5 years ago, June 17, 2017, I had gotten my second DUI.

I was working at the country club then, I was a cook, I had been working there for 10 years at the time, they loved me there.

We couldn’t keep a dishwasher for some reason, good help is hard to find I guess. One of my old friends was the dishwasher/busboy at the time, didn’t really have good work ethic. He was 31 and had never gotten his drivers license. I kinda have the bad habit of being everyones hero, that night I was his. What I’m trying to say is, I was basically just waiting to give him a ride home but he was a slow worker.

I have anger issues, I know this, I have depression issues. Sometimes I get mad. That night, I was mad.

(As stated, this was my second DUI, I had gotten my first in 2009. I had 4 and a half years sober after that one. I started drinking again because… I was sad? Mad? Angry, depressed… whatever. I started drinking again, there’s really no excuse when I knew I was that guy who couldn’t just have one.)

While waiting for my friend to finish I figured I’d sit in the bar and have a drink. The drinking was rather light that night. Over the course of 3 hours, I had two tequila sunrises, the equivalent to 4 shots. I just sipped my drink and stewed.

My friend finished up and came and got me. I drove him home, said goodnight and started heading towards my house.

I live in a small mountain town, lots of winding roads, lots of trees, lots embankments. Straight lines a few and far between up here. I was driving a 94 Mustang at the time, cute little car, quick, comfortable, it was a ragtop. Had to be doing 90 in order to put it into 5th gear.

On the drive home I was stuck in my head, not the funnest place to be. I was mad, and getting madder. I was mad at God for all the shit I had been through, I was mad at my friend for never learning to be an adult and not getting our of his dads basement, I was mad at myself for being unable to just put the bottle down, most of all, in that moment, I was mad that I never get to put my car into 5th gear. So I put my car into 5th gear. It was around 12:30am, figured no one would be on the road… I was wrong.

I was less than a mile from my house, I was doing 110, a corner was coming up, I didn’t care, I would have been happy had it all ended there, but there was a light shining from around the corner. I tried to slow down but I was too late, my rear tires hit the gravel on the opposite side of the road and the car spun out, I went nose first into the embankment and started to spin the other way, that’s when the car hit me and the car spun into the trees on the opposite side of the road.

I don’t actually remember the accident, the description was from the police report. First thing I remember was forcing my way out of my car, with it being so dark I couldn’t see any of the damages to it. I remember the light from the firetruck. I walked to the side of the road and there was a girl sitting there crying, I didn’t know what she was crying about. I asked her for a smoke as I couldn’t find mine in the car. I sat down next to her and waited. A couple sheriff deputies approached me, asked me some questions, asked if I was injured, I wasn’t, that’s when I realized I crashed the car, and the crying girl, I hurt her.

One of my neighbors was a CHP, nice fellow. He had jurisdiction here. After I was cuffed and put in the back of the sheriff’s car, they took me out as I was now in my neighbors custody. He removed my cuffs and cuffed me from the front. He put me in the front seat of his cruser.

I remember they were putting the girl into an ambulance when they were taking me away. I had asked the officer how bad her injuries were, he didn’t know. I knew I had messed up bad, I didn’t want to hurt anybody.

I blew a 0.08, the legal limit, I’ve learned that’s not entirely true though. Any measurable amount can get you in trouble if you decide to get behind the wheel.

When they booked me, The same lady who booked me 8 years prior was there doing the paper work again. She knew my dad from his drinking days, had booked him multiple times. With the first DUI she had told me my dad was going to kill me, with the second she was just a little sad. They said I got one phone call, I didn’t call anyone. They put me in a concrete room with a steel toilet and a concrete bench. The holding cell. I don’t think I slept that night, the concrete wasn’t all that comfortable, even though there was no one I the cell with me, I just couldn’t sleep. At 5:30 they brought me breakfast, I wasn’t hungry.

I didn’t know how long I’d be in there, I just knew it was going to be longer than the last time.

They took me to general pop shortly before lunch. Learning the rules and such was pretty easy, learning who to not cross was also pretty easy. Jail was pretty much just adult day care.

It weirded me out that I knew more than half the population already. Some were my old drinking buddies, some were my moms old drinking buddies, and some were my dad’s old drinking buddies. Small town…

I called my father, he put some money on my books and I put most of my money towards my phone. A collect call from jail is expensive.

I regularly called my mom and I called my dad. My mother was confident I was only going to be locked up for week, she was wrong.

My first court date was a couple days after I was locked up, my second a couple weeks after that. My mother came to my second court date. I was in shackles, standing in front of the judge. The lawyers were pushing for prison time, they wanted to give me four years. When they said that my mother burst into tears and cried, “my baby!” I couldn’t go comfort her, I couldn’t speak to her, I couldn’t do anything. That was the last time I saw her. 3 months later she committed suicide, I was still in jail, still fighting my case, but with that news, what did I have to fight for… I was done.

My father came to visit me, they let me see him from behind a sheet of glass, they let him come and tell me. Every visit prior was over a computer, had to be, I wasn’t sentenced yet.

The warden guy, he grew up with my dad. He met with me after I had finished speaking with my father, he have his condolences and offered to release me for the day of the funeral.

I self isolated for the next couple days, I only came out of my cell to make phone calls to family, to shower and to eat.

The second phone call I made was to my little brother. He was driving down the freeway, no one had told him yet, no one was able to get ahold of him. I told him he should probably find a place to pull over because he may not want to be driving when he received the news. Telling my brother that our mother had passed away while he was on the side of the freeway and I was in jail was probably the hardest thing I have ever done. I didn’t want him to find out via Facebook or something like that, that would have been terrible. I sat on the phone with him for the allotted 10 minutes, that’s all you get, 10 minutes per call, the hardest 10 minutes of my life.

My next court date was a week later. News of my mother had reached the lawyers, they came with a deal for me. Time served, 5 years felony probation, 18 months substance abuse classes, and 3 years with an IID device in order get my license back. Probation is up in a month, I jumped through the other hoops.

They released me on September 21st, 2017 at 1:30pm. I had served 98 days. I couldn’t fit into the pants I was wearing when I went into jail, I gained 37lbs, heaviest I have ever been, I weighed 187.

My dad picked me up, he asked me a question, “what kind of birds don’t fly?” I just laughed.