Ex-Marine and Vietnam War Veteran Bob G. is the unofficial face of Recovery Central, a new Little Rock facility for 12-Step meetings, mainly Narcotics Anonymous.
An alcoholic and former methamphetamine addict, Bob sponsors more people than he can count. And he does it by the book (See The Narcotics Anonymous Step Working Guides and Working Step Four in Narcotics Anonymous).
When Bob G. is your sponsor, you can figure you’re going to spend a year working with him on the steps. And you’re going to attend meetings. And you’re going to take his “suggestions” about what else you need to do to recover.
Big as he is, he’s no drill sergeant. No one escapes a meeting without a hug from Bob. Not if he can help it. Of course, it’s kind of a one armed hug not a full embrace, especially with women. He hugged a young woman once at the end of a meeting, and she burst into tears. In response, he quickly backed off and said, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.”
Smiling through her tears, the young woman said, “You didn’t offend me! It’s just that I’ve never had a hug.”
Bob has been clean and sober for ten years, and he and his wife of eleven years, also a former meth addict and in recovery for the same length of time, live in North Little Rock. She is his second wife, and they have children and grandchildren between them. She works, and he draws full disability for treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and devotes whatever free time he has to helping others.
Bob also suffers from diabetes, heart problems and pain from back, neck and knee injuries sustained in a rocket attack in Vietnam. The injuries require that he regularly attend a pain management clinic, but it was the emotional pain of PTSD that nearly killed him.
Bob wrecked ten cars trying to kill himself, and he killed another man in a pool hall gun battle, which brought a murder charge that put him in prison for the first time. He has been in prison three times, all told, covering a span of more than eight years.
He served 30 months in Cummins state prison in Arkansas for the murder charge, another two years at a State Police facility on related charges and then another four years at FCI medium security Federal prison in Memphis on drug charges.
Bob got 8 medals and ribbons for the 16 months he spent in Vietnam, and when he got home at not quite 20 years old he continued his abuse of the alcohol and drugs that occupied him non-stop in Vietnam to help him deal with the pain. Thirty-three years later he found a way to begin his recovery.
This is Bob’s story as he tells it.
I come from a middle class Protestant family. My father and the majority of my Uncles served in WWII and Korea. Upon graduating high school in 1966, I felt the calling to serve.
I was introduced to alcohol at the age of 13 and drank on and off until Vietnam when it became daily. My father and all of my uncles and most of the aunts were alcoholics or well on their way to it. They never talked about their war experiences.
After eight months of basic training at boot camp in San Diego, where I also received infantry and truck driver training, I volunteered to go to Vietnam.
Soon, I found myself on a C-130 loaded with Officers and NCO’s, and Da Nang was our destination. I was a private first class and the lowest ranking passenger on the plane.
As we approached Da Nang, the senior officer informed me that the planes had been taking sniper fire, and my job would be to jump off upon landing and test the waters. I didn’t even have a gun at that point, and I realized how insignificant I was. I was nothing more than a decoy.
When I jumped out into the 130-degree heat that day, there were, as it happened, no snipers. Still, I was now convinced I would never make it home alive, and I disavowed God. I also began drinking whatever I could find to kill the fear and pain.
After about six weeks, I was assigned to a truck driving detail to pick up body bags brought in by helicopters for shipment to the states in closed caskets. I would haul the remains of these young men, some grossly distorted by their wounds and the heat, to the morgue for transfer to the caskets. To deal with the horror of it we sometimes made cruel jokes about the distortions and made light of the tragic losses, but it took its toll.
I lasted about two months before being sent for R&R in Hong Kong. I couldn’t sleep, and all I could think of were the families who would never know of the devastation inflicted upon their loved ones by their wounds and the searing heat. I spent five days in Hong Kong bars and brothels.
I was at the most northern Marine base in Da Nang called “Red Beach” Force Logistic Command 7th Motor Transportation Battalion. We took convoys all over I Corp and to the DMZ hauling troops, ammunition and supplies throughout 1967 and TET offensive of 1968.
Certain that I wouldn’t be coming home, I volunteered for any dangerous mission like driving trucks loaded with hair-trigger explosives. I also realized that I felt exhilarated, more alive, afterward.
With my constant drinking and reckless behavior, I got into trouble and was demoted to Private. My Sergeant, realizing what was happening, sent me for three days of R&R, and then for the rest of my tour I stayed around the base camp.
I returned to the United States, nine days before my 20th birthday, got married five days after returning and stayed more or less drunk the whole leave. I spent another year completing my three years of service requirement.
The woman I had been dating and married went to my duty station with me. One night, I came out of a blackout/nightmare choking her and thinking she was a Vietcong. She put up with drinking and subsequent drug addiction for about 13 years.
Within five months after discharge, I wrecked and totaled our car and got my first DWI. As time passed, I totaled another eight or nine vehicles (I was the only passenger) and nine DWI’s followed. I was forced to go to driving classes and lost my license.
I lived each day like it was a good day to die. I hung out at the most dangerous bars and clubs fully armed. I slept with 19 guns in and around my bed.
When I did make it home, I would get up all through the night and go in and make sure my children were breathing and would check every door and window. And I would go out into my back and front yards checking my perimeter.
After my second trip to prison I knew I was insane and full of anger and began to look for help. When my mother picked me up at the prison gates, I knew I had a choice. I could keep living like I had been or I could commit myself to the Veterans Administrations (VA) hospital’s mental ward.
At first, I didn’t want to admit I was powerless over my mental problems or my disease of addiction. Fortunately, after a trip to a hospital emergency room and talking to the doctors and nurses about my abuse of drugs I ended up going to my first drug/alcohol program and got a taste of recovery.
I learned I didn’t have a moral failing or lack of self-control but a disease. I also found over the next seven weeks that I had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and would have to go into the hospital for treatment.
I spent the next two years in and out of the program and psych wards. I learned that my alcoholism and drug addiction (which by this time was called poly substance abuse) was secondary to my PTSD, and I began going to outpatient PTSD and drug/alcohol groups at the VA and the Vet Center for treatment.
I was doing everything I had been told to do except get a sponsor and go to meetings outside the VA. At the time, I used the excuse I couldn’t trust anyone. Deep inside, as psychiatrists had told me through suicide attempts (one-car crashes) and the deadly lifestyle I had led, I felt I didn’t deserve to live. After all I had seen, I had survival guilt.
Not using drugs was vital to my recovery, but it was not enough. I was miserable. I wasn’t doing anything to change.
I wish I could say I turned my life around then, but I didn’t. It took over eight more years, another stint in prison, a heart attack and two congestive heart failures.
After one more drug bust after being told I had only six months to two years to live, I finally went to my first meetings. At first, I went to get a paper signed to keep from being held in jail.
I didn’t realize at the first meetings I would hear other stories like mine, and I started to feel hope. Also, I had found out that I could possibly get a heart transplant if I tested clean for a year.
Today I know my higher power had a plan I couldn’t fathom. I was put on a new drug that caused my heart to improve, and that has allowed me to continue my recovery and to develop a life worth living.
The most important lessons I’ve learned and try to pass on to other combat veterans is that I have to treat my PTSD through psychiatric care, medication and talking to and working with other combat veterans from all the wars.
Working on my alcoholism and addictions is something I do with guidance from my sponsor, who helps me work and live the 12 steps and traditions in my life and to pray to a God of my understanding.
I had ten years clean July 19, forty two years after returning from Vietnam. Today, I’m a husband, father, son, brother and friend. Today, when I see a man or woman in uniform I tell them, “Thank you for serving.”
