Coming Up for Air

He wakes up one morning on his couch, blood streaking across his face and hands and clothes. No recollection—another ream of pages torn from a memory awash in alcohol. He stares in a mirror, wondering when and how he’ll finally die.

Soon and quickly? Or more of this slow, agonizing descent?

Fifteen years earlier, as a teenager, Dave studied hard, gave time to kids in need, and busted ass at basketball and crew practices. He’d sworn off alcohol after seeing addiction torment his father. But in his early twenties, bipolar disorder ripped through his mind like wildfire. Maddening pendulum swings between despair and euphoria that he kept secret and untreated. Instead, he turned to alcohol to ease the pain.

Years roared by as alcohol and bipolar disorder led him on a sightseeing tour through hell. Nothing could free him from addiction. Not getting beat up by cops and cellmates. Not spending weeks in a psychiatric ward after a knife was pried away from his wrist. And not losing his partner, Lucy, after she’d done everything she could to help him. He was on the verge of drowning, and ready to surrender.

Tearing through the streets. Screaming wild. Eyes shut, windows down, engine gunning. Ninety miles per hour. One hundred. One hundred and ten. Will it be over tonight? I’m ready to be swallowed whole.

But he wakes up. Bloody. Alone.

Still alive, though.

Lucy’s love is the tough, leathery kind. The kind that holds on to someone dangling from a cliff, even if both might plunge. He finally understands that she feels his pain in full measure—every tear and each drop of blood. That morning, after more than a decade of abusive drinking and self-medication, he quits. Dead in his tracks. Armed with her faith, help from those that still stood by his side, and his own grit, he sets out to beat back the massive waves of addiction and depression.

Someone new has emerged. And he’s got a heck of a story.