"I got a job working construction. One evening I went to the drive-up liquor in Ranchos, the one the Magistrate Judge owned, and I said ‘what kind of beer do people drink here?’ and he says ‘Schlitz’. So, I got a six pack and wow, that hit the spot after a hard days work in the high desert and I started doing that. It became a habit. Just a couple of beers. But I wasn’t a drunk. I wasn’t hanging out in bars. I was married with little kids and it seemed just like a normal thing to do…. I remember one time, driving back from work in Alcalde and I pulled over to watch the sunset, had a few beers and got a really nice buzz. And I thought, wow. This is what normal people do….

Then this really terrible thing happened. My wife was in a fight with her ex-husband over their kid, the one I was raising, and her ex was making up awful things about us abusing the child and it got really, really bad. After a year and a half of this it got resolved in court, we won. But it didn’t stop. My wife’s ex-husband’s parents knew lots of people here and they harassed us constantly. It was incredibly stressful. My wife said that she couldn’t stay in Taos anymore. But I couldn’t leave. This was my home. So, she left me with the kids. Um…that wasn’t easy….. Eventually she came back, took her own son to California and so it was just me and my five-year-old and it put me in a slump. I felt like such a failure and I started really drinking.

Each day I drank from Alcalde to home and then until I went to bed. I would wake up in the night, unable to sleep from the stress and so I drank more in the middle of the night just so I could sleep. This went on for over a year. I’d plug my boy into his TV, I’d watch the other TV, smoke pot, drink and drink – and this is why he is so fucked up to this day….

August 22, 1986. My birthday. That’s when I had my last drink. I woke up. I didn’t know where I was. There was my son in his sleeping bag across a fire pit from me. My hand had been in the coals all night and it burned a hole in my hand. I felt like I had had a spiritual death. It totally freaked me out. I was terrified. Inside, in my core, I felt like something was deeply wrong. I couldn’t function. I tried to go to work the next day but I couldn’t get passed Ranchos. The next day I got as far as Velarde, but I couldn’t get to work. I couldn’t face it. I didn’t know what to do. On the third day, I was in Kit Carson Park. I was walking in circles and I was pleading with God to save me, the same God that I had told to fuck off. But God said to me: Call AA…. AA? What is that? I didn’t associate it with the drink and drugs at first. But God told me.

So, I called. I went to a meeting. I hated it. Who are these weirdos? But then I was driving home and realized that the compulsion to drink was gone. Just boom, gone. But how could this be? No one indoctrinated me, nothing. But I realized these were my people….

Alcohol abuse takes different forms. I had a house, kids, a new wife, a job, a car…how could I be an alcoholic? The most important thing is to be honest with yourself. The first thing that I had to do was be honest with myself. I was an alcoholic… I’m still involved with AA.

When we come in, we have our hand out seeking help. But then later we have our hand out to be the helping hand, to pull someone else up."

- July 2022