- Alcohol
Interviewed by Wendy Lee Nentwig
When Brandon first entered the rooms of 12-step programs four and a half years ago, they told him it would get this good, but he didn’t really believe it. He had no idea what they were talking about. He couldn’t have even imagined.
You can’t really blame him. At age 28, he had been drinking regularly for 15 years. He first tried alcohol at age eight, giving in to small-town boredom and a curiosity about the hold it seemed to have over adults. He didn’t like it initially, but he convinced himself to change that.
By age 13, Brandon had moved to Salt Lake City and spent his Saturday mornings in the gutter puking on himself. He crashed his first car just weeks after getting it. His favorite thing was to drink and drive because the fast speeds provided a constant stream of new scenery, and no matter what messes he made, they were always left behind in the review mirror.
Despite his growing alcohol addiction, Brandon did well in business. At 21 years old, he was running a large company on the west coast. He thought it would bring happiness, but he was lonely more than anything else. So he decided at that moment to only do whatever made him smile or feel complete. He made a move to real estate because he loved people and loved homes. He got married. He quit drinking.
He was sober for 18 months when he relapsed on a cruise ship. They handed him a cocktail as he boarded and he figured, “what could it hurt?” There were no cars nearby. Of course, the drinking didn’t stop when he disembarked.
The inevitable car accident was a head-on collision. Brandon was drunk and left the scene. Later, he wrote the man he hit a letter that said, “What a way to thank someone that has just saved your life, to leave him on the side of road.” But the accident did save his life, because Brandon was headed off a cliff.
Following the accident, he was facing four years in prison and personal lawsuits that topped a million dollars. Six months of treatment brought some clarity, and a new judge brought some unforeseen mercy. That judge gave Brandon the hardest sentence she had ever given outside of prison time. It included 600 hours of community service, $900,000 of restitution and a suspended license.
He spent two years putting his head down and moving forward. One time there was no work for him to do, so they sent him to rake the forest. He obliged. He persevered through two foreclosures and the loss of two businesses.
Today, he’s working in recovery. He started as a kitchen manager and moved up from there, currently putting his marketing and sales skills to good use. After a recent job change, he was touched when his old boss asked him to come back. “Fifteen years of using and running, and he wanted me back,” Brandon says, incredulous. “No one had ever wanted me. People believe in me.”
Despite the rewards, Brandon is the first to admit it’s not always easy. “Sometimes I just don’t want to do it but I use the Serenity Prayer and it helps me not to manipulate the outcome.” For others out there who are where he once was, not believing it could ever get this good, he would tell them, “You’re just the same as I am. You have every opportunity I do.”
The question is: what are you going to do with those opportunities?