Job Has Sobering Effect on Reporter

The pickup truck stood cockeyed and defiant in the middle of the Woodland Hills intersection that cold winter night--its lights on and engine running--like some angry bull contemplating a charge.

I drove past slowly on the otherwise empty street, veering around the obstinate vehicle, trying to make eye contact with the driver to display my displeasure. But as I glanced in the cab, there appeared to be nobody inside.

Returning 40 minutes later, I found the truck still there, though now angled haphazardly against the curb, continuing to block traffic.

Against my passenger’s advice, I pulled over, grabbed a flashlight and got out to have a look. After all, maybe some old guy had keeled over of a heart attack and was desperate for help in the cab of his pickup.

Sure enough, there he was--a blue-collar-looking guy in his late 30s, head resting against the steering wheel, slumped forward like a body that had just taken a bullet. But this was no heart attack. When I opened the door it hit me, the sickeningly sweet blast of breath that comes from only one thing: a drinking binge.

Moments later, he came to--slobbering, crying out, weeping, unable to open his eyes.

Drunk.

As neighbors began to congregate and another passerby called 911 from his cellular phone, I was struck by a sudden protective instinct for this man’s social survival: Couldn’t we just shut off the engine and let the poor guy sleep it off? After all, maybe he had just lost his job or had a fight with his wife. Being greeted, bleary-eyed, by some policeman’s blinding flashlight was just adding insult to injury.

Then a 60ish resident shoved her hands into her pockets and with a worried look seemed to speak the mind of the small crowd: “Oh my God! If that man had made it out to the main road, he could have killed someone!”

As I drove home after giving my name and address to the police as the first witness on the scene, I pondered this latest brush with alcohol.

Several weeks before, I had sworn off drinking for three months. There were no drunken arguments or fisticuffs, no all-night offerings to the porcelain god or bewildered awakenings behind bars--just the occasional reevaluation of the role that alcohol plays in my life.

It was, perhaps, an application of the lessons learned in my professional life to my personal life. As a reporter, I have done my share of stories about the ugly results that sustained, irresponsible drinking can bring.

I have done stories on holiday sobriety checks, laughing at the slurred responses of happy-go-lucky revelers. I have ridden in police cruisers as eagle-eyed officers followed suspected drunk drivers whose cars fishtailed on the freeway as though negotiating sheer ice, not dry tarmac.

But in recent weeks, the drinking-and-driving stories had hit closer to home. Like the one about the drunken driver who one night not far from my house fled a minor fender bender with the second driver in hot pursuit. In his haste, police said, he ran another red light a mile away, slamming into yet another vehicle, this time killing its operator.

On the telephone the following morning, I listened to the weary voice of the local police division’s watch commander, whose job it is to offer reporters details of such fatal crashes, a man who no longer seemed surprised at alcohol-related carnage.

Then came the MADD story.

Just before the New Year, the main Los Angeles office of Mothers Against Drunk Drivers was temporarily closed down and much of its paid staff laid off. The reason: Contributions were at an all-time low. People, it seemed, had ceased to hear the group’s time-tested “Don’t Drink and Drive” message and were turning to other causes.

In the meantime, more than 16,500 people were killed nationwide in alcohol-related accidents last year and another million were injured.

I, too, have listened to MADD’s anti-drinking-and-driving pitch. And despite them, I confess, I continued to let friends drive drunk.

Over beers after a stressful day at the office, my brother and I have observed that no matter how many slogans are devised, everyone drives drunk. Judges. Cops. Prosecutors.

Reporters.

Most times, they just don’t get caught.

After a few beers with friends in some far-flung L.A. watering hole, it’s too easy to turn down offers of a spot on someone’s couch. “I can make it home,” you say. “I’m all right. Really.”

But you’re not all right. Really.

And I must admit, I’ve repeated advice to friends on how not to get caught on the way home after a night’s bellying up to the bar: Roll down the windows so the sweet alcohol stench doesn’t build up, hitting the cop in the face like a mallet when you roll down your window to hand him your license.

I’ve had my drinking-and-driving scrapes. Not long ago, on my way to San Diego several hours after consuming two after-work beers, I was stopped late at night by a CHP officer in Orange County. I walked the line, as the song goes, and followed the cross-eyed pencil. Finally, I drove away, sobered by adrenaline and very thankful to get just a speeding ticket.

Months into my break from the bottle, I now find myself driving with clear-eyed confidence on those weekend nights--sober, alert and self-righteous--almost daring cops to stop me.

Time and again, my brother and I have analyzed our beer-drinking habits, snapping open bottles of our favorite brew. There are two types of serious drinkers, we agree: Those like us who go to the trough regularly and socially, saying they know when to stop.

And then there are the bingers--the ones who go less often, but who simply cannot stop themselves once they are there.

But every determined drinker, we agree, must admit one thing: There are the makings of an alcoholic in all of us, the very real chance of one day seeing our social drinking take a slide for the worse. We don’t ever deny that.

And so I was on the wagon, having gone from two six-packs a week to none when I took the stand recently in Van Nuys court, subpoenaed as the people’s chief witness in the case against the drunken pickup-truck driver.

The officers and the prosecutor thanked me for coming, said I was doing the right thing. Still, sitting there on the stand, pointing out the driver at the defendant’s table before me, I couldn’t look the man in the eye--feeling more like Judas Iscariot than John Q. Citizen.

But I did my civic duty, rattling on like some self-assured stool pigeon, telling the court what I had seen that night. And when I finally looked over at him, he dropped his eyes in shame.

As I walked from the courtroom, a woman approached me. She identified herself as the man’s former girlfriend. I flinched, ready for a tirade.

Instead, she thanked me, saying her ex’s life had been consumed by alcohol since the breakup of his marriage a few years ago. Finally she, too, had given up on him.

This, she explained, had been his fifth drunk-driving arrest. This last time, his blood alcohol had registered more than three times the level the law defines as drunk. Some time in jail, she hoped, would help him set his life straight.

In the parking lot, I started the car with a sigh. It had been a tough day.

I wondered about an ice-cold beer.

Naaaah.