ADDICTION UNCOVERED

How To Avoid The Depth Of Addiction-Danny’s Story

Our Society: Addiction and More Uncovered Ch 25

I have a conversation with Danny on the phone. He already knows what the story about Toni when I had a conversation with him. (See previous chapter on Toni’s story) We talk for a few hours. Danny is retired from the coast guard. He did 30 years of service. I thank him for his service. Alcohol and drugs were the two major addictions he dealt with from the professional perspective. There is so much presence of alcohol and drug use in the military that Danny had alcohol and drug awareness and training that was mandatory every year. They had classes about alcohol and drug addiction as well as suicide prevention. They had a high suicide rate. He tells me that suicide is closely related to drug and alcohol use. He personally knew people who committed suicide because of drug issues. He tells me about one of the suicides. This person started with Danny around the same time in the coast guard. His suicide was different.

Danny is not sure if it was related to alcohol and drugs or not. He had another experience on a ship in the mid-1990s. He tells me on a ship people kind of get to know each other and they are forced to co-exist with each other. He talked with Charlie occasionally. Danny did not know him really well. One day he was on the ship and the next day the captain gathered everyone and told them that Charlie had ended his life. Rumors had started on board and it was suggested that alcohol and drugs were an issue. Another time in Danny’s career he worked with someone who left a suicide note. He had multiple issues but there was a phrase that Danny never forget that was in the end of the mote he mentioned “mother alcohol”.

It is a very sad thing he adds. Danny considers himself lucky that he had received all this education from the coast guard every year, he feels that probably most people do not receive formal education about these issues. He describes our society as a frame. I am imagining a picture frame here, then he tells me individuals are in it and we have to look at it from the point that what training and education and support individuals receive in society to help them. I like the phrase he uses next:

“To help individuals cope with the demons they might possess in their lives”.

From a sociological perspective, he tells me this raises the question of how much local, state, and federal governments should get involved in people’s lives to help them when dealing with addictions. I ask Danny what he thinks how much the government should get involved. He tells me this is a complex issue and gives me some historical aspects. Since 1940 he said things had been separate it was people to themselves and government to themselves. America as a nation was considered to be the individual on their own.

Self-reliance and independence, he adds. It is a good thing he asserts, and at the same time if people fall on hard times and they have to rely on themselves and their families to help them. After the great depression, he said the government had to step in and help people for the first time because so many people were very destitute. In 2019 the government is getting again involved in people’s lives he fells. It comes down to security versus freedom from a sociological perspective. To be free is a hands-off approach from the government’s perspective. The downside is he said that when someone falls into hard times like addiction the government does not help them to get out of it. When a government gets more involved it could help more people to turn around and educate them and give them the tools to become a productive members of society. The downside of it is that these programs and assistance cost money. That money has to come from somewhere. The other downside of it is that the government is getting really involved in our personal lives. He tells me that there is a lot that goes with the old saying:

“It takes a village to raise a child”.

He is not the first one telling me this. He believes that we have a lot of problems in our society. Just look at the news Danny said, pick out any one topic, violence, hit and run, somebody robbing a store for example. We have all these issues, immigration is another one, another big topic. He talks about citizenship for example. What does it mean to be a citizen he asks. He talks about the definition of citizenship and the responsibility of that citizen to the country. Individual should be responsible for their own actions. He tells me the concept of taking a village to raise a child. From a community perspective. Help our community instead of being in isolation and not doing anything. He feels ultimately the government should be involved, but there is a caveat to that it should be a temporary measure just life welfare and foster care. People need to help the individuals, help them turn their lives around to become a productive members of society where they can stand on their own two feel without requiring further assistance. He brings up foster care as an example. The original idea is a temporary removal of a child until the original parents correct their behavior and economic status so the child can go back to them. How many times do we actually see that he asks? Many kids get bounced from foster care to foster care instead.

Danny had studied organizational and family behaviors in college. He studied teen behaviors and the circumstances surrounding those behaviors. Including family and addictions. He brings up the point that when we study and learn about complex issues like addiction in society we have to include local and state government perspectives and how to help families change behaviors to get out of addictions. As a child in the 1970’s, he was raised around these behaviors. He went back to school to study how to correct these things. He tells me his personal perspective. As a child, Danny’s family was on welfare. They were very poor. His father was a drinker. When Danny was in his 20’s he found out that his father got into drug use. He has a sister who is a recovering alcoholic a cousin who is an alcoholic. He dealt with addiction a lot in his family. He told people the way he survived childhood without ending up in prison or in the foster care system is beyond him. He ended up drug-free and in the military. He heard people say that children are resilient. Danny’s father was also a child abuser. His idea of disciplining Danny was grabbing a 2x4 from the backyard and beating him with it. He disciplined him and his sister that way. In his childhood, he had drugs, alcohol, child abuse.

There was always something going on that the police would come over then they would leave. In today’s world, he asserts that his parents would go to jail for the things they did. The times in the 1970s were different. His dad ended up going to jail and needed to take classes on childcare and parenting. Danny had a lot of half-sisters and brothers, he calls his father rather promiscuous. Danny tells me that all his father knew if what he learned from his father and his father what he learned from Danny’s grandfather. He calls it a vicious cycle. Danny stopped the cycle with his children. I ask Danny what he thinks broke his cycle. He tells me about the Coast Guard and the education he received there, studying sociological issues in college and seeing what addiction did to his family and others while growing up. He just knew he does not want to go there. He tells me about rules, boundaries, and limitations and how they affect us from a personal and professional perspective.

Danny tells me about his current life. He lives in California, on a nice property with fruit trees. He makes wine from the fruit and likes to drink it. Now he tells me he has to ask himself how much wine is too much. Is there a point of time when the wine would affect him personally? At what point does it become an issue? In the Coast Guard, they teach people that they can have up to two drinks a day and that would be still ok. This might be maybe or may not be true. He knows that the time might come up when he realizes he needs to change his behavior. He hopes he will have the strength to do it. He talks about addressing why do people feel the need to drink in the first place. Danny used to chew tobacco for 20 years. He started chewing when he was a teenager then after 20 years the idea of possibly getting oral cancer from it was too much for him and he stopped.

I ask him if he could stop drinking if he wanted. He tells me probably he would have to stop making wine. He feels motivation can help stop addiction positive or negative. For him the tobacco it was a negative consequence, he has a family history of cancer and he did not want to lose half of his jaw to cancer. He feels like motivation to stop drinking would be based on his health. At his point of course my nursing brain has to tell him that alcohol is a carcinogen. He was not aware of it. According to the CDC drinking, any type of alcohol increases the risk for 6 types of cancer. The reason is in the breakdown of alcohol to acetaldehyde. Acetaldehyde damages our DNA and prevents our body from repairing the damage (CDC, 2019). The CDC website where this is located is https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/alcohol/index.htm. Danny feels that most people do not know this information. He did not know this information. Danny feels that if it would be a high carcinogen there would be government label on the drinks just like on cigarettes. Well, maybe there should be a note on the label. We know it increases the risk.

We go back to Danny’s childhood. He tells me his father would many times leave for 3–4 days then come home drunk. He would be drinking he would also be unfaithful to his mother. This is one of the most prevalent childhood memory Danny remembers. His father left for a few days then came home drunk. Then his father and mother would get into an argument and he and his sisters would have to witness that. He had 3 sisters and has 2 sisters now, lost a sister to lymphoma. One of his sisters still calls him from time to time because she has difficulty with their childhood. It affects her adult life extensively. His childhood affected him, and he looks at it like he is 100 percent responsible for himself. He does not want others to feel sorry for him. He does not want to rely on religion to wash away his sins and provide redemption. He relies on himself, his wife, and his family. He does not want to dwell on the past and on his childhood. He is living his life the best way he can live it. Those memories will never go away. He will not let them ruin his life. He has baggage. Everybody has baggage. In the here and now he decides how he lives his life. This reminds me of a book I read. The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. I highly recommend this book. It has a similar concept. Focus on the now not the past or the future. For Danny it is a simple thing. Be 100% responsible for our behavior. He tells me to ask ourselves we are ok with who we are. Examine our behavior over a day, a week, a month a year. If we are not ok with who we are then we have to ask ourselves why that is. Then make changes. Redirect our energy toward change. Need to find the strength to do it. He is not saying that change needs to occur completely on our own. If people need help with resources or someone to point them in the right direction, that is fine. He is telling me that the one thing that affected him from childhood is that he is very self-reliant. Because of all the things that happened to him he rarely seeks help from other people. He calls it a double edge sword.

He believes that whatever problems he faces he needs to get over it on his own. He sees this as a negative thing. He feels people should be able to rely on others when they need help. It comes back to the community perspective. It takes a village to raise a child. No one should have to get through life on their own. People should be assisted and educated when needed. Danny tells me about his life in retirement and his relationship. Danny and Toni have a very good relationship, they have been together for 16 years. He tells me that they never had an argument about anything. He describes having a happy great life. He tells me he could not ask for anything more. He does not make a lot of money in retirement. He can pay the mortgage and the bills. It is enough. He is perfectly happy. He tells me that if people want to live the way he does planning in life does help. Sensible planning. He likes traveling, seeing a little bit of the world, enjoying himself, he likes camping and his motorcycle. After retirement in the first couple years, he was trying to figure out his purpose in life. In the Coast Guard for 30 years his purpose was defined. He lived by organizational objectives and lived with people who had the same drive and desire as he did. They all lived by the same rules, he had an extended family. When he retired, he was struggling with his identity now. It was hard for him to figure out at first, but he did he realized that having a job should not define him. He should define himself. He had to be ok with not working. He is happy, he works on the house, and that he gets to travel. It is good enough. He had to ask himself if this lifestyle he lives now is good enough for him and the answer is yes. What he describes to me is a lot of self-reflection and asking himself questions about what he wants in life. I believe that self-reflection is a very important tool to find ourselves, who we want to be. We talk about family a bit and Danny tell me that he is a better man because of his wife Toni. He feels that she has the outlook on life that everyone should have. Toni is the type of person who looks at things positively and tries to make the world better. He is humbled by the fact that even if his wife could do her life over again, she would go through the same troubles she went through to meet him.

Our past defines who we are today. When Danny looks at his wife and looks at the things she went through and look at the things that happened to him or others he knows and thinks I am having a bad day, then he thinks of Toni what she went through and tells himself that he has nothing to complain about. Danny never knew anybody before who died twice, come back to life and have the outlook that Toni does. She is an amazing person no doubt. Danny wants to be a better person and have the same outlook on life as Toni does. It gives people a perspective. Danny tells me about his retirement plan and his plans to take care of his wife even if something happens to him. He receives a monthly income and it was hard for him to take his retirement and go from working every day for 30 years to not working and receiving money every month. It took some time for him to get over this. People would remind him that he served his country and he know it and it was still weird for him. He went from working and going to school to having nothing to do. We talk about our school experiences. It is weird for both of us not to have a paper due and what do I do now. He is been now retired for 5 years. He is very happy with his life. He enjoys cooking food. He tells me about winemaking. He never drank before his marriage. He was 43 years old before he really had a drink. He tells me about future plans. He talks about taking care of a farmstead in the future and not making wine. He now has a vegetable garden. They grow their own vegetables, hydrate the fruit. He wants to be self-reliant in the future. He likes to grow their own vegetables and bake their own bread because they know what is in it. The wine they make is also organic. He tells me about wine in the store that has chemicals and can cause health problems.

A lot of people get hangovers and dehydration because of the sulfide and chemicals in the wine that they buy. He tells me to want is in their wine. Juice, sugar, alcohol, and yeast. He is not justifying making wine, he is telling me this to inform me of their conscious decisions on what products they eat. He does love green tea and tells me he might just start drinking green tea now. Danny tells me that his mom drinks a lot, always smoked, and never really took care of her health. He wants to be in better health than his mom now. Danny works out to keep in shape. Likes to walk or do work out at home. He does have a goal of losing a little weight. He tells me about being overweight in his 30’s then getting too skinny after that. We talk about sugar in alcohol. He tells me about plans to leave California and move to Idaho. California is very expensive. They live now in an agricultural community. He tells me about people in San Jose who cannot get a mortgage in a 6-figure salary. He knows someone in the Coast Guard who rents out a single room in San Francisco for $1500 a month. Danny and Toni live about an hour from the bay area where most people are working. Hoping they will be able to sell their house in the future and buy a farmstead in Idaho. Homes now sell in the area where they live in a week or two people moving farther and willing to commute to afford a home. Housing is just unaffordable in the bay area anymore. He tells me about the

A limited number of days we all have on this earth and we have to decide how we want to live those days.

We circle back to define what addiction is. Danny tells me that he thinks addiction prevents people from being the person they want to be. He tells me addiction can also be defined by blaming everything and everyone around instead of ourselves. It is slavery, he tells me it binds people a behavior, creates an attitude. Addiction binds people to be a person they don’t want to be. Danny tells me that the hard part is breaking that chain, breaking that behavior. Addiction could be anything he tells me it could be chocolate; it could be doing physical fitness; it could be something people consider positive addiction. Nerveless addiction is something people cannot get away from. People want too to get away from it but can’t figure out how to do it. Addiction is something that controls us instead of us deciding our own faith and destiny, addiction decided the faith for people. Most addictions are negative addictions controlling people. Breaking addiction is getting control back in our life. Danny tells me addiction is a negative control on our mind, body, and soul. Breaking addiction is living the way we want to live not the way we have been living. Taking control of our lives. It is an individual thing. Danny tells me he is super happy with his life now and he does drink alcohol. He does not see this as a negative thing. He is enjoying what he is doing. He asserts that the moment he would feel that alcohol would create a negative consequence on his life, his wife, or anybody around him, knowing the person he is he would just stop. Danny knows that in general alcohol is not good for people. If he asks himself if alcohol has control over him, he would have to say it probably does. What a great self-reflection. He is consciously happy with his life, and he also realizes that the older we get the more concerned we have to be about our health. He knows that there is a point where he has to ask himself if drinking alcohol is worth the potential future health consequences he might encounter. He feels no matter what the addiction is we have to ask ourselves this question. Even if it is a positive addiction. There will be a point in time where it will hurt. He tells me he did not get to that point yet. He is honest with me telling me that he drinks. I really appreciate his honesty. Danny does not feel he fits the stereotype that he observed growing up. He saw what drinking did to his family, his dad, his mom, his sister. He definitely does not want to be like his parents. He feels one day he needs to make a decision. He tells me if that means stopping to make wine and getting rid of everything in the house so be it.

Danny tells me about a memory of his retirement ceremony. He spent a lot of time with people on the ship. In finishing the speech he said: “We all went through a lot together, we had people we lost, we had people who left the organization because of drugs and alcohol, my advice is to always be aware and get involved”. He remembers that suicide he told me about before. He told the junior officers:

“Know what your shipmate is doing. If you see something out of the ordinary don’t just brush it off, get involved, you can save a person that way”.

Danny feels that one of the reasons is why people have addictions is because somebody somewhere did not intervene. He poses a question. Can we avert addiction by getting involved in a person’s life? By going out of our way to check on the welfare of a person? Being a good friend? Being a good son or parent? He would say yes. Take the time out of your way to talk to a person who needs help. Danny feels that he is lucky that he has people in his life who love and care about him.

He feels that as long as we get involved in someone’s life no matter if it is a friend, a parent, a co-worker we could prevent a lot of addiction.

He goes back to the concept it takes a village to raise a child. He feels that in the larger framework of society it takes people in all stages of life to help each other. No matter who the person is. He tells me that as a public servant he feels that he must do good by others. Do good by the people who put him to the place where he was and where he is now. It does not mean overreaching government. Then he adds if someone needs help dealing with addictions and family and friends or other resources cannot help, we might need to step in as a society local, state, or federal government to help the person. He feels whoever runs any kind of program all needs to be on the same page. He feels that page is a temporary situation.

We are going to help and give the person a good job give them the tools to succeed then after that they are on their own. He tells me that is how it should be. Correct the behavior, help the person in what they need to help with, put them on the path toward success, once they are on that path they are on their own. If for some reason they relapse Danny adds people can step in again and help them walk that path again. What we run into with government help he states is that they keep helping people and it is to their detriment. He brings up the kids in foster care he mentioned before. Kids going from one place to the next because it takes the parents 5 years or more to get them back. Kids going from one foster parent to the next is not fixing the problem. That is not fixing the parents, it is not helping the parents. He feels that the same thing applies to addictions. We can help a person to be self-reliant and stand on their own two feet. This brings up the same problem Dr. M talked about some people keep using the system for housing and between use. Otherwise, Danny tells me they will keep coming back to get more and more treatment and we end up getting people who are addicted to government services. I certainly heard those stories when it comes to our jail system. That is all people know and they get caught up in the cycle. He also brings up government services like welfare. People get on it and won’t get off. It is easier to do that than to get a job and live on our own and he thinks that is a problem. He really feels this is the same thing that is going on with addiction. He talks about this endless cycle when it comes to addiction that people go back and think well if I use again there will be services that help me get clean and this creates an endless cycle. I ask Danny if he thinks that there are programs out there now that help people stop the cycle. He does not have knowledge of them outside of what he knew at the Coast Guard. What he had seen in the Coast Guard it is a combination of disciplinary, medical, and psychological help. It is a very stepped program. If someone is doing well, they get their life back and rank. If not, ultimately, they can lose their employment. The incentive here seems to me is keeping their employment and pay. Most people who Danny knows have done the program and they succeeded. Some people don’t. He’d been in that process as a supervisor. He thinks that about 20 % of people don’t make it. They end up being discharged. At least 80% succeed. That is a phenomenal success considering the statistics outside of the military.

We discuss that how having the safety of a government job and housing might play a role in success compared to the outside world. I saw people who don’t have a job, have no housing, can’t afford therapy, have no support and keep falling back to the cycle of addiction. Not surprising. He feels that this is correct in the Coast Guard all these services are provided. He used to counsel young people and he would tell them that when they are in the military any branch of it the military is a way of life. It is not just a job. If they have a problem, there is a mandatory treatment to do. If someone works anywhere else nobody cares about their personal life. The military is completely different. The military owns people and is involved in their personal life while outside of the military this is not the case. Lots of people also have a problem with that there are a lot of kids out of high school who find themselves in the military and there are a lot of rules and regulations that they have not experienced before. I ask him what he thinks about providing that help to all people. The Coast Guard for example in their budget already includes those addiction services and they are paid for. He thinks it would be great for everyone in society to get all the same help, but there is a difference he tells me. In the military, it is not a voluntary thing they have to go through the program, or they get kicked out. It is a mandatory thing where if someone refuses, they could go to jail. They can go to military prison because they are disobeying orders. In society, the person out on the street are not subject to these same rules. To offer these programs would be still good. He does not think you could mandate it. It would be martial law. In the military people give up a lot of personal rights. The conditions are different in society.

There are different motivators in the military than in society. He brings up who pays for this as well. The majority needs to decide if this is something they want to pay for. There are so many factors to consider. Would people go to the programs? Are they aware of the programs? We talk about government programs and bring up the idea for example if there is a kid in foster care because the parent deals with addiction then the treatment of that parent could be mandated. He tells me that sometimes in government the left-hand does not talk to the right hand. Different agencies don’t talk to each other. Social agencies collaborate with each other by helping the parent so the child can go back to the parent.

Thank you for reading,

Gabriella

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This book is dedicated to the memory of Bagóczky József my uncle who died at age 19 — alcohol-related car accident and to everyone else who has been hurt or lost related to addiction

Many people had been supportive and inspiring to me so I could create this book. Both of my wonderful children told me, just write that book, mom. My mom. I could have not done this without all the stories provided and the encouragement love and caring from my family and friends, nurses, doctors, counselors, teachers, professors, friends who are dealing with addiction and staying sober; and children, wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers of people who are dealing with addiction currently. Thank you for speaking up, sharing your stories and life experiences. Thank you to all the people who read this book while in progress to provide feedback, ideas, and encouragement for me to continue writing. I would like to say special thanks to my friends and family for believing me and encouraging me to go on.

Front cover acrylic painting created by Andrea Mihaly October 2019

Our Society: Addiction and More Uncovered. Hear the voices of everyday people — a collection of stories and experiences.

Copyright @ 2020. 1st addition on Amazon KDP. 2nd addition Jan 2021 Barnes & Noble. Gumroad December 2021. By Dr. Gabriella Kőrösi. All rights reserved. Dancing Elephants Press.