© 2002 by Perfect Brightness L.L.C. All Rights Reserved.

And what is it that ye shall hope for? Behold I say unto you that ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal, and this because of your faith in him according to the promise. (Book of Mormon, Moroni 7:41)

        With the workday over, soldiers about me relaxed by drinking beer and telling stories. The pungent odors of marijuana, tobacco, and incense filled the air. Seeking sanctuary in the now vacant office where I worked each day, I unlocked the door and stepped inside. Securing the door behind me, I walked to the furthermost corner of the dark, quiet room. Screen windows allowed the heavy, humid Panama air to enter and envelope me. The low moan of ocean-bound ships sounded in the distance as they moved along the canal thread and off into the dark jungle night.
        Gripping a small serviceman’s edition of the Book of Mormon,3 I hesitated in the dim, bluish-white light that filtered into the room from outside security lamps. Until this moment, my awareness of a Heavenly Father had been tucked away into a remote region of my mind along with the memory of my baptism as an eight-year old boy into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. With the Book of Mormon in hand and the yearning to reach out to God, I knelt on the cool concrete floor and began to plead for help.
        I had grown up in the fifties and sixties in a small town in southern Utah. My grandmother claimed I was fortunate to grow up at all. As a toddler, I had a mishap that all agreed should have terminated my turn on earth. It had happened in the springtime. The irrigation canals were bulging with runoff from snow melting in the high mountains that encircled our valley home. One afternoon, my grandmother took me on an outing. We walked through green fields of alfalfa to a bridge that spanned one of the larger canals. My grandmother provided entertainment by hunting sticks for me to cast off the bridge into the swift water. After tossing one, I would run to the other side of the bridge and watch for the stick to reappear. Once, when my grandmother had turned away, I hurled a stick with so much exuberance that both the stick and I went into the muddy water. She turned back to see no child on the bridge. A moment later she saw me float like a cork out from under the bridge. Being a large woman and not at all agile, she could only scream for help as she ran along the canal looking for an opening to fetch me out.
        She maintained that what happened next was a miracle, and cited two evidences. First, considering the canal bank was mined with obstacles and the waterway was protected with thick willows, it was nearly impossible for her to run and catch up with me. Second, when she finally found an opening in the underbrush and waded into the cold canal, she turned upstream hoping to catch my pudgy little body rolling along under the water. Instead, I came bobbing along the surface like a bawling piece of balsa wood. She was right about the miracle. Everyone in town, as they commented on the event, arrived at the same verdict: “Baby Philip should have drowned!”
        Growing up, I was the kid-picked-last-for-the-team type, a little overweight, and a lot self-conscious. On summer evenings, my cousins and I ran the mile into town to the little show house where the movie-of-the-week played. My friends would already have been to the store and bought treats by the time I arrived, huffing and puffing, to take the seat they had reserved for me. This was typical. I finished last in most childhood activities.
        My older brother and sister, on the other hand, excelled academically, socially, and athletically. Although I was a good student, average athlete, and played guitar in our school’s first rock-and-roll band, I felt insignificant alongside my valedictorian, student-body president, all-state basketball player, brother and equally successful cheerleader sister. My brother and sister were always good to me and treated me fairly, but I was convinced my own intellect and skills were no match.
        During my freshman year in high school, I fell in puppy love with a pretty, dark-eyed girl, whose short-lived interest in me gave me my first kiss. It was under an Indian Summer moon. Very romantic. Later, at a school dance, I became painfully aware that an older boy, who was the star basketball player, had easily won over her affections. With my teenage heart reduced to pulp, my self-esteem and confidence sank lower.
        I tried out and qualified for the basketball team, but I spent most of my time warming the bench. Because I was excellent at shooting baskets from long range, the coach occasionally called on me during practice to represent an opponent’s outside attack. The starting five would then practice their best defense against my long bombs. Since I seldom played in competitive games, I had little fear of being called on at crunch time. Then suddenly, during a home game when a heated contest was in its final moments, I felt that fear full force. With only seconds left and our team being just one point behind, the coach called timeout. To my horror, he barked an order for me to report into the game and for the team to get the ball to me for one final, long-range, desperation shot. I had not played five minutes the entire season. Now I was supposed to win the game!
        The clock started, and within moments, someone threw me the ball. I fired from thirty feet. The final buzzer rang as the ball swished through the net. The crowd leaped to their feet with a deafening victory cheer. But the celebration soon turned to a unanimous encore of boos aimed at the referee and, I was sure, at me. Just before releasing the ball, I had shuffled my feet. The violation was caught and the basket disallowed. We lost the game and I was the scapegoat—from hero to heel. A lot of me gave up that night. The following year I tried out for the team to satisfy family tradition and peer expectation. I was relieved when my name did not appear on the final roster.
        During my school years, I often escaped into a world of make-believe. On long school days and at night in bed, I refined my dream. I had a cave high in the mountains stocked with everything I needed. It had electricity, lights and a kitchen complete with refrigerator to ensure a continuous supply of ice cream. One room housed the most sought-after new invention to arrive in our isolated valley—a television. A creek running through the middle of the cave had a hot spring inlet for swimming. I imagined playing with my loyal dog in a lush pasture outside the cave entrance. My trusted horse grazed nearby, awaiting my beckoning whistle for the afternoon ride. I conjured this dream in afternoon English class, Sunday morning church. I summoned the dream in my basement bedroom each night before I drifted off to sleep. My imaginary playground symbolized the melancholy I seemed to have inherited. In my daydream, only my dog and horse were invited to the secret cave.
I spent many hours by myself hunting rabbits or riding my horse in the foothills around my home. My desire to be alone didn’t feel uncomfortable. Later, in my teens, sitting alone in my car drinking whiskey didn’t feel abnormal. I found pleasure being by myself and feeling the melancholy, especially if I had alcohol. Aside from making poor personal choices, some of my inclination toward alcohol may have come from the genes and example of my father.
        My mother had tried to insulate our family from the effects of my father’s binge drinking while employing every strategy to control him. Mom performed most of the classic behaviors associated with the spouse of an alcoholic—denial, browbeating, assuming more and more family responsibilities, feeling more and more guilt, rescuing, bailing out, removing consequences, accepting (and believing) the addict’s promises, making idle threats, hiding personal feelings, seldom or never communicating the problem with anyone and stuffing resentment—all common and often simultaneous—actions. Mom expended enormous energy to hide the problem from the public while trying to stop her husband from drinking alcohol. To some extent, our entire family participated in the façade. I remember that Mom and we children would often search our ranch for Dad’s stash of booze. Whoever found a bottle would smash it angrily, as if its destruction could stop Dad’s drinking.
Our deception included protecting my father’s job as the county sheriff. For example, during one of Dad’s drunks, he backed the family car (which also served as the sheriff’s car) off a steep embankment and had to abandon it. The next day a wrecker and several “interested” towns people showed up to pull the car back onto the road. Our explanation about how the sheriff’s car got into this predicament was that his seventeen-year-old son—me—was responsible. I went along with the lie. We had to protect Dad.
        Our family was at the mercy of alcoholism. Not one of us was bad, nor did we want to hurt anyone. We simply didn’t understand and had no idea what to do. Answers existed, but our denial of the problem prevented our finding them. When sober, my father was a tender-feeling man. I loved him and I never doubted that he loved me. But life would have been less confusing and destructive had we all been more informed and open about his drinking—had we been aware that each of us was performing a specific role in a play called Denial of Family Alcoholism.
        It is ironic that the few intimate experiences I had with my father occurred while riding horses together in the mountains and drinking. There were also many painful experiences when he had had too much to drink and I had to take care of him. Since Dad seldom showed his emotions, I was always surprised when, after only a few drinks, he would loosen up and talk about his feelings and life. It seemed strange to hear him share in this way.
        I remember hunting deer one October afternoon when I was nineteen. Sitting on the banks of a sparkling creek, high in the mountains, my Dad and I could look down and see the small town in which we lived. In the distance, the square fields of harvested crops appeared like green, yellow and rust-colored tiles placed neatly on the valley floor. Our horses grazed along the creek bank as we sat in the mild warmth of the autumn sun, visiting and drinking vodka.
        This was an extraordinary experience. The alcohol and nature combined to leave their stamp on my mind forever. Dad talked about his love for the valley, for Mom, for me, and his children. He talked about his frustrations and stresses. I had never heard him share like this. I had not known how deep his feelings were. I sometimes had wondered if he thought about life at all. Of course, I realized that the vodka had lubricated his vocal cords.
        During the last decade of his life, my father achieved success in staying sober. Before his death, he retired with twenty-five years as a successful county sheriff. During his tenure, he was known for his kindness and integrity. His small county jail hardly ever held a criminal, but many a hobo, as we called drifters back then, were fed at the local café and rested the night in the jail’s single bed. Following a lengthy illness, my father passed away in 1996. Of great joy to me was the reassuring fact that, as friends and family passed by the casket, my father lay peacefully attired in his white temple clothing,4 that of a worthy, endowed5 LDS Church member.
        I was the baby of the family, and Mom and I enjoyed a special relationship. Over the years, I was often the only one available to listen to her and give support when Dad’s drinking flared up. Mom and I depended on each other and did many things together. She was game for anything. I remember a sky-blue September Saturday when we completed an eighteen-mile hiking trip to the top of Mount Timpanogos, Utah Valley’s 12,000 foot sentinel. This accomplishment was especially extraordinary since Mom was sixty-five years old! I will always retain the image of giving her a push down the long snow chute that is part of the steep descent on the back of the mountain. With some trepidation, I watched her zip down the glacier toward a small lake below. But I knew she would make it to the bottom safely. We often joked together about whose guardian angel was busiest in preserving our lives. We were always there for each other; something I would come to count on more and more as my addiction progressed. The day following this incredible trip, Mom wrote of her feelings of gratitude and love:

(Letter retained in my 1987 Journal)
Dear Will Son (“Will” was one of my nick-names)

Just a note to thank you from the bottom of this ole heart for an unforgettable, memorable, beautiful day spent with you yesterday. I loved it all—the beauty of the mountains—visiting with you once more, sharing our inner most thoughts … I’m surprised at how good I feel today despite the pain in the front muscles of my legs. It’s amazing what a few hours in bed can do to revive the old bones …
As I think back on yesterday, I guess I have to give you about ninety percent of the credit for my success in making it to the top. You used super strategy and patience … pulling me up the last steep part of the mountain with your hiking staff. I could never have done it without your love, concern, support and physical assistance … the scenes of yesterday’s experience keep flooding back through my mind in Technicolor. I’ll treasure them forever.
Mom

        Many nights, while my brother and sister were at school activities, I lay in my basement bed below the kitchen and listened to Mom and Dad arguing, usually over money or alcohol. Before Mom passed away, I was able to tell her of the hellish nights that I lay trapped, listening to their verbal battles. She was, of course, embarrassed and saddened. I was surprised to learn that she had been unaware of my childhood torment.
        I was thirteen when I had my first experience with hard liquor. An associate of my father had parked his truck behind our house. Walking by the passenger-side window, I noticed a small bottle of whiskey exposed in the open glove box. Emanating an almost mystical, magnetic power, the golden-colored liquid sparkled in the sunlight. With little thought of the consequences, I reached through the window, grabbed the bottle, and hid it away in my shirt. I began planning an opportune moment to consume the enticing libation.
        In a canyon several miles from my home was an open-air dance hall and small café. Purple Haze, as we called it, was nestled beneath a sheer, purple cliff beside a meandering river. This dance hall provided a romantic setting for youth and adults to gather for dancing on summer evenings. Although I was considered too young to attend, my mother finally relented due to my persistent pestering. I could go to the dance next Saturday, provided that my older brother and sister kept an eye on me. My plan was to smuggle the bottle along, drink it, and see what happened.
        The small container fit nicely inside my cowboy boot as I walked into the dance hall. I made a beeline to the men’s room. I took a drink. I barely noticed the burning as the first gulps of whiskey entered my stomach. My face flushed. Suddenly, I felt a wave of relaxation and euphoria. My native melancholy melted away as the alcohol burned deeper into my being. I stepped out into the summer moonlight aglow. My shyness and self-consciousness seemed to disappear. A feeling of well-being, like liquid peace, flowed through my body.
        The music, the dancers, and the drug combined in a kaleidoscope of emotion beyond anything I had experienced. The alcohol’s effect was swift and overwhelming. A door swung open in my mind that encouraged a strong craving for more of the drug. I was suddenly certain something this pleasurable could never bring unhappiness. Being an active member of my church, I would feel some guilt, but the desired result seemed worthy of the price. Alcohol, I thought, was the missing ingredient to raise my self-esteem. It appeared to be the sure remedy for loneliness.
        Growing up in an isolated farming community , I seldom had heard the word “alcoholic.” “Town drunk” and “bum” were the labels used to describe those who spent all day at the local café guzzling beer. Because these labels didn’t fit the way I had begun to drink, I had no awareness that my alcoholism was serious or that it was progressing. By my seventeenth year, it seemed I had to have alcohol to feel peace of mind or enjoy any activity. My craving had begun to affect my life in other significant ways. It robbed me of the normal fun I should have been enjoying with other Latter-day Saint youth. A little lying, stealing, and associating with those having less than desirable standards were necessary to obtain alcohol.
        Deer hunting season provided a prime opportunity to further my dependency. With the hard work of the harvest over, the annual hunt was a time for my father, his brothers, and their friends to relax and celebrate. Alcohol was the ritual beverage for every season, but more especially for the deer hunt. The grown-ups were lenient with the boys who had hauled the summer’s hay and put up the season’s crop of potatoes. Usually, after the uncles had had sufficient to drink, it was a simple task for young nephews to secure and share a bottle of their whiskey. Additionally, late-night raids on out-of-state hunters’ cold-creek liquor caches provided a consistent source of booze. It was exciting to see how many bottles we could filch from the streams and hide away for future use. To us, stealing alcohol didn’t seem a crime. It was more like redistributing the wealth.
        I loved the freedom of the hunt. There was alcohol, my horse, the mountains, and little fear of chastisement from the men in camp. My goal every deer season was to have a supply of liquor, my horse and rifle, then ride off alone to hunt.
        One season opener, I crawled from my tent out into a foot of newly fallen snow. More snow was blowing down through the canyon. For such an occasion, I had hidden away a full bottle of Loudmouth, as we affectionately called whiskey. The bad weather was not going to aggravate my plan for a day of riding and drinking. I would soon be feeling the warmth of the whiskey. The snow added an element of excitement. Ignoring the cold wind, I saddled my high-spirited mare. Carefully wrapping the whiskey bottle in a flour sack, I tied it behind the saddle, mounted, and forged off in the storm toward the ridge top.
        Wearing leather gloves, a heavy denim coat, thick leather chaps, and my traditional black felt Stetson hat, I paused in the saddle for a long drink of Loudmouth. Warmed by its burning, I crossed the ridge top and spotted several deer in an opening below.
        Dismounting, I let the bridle reins dangle free, took not-too-careful aim at a buck in the group and fired. My bullet missed the deer. The mare, no doubt annoyed at my stupid plan to coerce her out into the storm, bolted. My precious bottle bounced back and forth against her flank. The mare’s unruly antics had placed the day’s scheme in jeopardy. If I didn't catch her, I knew the bottle could shake loose and shatter on the ground. I would be left alone to face a cold, sober day. Plodding off through the snow, I chased the bottle of whiskey like a donkey pursuing the evasive carrot.
        Walking in boots and heavy chaps through two feet of snow soon became an ordeal. The whiskey had worn off and I was longing for more. The mare must have known the game she was playing. On several occasions, I came near and almost had the reins in my grasp when, with what I was sure was a mocking sneer, she jumped back and ran off down the hillside.
        For hours, I followed the dumb animal from one canyon to the next until we both found our way back to camp. When I arrived, she raised her head from a bale of hay and looked at me as if to say, “Well, what took you so long?” I decided against shooting her between the ears when I spotted the flour sack tied securely behind the saddle. The “spirits” had been good to me. I pulled the bottle from the sack and drank deeply. Suddenly, chasing the carrot had been worth the effort.

*********

        I loved to sing and learned to play guitar at an early age. At sixteen, my cousin and I, along with two friends, formed a small rock band and began playing for local dances. During the summers, we performed at the outdoor dance hall where I had first experimented with alcohol. Now drinking was routine and I used alcohol to enhance my courage to perform. While playing on warm summer evenings, I witnessed many young people open the door to addiction through alcohol experimentation. Several decades later, one of those youths, and a close friend of mine, was convicted of murdering a man during an alcohol blackout. But the significance of the destructive paths we were choosing went unnoticed as I sang beneath the mountain cliffs in the soft moonlight.
        On several occasions, I drank to unconscious and suffered severe hangovers. Alcohol had begun to endanger my life, and, when I drove, alcohol was endangering the lives of others.
        At seventeen, alcohol made its first serious attempt on my life. That summer, I spent many afternoons driving and drinking in the mountains above our home with a cousin nicknamed Biggy Rat and a close friend we called Itchy. My nickname was Fats. One evening at dusk, we parked by a mountain spring, drinking whiskey and chasing it with the icy-cold water. There, in the mountains we loved, we toasted our friendship. These alcohol rituals seemed to cement our friendship and our pledge of loyalty to preserve “our” mountain from the spoils of man. But, true to the addictive pattern each of us would experience, alcohol’s double face was about to appear. Less than an hour later, Biggy Rat and Itchy were engaged in a fistfight as the result of a meaningless argument. Trying to make peace, I wound up in the middle of the scuffle. The battle left us muddy and bloody.
        By midnight, the alcohol had pretty well worn off. We smoothed our ruffled feathers and drove off the mountain—literally! On a steep canyon road, Biggy Rat fell asleep at the wheel and the truck lunged out into the air. When it landed, it rolled over and came to a crashing stop, caught on the high side of the canyon by an gnarled pine growing alone in the middle of a wide rock slide. I awakened from my stupor wondering why the ride had suddenly become so rough. Climbing up and out of the window, I took one step to what should have been ground, but instead landed on several large rocks ten feet below. Fortunately, my posterior hit first. If it had been my head, I might have died. Having observed, or rather heard, my reckless dismount, my companions crawled more cautiously from the truck and dragged me back up to the road. We were shaken, cut, and bruised, but bloodier from our fistfight than from the wreck. Incredibly, none of us had been seriously injured.
        My tailbone was sore. I couldn’t walk so the Biggy Rat and Itchy hiked ten miles into town to get help. As the eastern sky was growing red with the coming dawn, they returned with the country sheriff—my father! The four of us stared in disbelief as the morning light revealed the battered truck lying in the clutch of the old pine with a thousand-yard drop to the floor of the rocky gorge below. My father growled something about God’s intervening to cheat Death three more notches on his ledger. Had we not previously eliminated the evidence, he might have said, “Alcohol had been cheated,” and we would have been in a lot more trouble.

********

        I graduated from high school with Salutatorian honors but this was only one more experience that fell short of my siblings. My parents never pushed me to rival my brother and sister, rather, the opposite. Fearful I would fail and be hurt, their encouragements were noticeably subdued adding to my poor self-image. But, desiring I be given the same opportunities as their other children, they provided for me to attend a small college in southern Utah.
        In these new surroundings, I became shier than ever, especially around girls. Although I played guitar at the fraternity house and had friends and fans, I was quick to deny praise and attention. To compensate for my timidity, I used alcohol with the belief that the recipe for serenity was simple: Add me to one mountain, one bottle of booze, and one guitar; Mix thoroughly.
        As my college years passed, I was seldom at peace unless I was drinking. I don't mean to exaggerate. I participated in other activities such as singing and traveling with the choir and competing on the speed typing team, but by the end of my third year, I was carrying a bottle of whiskey to class in a briefcase and spending most of my free time at a nearby tavern. Not yet 21, I had obtained a false ID that allowed me to purchase alcohol freely.
I began my fourth year of college in 1968. Early that year, a pretty girl with long blond hair took extra special interest in me. I was beguiled. That November, we married. A baby was on the way. By the end of the school year, my education deferment to the military expired and my draft notice arrived soon thereafter. This foreboding document had one unstated but widely known purpose—to send me to Vietnam! I was to report for Army Basic Training in October.
        The bad news had a bad effect. I increased my daytime alcohol use even more and hid bottles around our apartment to conceal evening drinking. With impending military duty, my expectant wife and I planned that she live with her parents in northern Utah. I now encouraged her to move early so I could be unhindered in my drinking. She had already grown tired of my drinking and associated irresponsible behavior (I occasionally spent the entire night drinking at the fraternity house) and she welcomed the escape. Following her departure, I leaped into a free-fall down the alcoholism pipeline. Several summer jobs disintegrated into a continuous drunk that culminated in a weeklong binge as I traveled to Salt Lake City for military induction.
        At Basic Training, I quickly learned that alcohol was off-limits. Mostly alcohol free, my mind having cleared some, I began to realize the depth of love that I felt for my new family. During Christmas furlough, I controlled my drinking and had a joyful reunion with my wife and became acquainted with our four-month-old daughter. Already homesick, my heart ached as I boarded the airplane back to Fort Lewis.
        Infantry training had forced my alcoholism into brief remission. After Basic, Advanced Infantry provided the opportunity to learn to drink like Army men. Whereas there had been forced sobriety, now there was encouragement to visit the beer halls every evening. I needed no urging. I was restless and unhappy until alcohol was pumping through my veins. I lived each day looking forward to the evening’s release from duty so I could drink with my comrades. I had also begun using a new drug, marijuana, introduced to me by friends as a convenient alternative to alcohol. It was during Advanced Infantry Training that I increasingly seized the ever-present opportunity to share a “joint” with friends.
        In April of 1969, I completed Advanced Infantry and began anticipating my next assignment with anxiety. Based upon the history of our infantry training battalion, we were sure bets to become “grunts” in the jungles of Vietnam. When I opened my orders, I read with great relief: “Report to the 4/20th Mechanized Infantry Battalion, Panama Canal Zone.”