EARL ERICKSON IS NO STRANGER TO ADDICTION, DEPRESSION, SUICIDE, AND GRIEF. He's had eleven drunk driving convictions. He tried to commit suicide twice. He nearly drank himself to death after his wife, Bobbie, died from brain cancer. Drinking and getting drunk was the only way he knew how to stifle his feelings and mask the pain. In this memoir, Erickson narrates the often painful story of his life- from his normal childhood upbringing to his out-of-control adult life to his sobriety. He tells of the tragedies that shaped his life: finding his brother's lifeless body after he committed suicide and mourning the untimely death of another brother from liver cirrhosis. He recalls a string of broken relationships and bouts with serious depression. But at the age of fifty, Erickson received a powerful message from a higher power while on a solo camping trip in 2003, and he's been sober since. The Journey of an Incorrigible Alcoholic: The Paths I Chose and the Ones I Didn't tells one man's story of recovery and hope.
The Journey of an Incorrigible Alcoholic: The Paths I Chose and the Ones I Didn't
ADDICTION, DEPRESSION, SUICIDE, GRIEFBy Earl D. EricksoniUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2010 Earl D. Erickson
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-0-595-52583-6Chapter One
August 2, 1975: Tacoma, Washington. I knocked on my brother Donald's door. He was living in an attached bachelor apartment adjacent to a private home, and I expected him to be there because both of his cars were there. This was my second attempt to try to find him home this evening. Earlier, there was no answer. I figured he was taking a nap or had gone to bed early. This seemed very strange. I was stopping by to introduce him to Belinda, a girl I had recently met. It was Saturday night, and Belinda and I were on our first date. We had been partying all night long. We were both pretty straight on our first visit, but now we were stoned and drunk.
I knocked on the door a bit louder than before. Then all of a sudden, the door moved ajar. I swore the first time I knocked on his door it was secured. Becoming suspicious, I called out Donald's name, but there was no answer. I told Belinda to stay back, as I was about to enter.
It was very quiet inside; the room was completely dark, except for a stray light streaming through the thin curtain from an outside lamp. When my eyes adjusted, I could barely make out my brother's shadow on his bed. Okay, now I thought he was playing a joke on me. He was famous for that. I decided to tickle his feet. A strange sense came over me as I touched Donald's feet in the darkness. I wondered why his feet would be so cold and stiff on this very warm August night. After stumbling around for a few long seconds, I found the light switch on the wall by the door. I flipped the switch, brightening the small room and revealing a sight I will never forget the rest of my life.
The headboard and the walls surrounding Donald's bed were splattered with blood and brain matter. A small pool of blood had dried around his pillow, and it appeared to have dripped onto the carpet. There was a revolver clutched in his frozen hand.
Suddenly I felt gravely ill, shaken at the sight before me. I was frantic, obviously in a state of shock. My emotions snapped and I panicked. Still feeling high from smoking marijuana laced with angel dust, I completely freaked out.
I struggled to get the gun from my brother's hand. When I finally had the gun in my hand, I took it outside and shot it into the ground. It was the very first time I'd shot a real pistol. It never occurred to me why I had done this. I had no clue whatsoever. The reality of it all just wouldn't sink in. When I came to my senses, I knew my actions would look suspicious to the police, so I hid the gun under some leaves beneath a nearby hedgerow.
Belinda was freaking out by now, yelling, "What the hell are you doing?"
I didn't know what to say. I yelled back, "Call the cops-hurry!" I retrieved the gun from the hedge, put it on a patio table, and waited for the police to come. For some reason, I felt guilty. Too much was happening too fast. I was shaking so much I couldn't control myself.
I was beginning to wonder if somebody had shot Donald while he was sleeping, then staged a suicide. After all, the door was unlocked. If this was the case, I'd really messed up the police investigation that was about to unfold. I was hoping the police would believe me when I told them that I didn't shoot him, either on purpose or by accident.
Why were the police taking so long to get there? Belinda notified the property owner, who lived next door, and the woman mentioned that she'd heard what sounded like a gunshot a few minutes ago; that happened to be the shot I'd fired in the dead silence.
Now I wondered if the police were going to arrest me for something I never did. I knew that innocent people go to prison, too. Finally I could hear the sirens wailing in the distance, getting closer. I was shaking worse than ever. Should I run for my life? It was too late. The police were on the scene, and then the paramedics. They told us to stand back. I insisted that I didn't shoot my brother. I explained that I shot the gun outside to see if it was loaded. One officer was inside the apartment doing a preliminary investigation while the other officer was interviewing me.
I finished explaining my story to the officer. It went better than I'd thought it would. I must have convinced them, because the coroner later ruled the death as a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Donald had put his revolver in his mouth and then pulled the trigger. He had been dead for at least twenty-four hours when I found him. He left behind an unfinished suicide note. Another telltale sign was a stack of suicide-related books near his bedside.
My brother Allan arrived on the scene, and I told him what exactly had happened. I was unfit to drive my car, so Allan drove Belinda home. Then we had to notify my parents immediately. It wasn't going to be easy.
It was now Sunday, August 3, my father's seventy-second birthday. He had suffered a stroke a few years earlier, and his health was somewhat fragile. I thought the news would kill him. It was so horrible to have to explain it all to him. As I told him what happened, his face went pale in silence. I didn't know how to console him because I was still in shock over what I had gone through. I felt so much anger, and then sympathy, toward my dead brother. My emotions were confusing to sort out.
Later, there were times when I saw my father in his basement with tears streaming down his face as he was digging out pictures, letters, and keepsakes that reminded him so much of his first son, now dead at the young age of thirty-six. Fathers are not supposed to bury their sons. He tried desperately to fight back the tears that were ripping at his heart and soul. I'd never seen my father cry before. As a rule, he never showed his emotions. I felt pity and sadness for him. My mother took the news better than the rest of us.
My brother Mark stood visibly shaken with emotion soon after I informed Dad. He was estranged from Donald and had taken a beating from him only a few months prior to the suicide. He admitted that, just a few days before his death, Donald had telephoned him from a tavern and tried to apologize for his actions. Mark had told him to go to hell.
It began when Donald lost his patience with Mark one evening because Mark was drunk and acting stupid. Donald was tired of him telling stories behind his back. The conflict escalated into a beating in which Mark had his ribs bruised badly. He also received a black eye from that incident. They hadn't spoken since. Donald was an alcoholic. That, compounded with his recent drunken driving arrest, a divorce, and losing all custody rights of his son, sent him into a downward spiral. In his deepest depression, he knew killing himself would be the only way out.
I was walking around grief-stricken after the suicide. I was now dealing with two different kinds of grief. Both were very powerful, and I was not acquainted with this degree of pain and heartbreak. I hadn't gotten over the recent breakup of the five-year courtship and romance I'd had with a young woman named Renee. She'd left me less than three months before Donald's suicide, and I was still reveling in the pain of that ending when I discovered my brother's body. I was on the fast track to disaster.
I contacted Renee by telephone and asked her if she would go to the funeral with me for support. She agreed to go. At the funeral service, I lost...
