Another Brush With Alcohol Leads to Some Sober Insights

I don’t care what the people are thinkin’

I ain’t drunk

I’m just drinkin’.- Albert Collins

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 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.

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 and my personal life. As a reporter, I have done my share of stories about the ugly results that sustained, irresponsible drinking can bring.

But in recent weeks, the drinking-and-driving stories had hit closer to home. Like the one about the drunk 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 a red light a mile away, slamming into yet another vehicle, this time killing its operator.

Then came the MADD story.

Just before the new year, the main Los Angeles office of Mothers Against Drunk Drivers was temporarily closed 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.

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 over your license.

Months into my break from the bottle, having gone from two six-packs a week to none, I now find myself driving with clear-eyed confidence on those weekend nights--sober, alert and self-righteous--almost daring cops to stop me.

I was still on the wagon when I took the stand recently in Van Nuys court, subpoenaed as the people’s chief witness in the case against the drunk 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.