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Stories of Recovery

I was used to a high level of responsibility in a career that spanned NASA’s manned space travel and later, top-secret government projects as a physicist. This work for a large corporation, under contract to the U.S. government was demanding. Seven-day work weeks were common, and as the chief scientist, I often traveled on foreign missions under the cloak of national security, later becoming general manager of the division.

When the pressures of having to slowly wind down the operation and close the office was later compounded by the frustration of not finding another challenging position, depression set in. For a space scientist who “always worked and played hard,” the drinking part of the playing equation escalated along with a thundering sense of having no purpose. Fortunately, I am now in recovery from late-onset
alcoholism, with a new vocational and spiritual direction.

The disease is cunning, baffling and powerful, and kept me in denial well after my relationship with my adult daughter disintegrated. Even a bout with pancreatitis only meant I was sober for six weeks. Then I started drinking white wine by 7:00 a.m. During a five-year period, I was an alcoholic and had become bankrupt mentally, physically, spiritually and emotionally. After being urged by my wife, I finally saw my physician — an internist.

I told this doctor, a personal friend, that I wasn’t feeling well, saying it was the flu. The doctor didn’t buy it. He asked me how I really felt, and I admitted that actually, suicide didn’t look too bad. “You’ve been drinking,” he said. After admitting that I had been drinking, he asked, “Would you consider being admitted to rehab?”

In that moment, which I considered weak, I agreed. If I hadn’t, I would have died. I even stalled a little before entering Hanley’s residential older adult program, in January 2000.

What was it that made the difference? They told me later that I was a difficult patient, because I looked for a rational answer for everything. I can’t tell you exactly what happened, but I know that somehow the spiritual side of my life was ignited, even though I had not been religious. I had a realization: this is it! It was like a mirror being held up to my face; I found out who I really was. I never took time to think about it before. And, finally, the nine years of silence between my daughter and I ended.

My 28-day stay in the program was followed by one month of out patient treatment and ongoing participation in AA support groups.

The road to late-onset alcoholism was actually a long and winding one for me. I was a social drinker. The pressures were pretty intense in my work, and I drank more as the stress level went up. There was probably a slow, 10-year build up to my alcoholism. I can seenow how impatient I was. I didn’t have any tolerance for what I considered incompetence by anyone.

For years, I couldn’t talk about my work to anyone on the outside, including my wife, who had no idea where I was going on clandestine international trips. I was the top engineering scientist developing very high-energy lasers for a secret U.S.government project.

In the beginning, it was the pressure of this high-profile but secret, “Star Wars” kind of work, that I found an outlet in drinking. Then, in 1991, I was put in charge of managing the division. I felt I was better as a scientist, but by the early 1990s, I was suddenly faced with laying off talented people who I liked, respected and had known for 20 years. They were family. It was a long, agonizing process. Top management’s intention was to eventually shut the operation down. I tried to stage cutbacks for as long as possible. It took years. I was an angry person. Of course, I knew I was phasing myself out of a job, too.

After the company operations closed I took a deliberate year of self-imposed“mental rehabilitation,” at the age of 59, and then decided to find a job. But jobs with anything approaching the responsibility or income I was used to were not forthcoming. For someone not accustomed to feeling useless, this was devastating.

My earlier career with NASA, where I served as a launch team engineer during the halcyon days of the Gemini and Apollo manned mission to the moon and then, as lead engineer at the Cape for several manned space missions, also were demanding. My later venue with a corporate defense contractor held the intrigue and glamour of the NASA posts, with one caveat — you couldn’t tell anyone. A new beginning.

Now, in my 60s, I have found another career and earned a Masters degree in Substance Abuse Counseling. Things that used to drive me up a wall are of no consequence now. Replacing the space missions that long captured my attention is a new, more personal mission — one that I hope will help fellow travelers on Earth.

Ron Freeman has played a significant role in compiling and analyzing research and data that helped develop the Hanley Center's "Aging to Perfection" prevention education program. He says that in studying the data he relived the traps that were his own risk factor and gained a new understanding of the vital protector factors needed to face later-in-life transitions.