The Dependency
I drank for my entire military career. Every year. Thirty years of using alcohol to manage what I couldn’t name.
I smoked from 1985 to 2007—one to two packs of Marlboros a day—until St. Patrick’s Day, when I found my father dead. I could see the effect of smoking two to three packs of menthols a day on him. I knew I didn’t want to end up like him: alone, a cab driver who drank on his off time, disconnected from everyone who might have cared.
I made a choice that day. I quit smoking. But I kept drinking.
The Isolation
The last three years of my military career, I was on active duty, driving between Vancouver, Washington, and Scappoose, Oregon, where my mother lived in a care facility. Eventually, I moved her to a better center in Redmond, Oregon, for her dementia and Alzheimer’s care. I put thousands of miles on my truck during that time, driving back and forth, trying to be present for her while still serving.
When I left active duty, I moved into my RV in Sisters, Oregon. Then COVID hit. I was alone, isolated, disconnected from everyone.
My mother was dying. I knew it was coming.
The Goodbye
On December 22, 2019, something told me to go check on her. I don’t know how to explain it—my brain just knew.
When I got to the care home, the staff told me she was going to pass away within the week. I walked into her room. Her nurse was there, and she told me my mother was “getting ready to go.”
I acknowledged what she said.
The nurse stopped me. “No,” she said. “She’s getting ready to go, like, in the next five minutes.”
I took my mother’s hand. I told her that if she hurried, her husband Roger was waiting for her, and she might make his birthday. I told her I was going to be okay. I told her I wanted to see the world.
She took a deep breath. And then she let it out for a long, long time.
The nurse told me afterward that my mother had been waiting for me. That giving her permission, letting her know I was okay, gave her the push she needed to let go.
I don’t know if I believe all that. I don’t know how or why my brain works the way it does. It just seems to know things.
But after that, I realized how lonely I was. How disconnected.
The Shift
I started using marijuana. I quit drinking completely.
And something unexpected happened. It helped me process information I hadn’t been able to before. It helped me process emotions I’d been burying for decades. It helped me become mentally ill for a while—truly, deeply unwell—but I didn’t give up.
Because what’s the option?
I pushed people away. I used that time to learn. I worked through my ADHD, my PTSD, the anger, the pent-up rage at a system that should work but is run by people who have no memory of being workers themselves. People who’ve never been passed over by an algorithm, never had a resume rejected for having too much ability or not enough formal education.
It’s all part of the human experience. But mental illness is hard to treat when society has been set up as a kind of purge—a system designed to make you feel like you don’t matter, where no one will notice your absence.
The Epidemic
When it’s easier to pick up a pipe to smoke yourself or a gun to smoke another, we have a problem.
Pain is everywhere. Disrespect. A lack of concern for another’s well-being. We are all humans, subject to the whims of others, and our capacity for violence can outweigh common sense and decency when we perceive a slight.
We have no control in a world this chaotic.
Even someone like me—someone who genuinely wants to help—doesn’t know where to start. It’s all so insurmountable.
And when a law enforcement officer shows up to help someone who is obviously in need of care, but no one cares—when the epidemic is growing and no one is looking anymore—it’s because we’ve been conditioned to consume and dispose.
Those lives of others no longer hold any purpose. That being—full of emotions, of love, fear, anguish—whether human, pet, or something living on the streets—is reduced to nothing.
Fear is the one thing that seems to fuel the universe.
The Question I Can’t Answer
I spend my time trying to deconstruct it. What is that one unifying thing I can do to make it stop?
And it never does.
That’s what consumes the minds of so many who turn to drugs and alcohol. It’s the fear.
Fear of being alone. Fear of not mattering. Fear of being discarded. Fear of the pain that never ends.
The Work
I don’t have the answer. I don’t have the magic solution that makes the fear go away.
But I have this: I know what it’s like to be in the middle of it. I know what it’s like to lose decades to addiction, to watch a parent die, to realize you’ve been running from yourself your entire life.
And I know that the only way through it is through it.
Not around it. Not over it. Not by numbing it with another drink or another pill.
Through it.
You process the pain. You give yourself permission to feel it. You stop waiting for someone else to save you and start doing the hard, unglamorous, terrifying work of saving yourself.
That’s the mission. Not because it guarantees success. Not because it makes the fear go away.
But because the alternative—giving up, giving in, letting the fear win—is a slow death that takes you years before your heart finally stops.
To Those Still Fighting
If you’re reading this and you’re in the middle of it—the addiction, the isolation, the mental illness that makes you feel like you’re drowning—I need you to hear this:
You’re not broken. You’re not weak. You’re not a failure.
You’re a human being trying to survive in a system that was never designed for your well-being. You’re doing the best you can with the tools you have.
And if those tools aren’t working anymore—if the alcohol isn’t numbing the pain, if the drugs aren’t filling the void—that’s not a sign that you’re hopeless.
It’s a sign that you’re ready for something different.
You don’t have to have all the answers. You don’t have to fix everything at once.
You just have to take the next breath. And then the one after that.
And if you need help—if you need someone to sit with you in the dark until you’re ready to walk toward the light—reach out. Call someone. Text someone. Show up at a meeting. Go to the VA. Go to a clinic.
Do whatever it takes to stay alive one more day.
Because the world needs you. Even if you can’t see it right now. Even if you don’t believe it.
The world needs people who have been through hell and decided to keep walking. Because you’re the only ones who can teach the rest of us how to survive it.
A Final Note
I’m not a therapist. I’m not a counselor. I’m not a mental health professional.
I’m just a guy who spent 30 years in uniform, who buried both his parents, who has lived with addiction and mental illness and the kind of loneliness that makes you question why you’re still here.
And I’m still here.
Not because I’m special. Not because I have some secret knowledge.
But because I made a choice, every single day, to keep going.
And if I can do it, so can you.
Resources:
- Veterans Crisis Line: 988, then press 1
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988
- SAMHSA National Helpline (Substance Abuse): 1-800-662-4357
- Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741
You are not alone. Help is available. Reach out.