Tom's Story: The Costs of Alcoholism

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[Chapter One: 2001 to 2004]

Tom is 51 years old. He?s been sober for 3 years after nearly 3 decades of debilitating drinking. Today Tom lives in an Oxford House ? a house for people recovering from alcohol and drug abuse. His days are centered on staying sober.

TAPE TOM generally, get up in the morning. Start with a prayer for the day. I come to my office /// in Manchester. I check phone messages to see if there are any calls from people seeking help. I work with volunteers?. :15 [FADE AND HOLD UNDER]

Tom works part-time helping to get people into rehabilitation. He also does volunteer work with newly sober people, helping them complete their GED?s and write resumes. Most days he attends a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. Tom says he tries to never forget what drinking did to him.

TAPE TOM alcoholism has cost me pretty much my life, I mean it?s brought me down to my knees. I?ve lost relationships, missed opportunities, family, friends ?
I don?t think there?s any more destructive type of item out there that could have done anything worse to me than what alcohol has done over the course of 30 years. :25

Tom?s drinking cost him two marriages, several jobs, two car accidents, and six convictions for Driving While Intoxicated. It is a tenet of A. A. that alcoholism is a progressive disease ? it always gets worse, whether the victim drinks or not. By the time he stopped, Tom would routinely drink until he passed out -- or blacked out, and could not recall what he had done. Over the course of 30 years, Tom made several attempts to quit. He says he finally got sober when he finally lost enough.

[Chapter Two: 2000 to 2001]

TAPE TOM in may of 2000 I was asked to resign from my job due to my alcoholism. I had no license at that time, so I moved back to my hometown, where I had lived with a friend, and spent what money I had consuming alcohol for the next year. :19

The beginning of the end of Tom?s drinking came on August 3rd, 2001. Tom started drinking that day in the early afternoon. Around six in the evening he went to a bar, where he continued drinking.

TAPE TOM probably around midnight or so, I decided to help myself to a vehicle, in a blackout state. I took that vehicle and drove it to another town, where //// I was sitting at the side of the road with my parking lights on, and a cruiser, a cop had come up beside me and arrested me. :22

Tom came-to in jail, where police told him about the stolen car and the D.W.I. He spent the next six weeks in jail. In the past, after an arrest for D.W.I., Tom sought treatment as a way to mollify the court. This time he thought about treatment for different reasons.

TAPE TOM you know, the 45 days I had in jail, the time I had to think about my life, and sitting there writing a letter to my son, who at the time was very young, I knew I didn?t want to spend the rest of my life like this, and not being able to see him, and not being able to be there as a dad. /// So I decided in all honesty to become honest with myself and give myself a fair shot and do what I thought was the right thing, and take it seriously, and give myself a fair shot at life. :33

On November 11, Tom entered the Veterans Administration Hospital in Bedford, Massachusetts. He hasn?t had a drink since. His three weeks in the V.A. were followed by 6 months in an in-house treatment facility run by the state, followed by almost a year in a half-way house.

[Chapter Three: 1986 to 1999]

It would be wrong to see Tom's life as one uninterrupted dive into an alcoholic abyss.
There were periods when he moderated his drinking ? even periods when he didn?t drink at all. In 1986, Tom was 33, living on New Hampshire?s seacoast, with a good job as a buyer for a manufacturing firm. Tom thought his drinking was manageable.

TAPE TOM I was a very functional alcoholic. I would work, 8, 10, 12 hours a day. And often times buy beer at the package store, take it home, and consume 10 to 12 beers. And pass out, get up go to work next day. And continue the same procedure. :22

That year, Tom met his second wife, Linda. Linda had grown up with an alcoholic father. Linda knew Tom drank a lot, but she was confident he would change ? and that she could change him. The couple married in 1988. But Linda recalls Tom?s drinking got worse.

TAPE LINDA I was always on edge, concerned that, oh god, we?re going to go someplace and he?s going to start drinking now. once he started drinking ? I don?t care if it was eight at night or eight in the morning or noontime ? he never stopped that day. He just didn?t seem to have the ability to stop. He would continue drinking. Until he fell asleep, passed out, whatever. :23

A year later, Linda discovered she was pregnant. And that did trigger a change.

TAPE LINDA the whole year I was pregnant, he stopped drinking. He swore he wouldn?t take another drink, he wanted to go to church every Sunday. I mean he was like ? he was afraid I think he was afraid that /// was going to be punished for all the things he?d done in his life. And he became this model citizen. This model husband, and person that very concerned with my well being. He didn?t want to do anything that would upset me so something would happen to the baby. :29

The couple had bought a home; Tom was back in school to get his college degree. But immediately after his son?s birth in September, 1990, Tom resumed drinking.

TAPE LINDA when I came home from the hospital /// he had bought, oh my gosh, it must have been 12 plus bottles of wine. And he had them all around the house. And that?s what he wanted to do. He wanted to sit down, and he wanted to like drink all that right now. /// 482 [SLAPS HANDS] it was like a dam that?s holding back all this water for all this time, and then all of a sudden they let it lose. That?s what it was like, after our son was born :33

Tom recalls feeling a kind of restlessness that persisted throughout much of his life, whether he drank or not.

TAPE TOM things never seemed to be good enough for me. I get to that plateau where, I would have something or begin to make something good of myself, whether it be the marriage, or buying a home, and it just wasn?t enough. Even the work I did, I made good money at one point and I wanted to make 5 thousand dollars more. And that 5 thousand dollars more was not enough. :26

Linda remembers that sometimes Tom would go out bowling, and not come home until 3:30 a.m. Some days he didn?t go to work. But he was good at his job, and he saved his company money. Linda thinks that?s why his occasional absences were overlooked.

TAPE LINDA it was almost eerie at that time. I remember thinking, from the outside looking in, everything looked wonderful. But I remember thinking a lot, if people always knew what a different person he was. I mean he was nasty and mean, you know, away from that work environment. He had such a good fa硤e there. He was holding it together there. :23

In December 1991, Tom was arrested for D.W.I. For the second time in his life, he tried treatment ? this time in an out-patient program. But Tom?s goal was not to ease his addiction, but to ease his dealings with the judge.

TAPE TOM it was prior to going to the courts. I mean, I always got something. I did listen to the counselors, and I knew what the program was all about by this time. and I just did not apply it to my life. I did it for all the wrong reasons. /// I just wasn't ready to give up. I guess I just hadn't lost enough at that point. :29

Tom stayed sober for a couple of years. Although he never regained his driver?s license, he got a better paying job as a buyer for a different company. At Tom?s insistence, he and Linda separated. Things were stable for awhile. Then Tom began to drink non-alcoholic beer.

TAPE TOM you know, it tasted like alcohol. I figured I was okay because it?s been a couple of years and I wasn?t drinking, and I had no intentions of going back to drinking alcohol the way I had in the past. So I continued down that path for awhile, and then obviously, eventually, it just led back to the same old habits, of, you know, maybe I can have one, maybe I can have two. And before you know it, you can have three or four. And before you know it, I did alright with three or four, let?s try six. :32

Tom and Linda finally divorced in 1996. His son and his former wife went to counseling. In 1999 Tom got another D.W.I, underwent treatment, stayed sober for awhile? and resumed drinking. But until he landed in jail two years later, Tom did not see himself as a chronic alcoholic. He was ?managing? ? just as he had when he was a kid.
To understand Tom?s drinking, it?s useful to look back at the time when it began.

[Chapter Four: 1967 to 1985]

Tom?s father died when Tom was 16 months old. His mother, who never drank, raised four boys alone. Just before Tom entered high school, Tom?s oldest brother, 17 year old Michael, died in a car accident -- a car driven by a friend who was drunk. Tom says he got through Michael?s death alright? and high school was a good time.

TAPE TOM I was very active in sports. And I was very good at the sports I participated in. I was class president my freshman year. I even had the same girlfriend for my whole high school years. I was well liked in the community. I had like, paper routes. Seldom, on occasion we would go out weekends and have alcohol, but it would not be maybe a handful of times throughout the high school period. :33

Immediately after high school, Tom joined the Air Force. He was training in Biloxi, Mississippi when his youngest brother, Sam, age 16, who Tom was very close to, was critically injured in a car crash. Just like Michael, Sam was thrown from a car driven by a drunken friend, on the same road ? almost at the same spot ? where Michael died. Tom came home on emergency leave. Sam died two days later.
TAPE TOM and I went back to finish tech school. And I did not handle this death very well. I ran, and I hid, and I did this by putting in for assignments as far away as I possibly could out of the united states. // 9418 I ended up with an assignment in korea. And pretty much from there, I found my cure for what I felt was the remedy to deal with the grief ? loss of my brother. /// I started drinking. And I drank constantly each and probably every day of the week. :39

Tom got out of the Air Force when he was 21. He came home, got a job, and, almost immediately got his first D.W.I., followed by another a year later. He married, separated, attended college briefly, found jobs and lost them. In June of 1982, he was nearly killed while driving drunk. He entered the V.A. Hospital in Manchester for treatment for alcoholism. After a month, he was discharged with a prescription for ?Antabuse? ? a drug that makes you sick if you drink. Tom stopped filling it.
In the mid-1980's, he began hanging out at a bar owned by an old high school friend named Dennis.

TAPE DENNIS I had talks with him and told him, you got to quit drinking. [LAUGHS] You just get over the line there, and you just ? get out of control, and there?s no reasoning with you. :11

In his more sober moments, Tom would agree with Dennis.

TAPE DENNIS He knew it. He knew he had a problem. He knew he had to quit. But it something you ? it?s something he had to do on his own. Nothing I could make him do. The only think I could do is when he come in, not serve him. :12

Dennis stopped serving Tom, but Tom continued to drink. In a way, for Tom, drinking made sense.

TAPE TOM I?m always saying to myself that, you know, I lost two brothers in a car accident, and I was okay, I lived through it, so I wasn?t really that bad off. /// I?m sure that I held a lot of grief and pain, and that the alcohol was my medicine still at the time. /// and I had to have my medicine to survive. :20

Tom says he?s sober today because he recognizes that his consumption of his ?medicine? constitutes a disease ? and that he can in no way control that disease.

TAPE TOM at some points I just felt that it couldn?t be affecting me the way that it has affected other people. I just felt like I was immune to being addicted, that I had a problem, that my life was all hunky dory, the world was beautiful.
MACPHERSON so you felt like you had a problem with alcohol, but you weren?t an alcoholic.
TOM right, right. Well I felt that I could drink, but I didn?t drink in an alcoholic state. I was very functional, I had a job, I paid my bills for the most part, and I?m not bothering anybody, so how can I be an alcoholic?

So long as Tom had no answer to that question, he continued to drink. And even long after he finally recognized that drinking was damaging his life, he could not imagine life without it. For NHPR News, I?m Doug MacPherson.