Highlight - A friend in crisis

What do you do if it appears that a friend’s drinking is out of control? For Rick, it was the intervention of a friend that helped him see the crisis he was in.

“I was very intoxicated on a Friday night at a neighbor’s house. The next morning I woke up and he was over at my house and he confronted me and said, ‘You’ve got to do something.’ He backed me into the corner and said, ‘If you don’t stop, you’re going to lose everything,’ and I said I’d get help.”

Although that confrontation created a spark of change for Rick, it wasn’t his last experience with alcohol.

“That Monday, my wife took the kids to the state fair and I stayed home to watch golf and drink. Somewhere in there, I was in the garage, I don’t really remember it all, but she came home from the fair and pushed the garage door opener, and I was on the floor of the garage. The sodium in my body had depleted and so I’d seized and. I’m laying there and my kids had to step over my body – I was almost dead”

Unfortunately, Rick saw this coming.

“For years I walked down the hallway in our office building thinking, one of these days I’m just going to fall over dead if I keep doing this. I knew I was an alcoholic and it was killing me.”

It was the friend that had originally confronted Rick that came in during his time of need and helped him get started on his recovery. Today, Rick is 3 years sober and he’s proof that reaching out to a friend in crisis can make a difference, even if it doesn’t seem like it makes an immediate impact.

“My buddy that had confronted me came over and they got me to the I.C.U. and I had ten days there and then secured a bed up in Center City (a recovery center) and I spent a month up there and really, the big moment was my friend cornering me and telling me I needed to get help.”

A friend in crisis