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I immediately got in with a drinking crowd when I was in A School and it just seemed
like the normal thing to do. I had a lot of people very early on tell me that I drank
too much, put me on restriction. I was actually, placed on restriction two or three times in
A School for drinking offenses or being in the wrong place at the wrong time due to drinking
and I never changed my behaviors because of any of that stuff. It just continually got
worse and when I made it into the fleet it was the same story all over again. My Chief
actually took me to the side at one point and he said, you know how many EP Evaluations
that I've had to throw away, that I've written for you and then had to reduce to an MP or
a P because of the way that you act and the way that you drink. I thought I had everything
under control, and that's the problem with the crowd of people I was hanging out with
is that they were drinking just like me so it looked normal. I went home on leave one
time and a couple people told me that my mom had been really depressed lately and that
I should talk to her because she had been drinking a lot. I was out with my girlfriend
watching a movie and I was calling my mom continuously because we were supposed to go
out to eat that night before I left. So, I continued to call her and after the movie
I went back to my house and I walked into my bedroom and my mom was lying on the bed.
She'd been dead for about 24 hours. I tried to give her CPR and I just couldn't do, the
smell was just to over powering and when I pulled her arm her entire body just moved
because of the rigorous mortise... It was a pretty bad sight. The reason that is important
because of drinking and driving and behaviors is because my behavior after. After about
5 minutes of bawling my eyes out the first thing I did was grab a bottle of whiskey.
I found out later that my mom had overdosed and died not just because of drinking but
because of pills. The doctor told me something very interesting about that, it doesn't matter
how many pills you take or how much alcohol you ingest, the whole act of mixing alcohol
or a narcotic just triggers something in your brain and there is anywhere from a 10 to 20
percent chance that where your brain just says I don't want to wake up and you're done.
Your brain will just shut off on you while you're asleep. And that's exactly what happened
with my mother. When my mother died my drinking got much much much worse. I got a DUI my chain
of command was not too happy about that. They put me on restriction, 45/45. So I got sent
to the brig on bread and water for 3 days and while I was in the brig I had a master
chief come into the brig and sit down with me for about an hour and explained to me why
the navy is important. Why he joined the Navy. What was his motivation, like how much he
cared for Sailors and why I should stay in the Navy and why I should seek help for my
drinking. He gave me examples of Sailors that we recovering and getting their career back
on track. It was probably one of the most memorial moments of my Navy career up to that
point and it still is one of the most memorable moments up to this day. After that I went
on deployment that I went to SARP the Substance Abuse Rehabilitation Program and now today
I am LPO of my department and I am looked upon as a leader and a mentor. There is a
chance and there is hope for anybody who's drinking is a problem you can stop of moderate,
you can be able to recover your life and maintain some sort of normalcy and hang out around
people and still be fun. A fun guy and get to go to parties and hang out around people
who are drinking and I just don't have to drink anymore it's not a requirement.