I have made my vow. I added the part about not drinking for both my daughter and for Adam and Ashli. I used alcohol to self medicate. The medicine for Bipolar disorder caused me to have suicidal thoughts and that is unacceptable. I have been off of the medication for about 4 years. I tried it for about 2 weeks, a couple years ago and I started having suicidal thoughts right away. The medicine isn’t an option because of that side effect. I will not put my family through that again.

I don’t feel the need to drink very often, that isn’t why I drank. I drank enough every 3 or 4 days, depending on school or work, to relax my mind and to let out the pent up emotions that I’ve learned to hold in. It is the only way that I know to release that in a positive manor.  I very seldom crave alcohol and in fact I had the most amazing breakthrough a few months ago when I drank enough to go inside my mind and work through Arleen’s murder and forgive my mother for putting me in all of those dangerous situations when I was a little child. I used it as a form of therapy.

My daughter, and a friend from the college expressed concern about whether my drinking on occasion was good for the children. 99% of the time I only drank after 8pm when the children were in bed and when they were gone for the weekend.  They only knew that it had happened if they saw some beer cans in the morning.  

I looked at their questions and asked myself, how would a judge see this? I determined that the alcohol wasn’t doing anything bad to the children; in fact it helped me to release my tension at night that had built up throughout the week so I could relax and be myself when I interacted with the children. In that aspect I believe that my drinking, being done the way that I was doing it, was actually beneficial to our family.

However, I looked at what Joey’s mother could do and how that she could twist it into something that she could use to put the children back into harm’s way.  I therefore stand by my vow. I will continue to stay away from alcohol and the benefits that it had on my life and my school work.  I understand that my grades will probably drop a but because I can’t slow my racing thoughts down enough to read anything. I will deal with the drop in my gpa. I realize that it might even cause a deep depression or a manic episode, which is more than likely the case. I will do what it takes to keep these children out of harm’s way even if it means the steady deterioration of the Doug that I’ve come to know and love over these past 4 years.

I will do my best to find new ways of releasing the tension in my mind. I don’t think I can do anything about the racing thoughts or to keep my mind from flipping through topics like a couch potato with a tv remote that is clicking the channel button over and over.

I accept all of this and I will find a way to come out of the other side.  Any battle can be won and there are always casualties in war but the battle must be fought.

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Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world. But, the Marines don't have that problem.
Ronald Reagan, President of the United States; 1985