Between A Rock And A Hard Place

Happy new year everyone. I am working on a few other posts right now like Vol. 2 of my story and another about the insanity going on in the crypto world. I feel i gotta get this one out though. Im not the type to bother other people with my personal issues so I find that writing them out in Steemit posts if very therapeutic and sometime I receive great advice and suggestions from the community that i would never think of on my own. This is one of the best aspects of Steemit that I never foresaw as even a possibility.

I am the foreman/ lead carpenter of a small high end custom cabinet shop in Naples Fl. We have been open for almost two years now and been very busy ever since we started. Up until last week there was three employees. There is the helper/ trainee , The painter/finisher and myself. I have had about five different helpers that havent worked out but, my finisher has been there almost as long as me.

For those out there that dont know, a cabinet and furniture finisher is not your average houser painter. They are more like car painters than house painters. They are artists and their craft is a specialty.Like any other skilled trade It takes years of training and knowledge to master. A good finisher is hard to find and we were very lucky when Tommy came on board. Tommy is not his real name but, Im not going to put someones personal business out there.

Tommy is about fifty two years old. We have had uncountable conversations in the shop while doing what we do. We got to know each other pretty well and we both considered each other friends. As much as you know someone, you never really know someone. Tommy lived with his mother and she brought him to work and picked him up everyday. He told me from day one that he had lost his drivers license a while back for a long long time, probably forever. Tommy told the owner and I about his DUI's and that he has been sober and active in AA for over five years. Where as it was a shop position and required no driving, The owner looked past all that and hired him.

I could relate to Tommy an many different levels.I myself have had plenty of struggles with substance abuse. I am not shy about it. I have written about it in numerous posts of mine. I has made me who I am today. When my daughter was born, five years ago this coming February, I took a long hard look at myself and decided that I wanted my daughter to have a dad that was going to be there for her whenever she needed me and a daddy she loved and could be proud of. So far I feel I've done pretty good at being a dad. As of almost a year ago I have been been doing it all as a single dad no less. So Tommy and I were both divorced, both have substance abuse in our pasts and we both had about five years sobriety. We both liked to listen to the Rush Limbaugh show during the day also.

Things were going great for us and the company. We are getting busier every day. We have honed our process and eliminated as much wasted time and material as possible. We learn more every day continuing to make a better product in less time. Tommy's experience and skill was vital in making this happen. I have been a carpenter for most of my life but this was my first go around at cabinetry, let alone running the shop. Tommy has been finishing cabinets for over twenty years and has worked for or with most of the other shops and vendors in the area. This gave him an excellent database of knowledge, information, people and other resources to help get our business off the ground and thriving.

It was around Thanksgiving that I started seeing some "cracks in the foundation" so to speak. He asked me if he could give me gas money to pick him up and drop him off. I said sure without prying. All he said was that him and his mom got into a fight and she wouldn't drive him anymore. I didn't think a whole lot of it at the time. Then one day I had to leave the shop to go pick up some materials and other things, when I came back about three hours later Tommy was absolutely drunk off his rocker. This put me in a really shitty situation. As the shop foreman the owner trusted my judgement and it was my responsibility to let him know about things like this. On the other hand, I didn't want to ruin someones life because the suffer from an affliction and made a mistake. In this situation I could very easily see the shoe being on the other foot and it being me as the one who relapsed and fucked up. Because of that reason alone I decided to sweep it under the rug and not say anything.

I had to have a talk with Tommy the next morning though. I had to let him know that he put me in a position that i didnt want to be in. If he did it again I couldn't cover for him because all it would take is someone to come by the shop and see him like that and then I lose my job because i didn't tell the owner. Tommy told me that he appreciated me not saying anything and he wouldn't do that again. I offered to help him if I could, recommended he hit the AA meetings strong and try to stop it before it got out of control. I could tell he was just patronizing me when he said that he was going to do that.

Two days later and Tommy shows up to work in a taxi cab and I could tell he was hung over. Within two hours Tommy was absolutely shitfaced to where he passed out on the workbench. Now I had to call the owner. The owner wasnt too happy but thought the whole situation was kind of funny. He said Tommy had to go home though and was not to come back until he was sober. If he wouldn't go on his own I was to call the cops on him. To shorten a really long story, I tried for well over two hours and he wouldn't go. I had to call the cops on my friend. My friend that was on an extreme downward spiral and there was nothing I could for him. I called his mom to see if she would pick him up. She wanted no part of it and told me the whole story about Tommy. He had been institutionalized many times. he would drink rubbing alcohol and mouthwash when he could not get his hands on booze. She also told me that the reason for the fight they had and why she wouldn't take him to work anymore was because he was drinking in her house and she doesn't allow alcohol. She then said call the cops on him, she was done with it.

The cops showed up about an hour later. They said that it wasn't illegal for a grown man to be drunk at work so they couldn't arrest him. The only way that they could physically remove him from the shop was if the owner wanted him trespassed. The owner did not want to do that because then he could never come back or he would be arrested. The sheriffs deputies managed to get Tommy into a cab to his moms house after a lot of persuasion. Tommy didn't even know where he was or what was going on. His mom was pissed , The deputies pretty much told her that she had no choice but to let him in because that was Tommy's legal address. Apparently it didn't matter that she was almost eighty years old and afraid of him and his violent outbursts when he was drunk.

Tommy took that Thursday and Friday off and showed back up to work on Monday, his mom was driving again. They had had a long talk over the weekend to try to get to the bottom of why he relapsed. The week before Thanksgiving Tommy had gone to an oral surgeon to have two teeth removed. The dentist prescribed some pain meds for after the surgery. They both came to the conclusion that the pain meds were the culprit. Never having had an opiate or narcotic problem, Tommy never even thought about that before he took them. I was recently stabbed in the stomach and had to refuse pain meds at the hospital for that exact reason.

Tommy was good after that, for a few weeks. He showed up for work on the Tuesday after Christmas in a cab. He wasnt drunk or even hungover. All he said was that "Yeah, Tommy fucked up again.". Then"Can you give me a ride for a few weeks?" I said sure. I took him home at the end of the day and said id see him in the morning. When I got there in the morning his mom came outside. She told me that he was passed out drunk. She then said that she was hoping he would have made it to work and passed out so that the owner would trespass him this time and have him arrested. That is how fed up she was. Tommy texted me around eleven o'clock that same morning saying , "Im so sorry ,blah blah blah." I said no worries, just stay home, sober up and come in tomorrow. The owner had showed up that morning to drop off paychecks and asked where Tommy was. I had to tell him. He wasnt happy but, left it alone at the time.

A cab showed up with a Half drunk half hungover Tommy at about noontime that same day. I said "I really wish you didn't come here today like this". I told him that I really needed him to leave, to save my job and his. To my surprise he left. On my way to work the next morning I texted Tommy to ask if he needed a ride. I didn't get an answer. I tried calling and got no answer either. When I got to the shop I noticed that a few things were out of place. I had to assume Tommy came back after I left and slept there. I found a bloody rag in the bathroom sink. The owner showed up that morning and when Tommy was a no show two days in a row, he was fired. The owner left a voicemail and text just to get the point across.
Later that day the owner called me asking if I had heard from Tommy. I said not since yesterday. Tommy's mom had called looking for him. Later on she called to say he was found and that he was at the hospital. He had been beaten up pretty badly. He had a gash across his nose. He was missing a tooth. His eye was swollen and bruised and his eyelid was cut in half and just kind of flapping around. When I heard that I thought of the bloody rag in the bathroom sink. I started really looking around on Tommy's side of the shop. I found some small blood smears on the top of the work table, like someone was wiping the blood off their fingers. On the floor between the two tables there was a big thick coagulated puddle of blood about eight to ten inches around. By now it was almost black and looked like some dark paint or stain that was spilled. It was dried blood though. On the ground farther under the work table I found Tommy's glasses. The frames were bent and twisted , broken in two different places. There were no lenses in the frames at all. Now it was all becoming clear though. Tommy came back to the shop after I left and kept drinking. He either rolled off the table while he was sleeping and smashed his face off the floor but, more likely is that he passed out standing up. When he fell he hit his head on the corner of the table, smashing his glasses. The sharp glass from a broken lens is what cut his eyelid almost off. From there he made it to his moms house somehow. She called an ambulance for him

At the hospital the did a blood test on Tommy. His blood alcohol level was just shy of 0.40. The doctor never called the substance abuse specialist. If he had, Tommy could have been Marchman acted right then and there and maybe gotten help that he obviously so desperately needs. The doctor didn't make that call though. The doctor didn't even bother to clean Tommy up. After Tommy had been sitting there for hours it was too late to stitch his eyelid back together so he just tried to glue it, still leaving his face crusted in dried blood.

I haven't seen or talked to Tommy since that last day. I have talked to his mom. She was still in shock that the hospital didn't follow proper procedure to have Tommy committed. Tommy does not have insurance and his mom does not have a lot of money so just outright paying for detox and rehab and all that is out of the question. Being committed was his fastest easiest route to state funded help. There is a very likely chance that Tommy will not survive another incident like this. There is a good chance that it will not be long before Tommy has another incident like this. This is not the first time that I have seen alcoholism at this level. I have seen it take a few lives. It is so sad. The only way I can emotionally deal with it is to assume that he is already dead. It is not that he does not want to stop drinking, it is that the alcohol has too much control over his mind that he literally can not stop unless he is locked up with no alcohol around. Once his mind is a little clearer, then he might be strong enough again. he wont get there on his own though. His mom can not do it any more and it will take a lot more than i can do when i live far away from him and need to drop off and pick up my daughter for school. No matter what she comes first.

I dont know why I wrote this post. I dont expect any miracle answers. I know what the answers are but he needs to want it for himself too in order for it to work. I dont think he cares anymore. Watching this whole situation from up close and personal has made me realize how lucky I was to get past my own substance abuse issues. I know that the statistics are not in the favor of people in our position. I guess I just wrote this to get it off my chest. I have very few real friends at this point in my life. All of my friends that I had from childhood werent really friends to begin with. The ones that were either overdosed, got killed or killed themselves. Same with the best friends I made in The Marine Corps. All the other "friends" I've had have ended up selling me out or using trust to take advantage or some other fucked up shit that I would never even consider doing to my enemies, So when I watch someone I considered a friend go on a downward spiral so fast that there is almost no hope, I am almost numb but, it still hurts.