My OP-ED piece in today’s Journal News
The Schuler crash: Dispelling the shock and disbelief
Brad Lamm
Like everyone else, I have been reading the coverage of the Diane Schuler case and the tragic loss of eight lives and trying to make sense of the tragedy. Most reading the coverage mourn the lost Hance family children and the unsuspecting victims in the other vehicle struck by wrong-direction driver Schuler, but I see it through a different lens and with a different empathy. In no way do I minimize the profound tragedy – but I see a larger and more dangerous story: That Schuler may have had an alcohol problem that no one saw and that it was on such a grand and deadly scale.
We need to replace the shock and disbelief with a teaching opportunity, in the hope that some meaning might emerge from our collective lament. My lens is different because each day I deal with families that have a living, breathing Diane Schuler in their midst, one that hasn’t had a horrible automobile crash, yet. These families are doing one of two things: enabling and nurturing a vicious cycle of addiction pathology through inaction and fear, or crying out for solutions while at their wits’ end. I feel uniquely poised to direct traffic at these crossroads as I was once very much like Diane Schuler, driving out of control on the wrong side of the highway of life.
My family (like the Hances and the Schulers) was largely unaware of the severity of my addiction to crystal meth, alcohol, cocaine and anything I could drink, snort, smoke or swallow. For 20 years I was the upwardly mobile life of the party, good friend and listener. At home I was a closeted addict and alcoholic, hiding in plain sight with secrets most of my loved ones, family and friends had no idea about. I went to tremendous lengths to keep the truth of my addictions away from those who loved me. I would explain my increasingly off-kilter behavior as “I have a fever . . .” or “My blood sugar must have gotten too low . . . ” or “I have a seizure disorder . . . .” I had the resume of a model citizen, not a common drunk. I was a nice person, from a decent middle-class family. And, yet, I couldn’t beat my addictions. I tried and failed many times.
Fate brought an intervention, rehab and finally recovery. I have since devoted my life to helping families that have a person like me among them, or a person like Diane Schuler – an alcoholic hiding in plain sight. Some of us are enabled. Some of us are obstructed. All of us are equally deadly, and we walk and drive among you.
The real sadness for me in this story is that it’s not at all shocking but completely routine. It’s my story and it’s the story of the family I met last night, and last Saturday and a year ago, and the family I will meet next week. It’s the quintessential addiction tome. The collateral damage one collects as addiction flourishes seems to be the luck of the draw, so a tragedy like the Schuler crash appears unusual to us. But that perspective, until changed, will serve to enflame the pandemic and periodically provide news stories like the Taconic crash.
So I argue that the greater horror is the reality of how many mothers make it home each night as their chronic disease state goes untreated. These afflicted people wreak a slow havoc on the children that make it out of the back seat. They are a catalyst for a lifetime of alienation, and their deterioration is nurtured by those closest to them who are too fearful to take action. They are ticking time bombs driving the wrong way in life . . . only we don’t sober up until someone crashes. I know because I see it every day in my professional capacity, but I really know because I am them and they are me.
Addiction is the only medical disease with its own social support system – friends, spouses and family actually assist the pathology through self-interest or fear. No other ailment enjoys this embrace. No other ailment is as abrupt and unforgiving and actually kills innocent bystanders while hiding in plain sight. And none, as typified by the Shuler story, is as preventable through brutal honesty, invitation and loving engagement for change. If Diane Schuler’s alcoholism was acknowledged for what it was and treated, would eight people be dead today? The answer is no. I know because I was that person.
The writer is a board-registered interventionist who does work in the Lower Hudson Valley. Learn more at ChangeSomeoneYouLove.com.
www.InterventionSpecialists.org
This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 19th, 2009 at 5:31 am and is filed under Alcohol, Alcohol Abuse, Alcohol Intervention, Alcoholism, Brad Lamm, Change, Change Seminar, ChangeBegins Training, Drug Addiction, Drug Intervention, How to Change Someone You Love, Nature vs. Nurture, News of Day, Press, headline. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.