain.

Hutchinson still sees herself in those who are suffering. She still wants to help, and she hates to see anything that stands in the way of someone finding the recovery she has. She cried when she heard the news of the Government of Canada extending medical assistance in dying (MAiD) to mentally ill people, including addicts, seeking to end their lives.

“I really want to help people with addictions. It’s so important,” she said. “I know people are struggling. I was in that dark spot, too.”

Hutchison also continues to share her experiences openly and honestly. Her story is among those shared by Londoners in Resilient London: Meet Your Neighbours, an exhibition at Museum London.

In Resilient London, each person shares a story alongside an object(s) to illustrate their story. Some tell of obstacles overcome and the joy found in achievement. Others share experiences with life-changing physical and mental illnesses. Still others describe the strength found in family as well as the tragedies of personal loss.

Hutchinson’s portion of the exhibit celebrates her overcoming addiction, and is marked by a Team Canada photo, her AA coin, and her one-year work pin for display. The exhibition runs through May 12, 2024.

“It’s so important to stress to people that it doesn’t matter how low or how shitty you feel, no matter how it seems like it’s the end of the road, there’s always someone there to help you. Reach out to anyone, whether it’s a doctor or your friend or a priest or just a stranger. Reach out to me,” she said.

“If I could tell myself when I was 12 years old, ‘Hey, April, just hang on. Don’t lose yourself and don’t lose your hope. There’s always a tomorrow.’”

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Editor’s note: If you are in emotional distress, or need someone to talk to, please reach out for support. In Canada, resources are available at www.crisisservicescanada.ca or 1-833-456-4566. In London and area, phone or text Reach Out, 24/7, at 519-433-2023.