This is an excerpt from my memoir, Officer Banfield — the honest story of my years as a corrections and police officer, hitting bottom in alcoholism, and the long road to recovery.
It turns out there is life after being a police officer. At one point, I could not imagine what my life would be like after law enforcement. I was afraid of having to ever do anything else. I thought that all I could do in my life, was to be in law enforcement and thankfully, after USCPD encouraged me to quit, I immediately found that I had an afterlife.
I look at death from these physical bodies as the same thing. We might not be able to picture it or see it very clearly most of the time, but whenever we are there, when it is time, it becomes completely clear that we have all the rest of eternity doing everything and anything we could possibly love to do and imagine to do forever.
The gift of eternal life is to see that when you go through big changes, like at one point, I couldn't picture life after being a police officer, and today I'm grateful I have lived over nine very happy and wonderful years of my life since being a police officer.
The biggest aggravation of my day is often like what just happened a couple of minutes ago.
I sent my ex-wife a text message at 3:25 in the morning that says, "I'm going to the shed soon so I can record my audiobook. I can take the baby if needed."
The baby is our six-month-old son.
She said at 4:41 a.m., which is an hour and 16 minutes later, "Yes, please. He woke up at three, but only slept an hour or so more before
waking up again. I'm feeding him now."
I messaged her back at 6:58 a.m. saying, "I just saw this message. How are you now?"
That leaves me not feeling very good. My ex-wife has been in there for two hours with him when I could have had him in the shed and helped her sleep.
Often things like that are the worst part of my day. Just that brief moment of feeling like I messed up, feeling like I didn't contribute in the optimal way to my family.
My life today is unrecognizable from this life before. The life I'm talking about to you in this book feels more different from me than being a child.
This is as if I'm talking about someone else's existence. To say that I did these things sounds absurd to me because in the present state of mind I am now, many of the things I've described in this book seem unconscionable.
Others of them, like the idea of being a police officer, simply seem undesirable. I have no interest in being a police officer and I don't think we have a need for police officers if people are trusted and connected, and members of a community where we all work together, help each other and support each other with love and connection.
Therefore, this will talk a little bit about my afterlife after being a police officer. I remember and I imagine death as much the same way as this.
I remember feeling tremendous amounts of fear thinking about what I would do if they ever fired me. In active addiction my mind went to dark, violent places I am not proud of, the kind of sick thinking I now know I never would have acted on sober.
There was no way they could fire me and I was so afraid of having to experience life after being a police officer that I never pictured what my life would look like.
As soon as they encouraged me to quit, and as soon as I realized all those dark ideas were dumb ass ideas I was never going to take action on if I was sober, then I moved home with my parents and saw that I had a beautiful grown-up and fun life waiting for me after being a police officer.
I moved home with my parents and sold almost everything I owned in the apartment. I moved home in my Corolla and my parents helped me move with Dad's Ford Explorer at the time.
Then, I started studying for the GRE, applied to graduate school, went to the University of South Florida at Tampa, and had an absolutely awesome graduate school experience there.
I got inspired by the university so much that I started my own business a year into school there. I got my master's degree and dropped out of the Ph.D. program to do my business full time online, which I've done for seven years now.
The core of my business is trying to help other people, trying to take a message of love, hope and faith, trying to take whatever I have to give directly to you that might be interested in receiving it.
I started off with helping people with video game addiction seven years ago instead of facing my alcoholism. Then, I ended up turning around and just getting back into video games and drinking.
Thank God, in 2014, I realized I had this illusion that just being a police
officer was a part of why my life had gotten so crazy and certainly being a police officer contributed to that. It fed the craziness that was already in my life, and especially my drinking.
My drinking combined with all the stuff of being a police officer was a very bad combination.
However, I assume that if I was with a wonderful girl in a stable relationship and I had my own home and something like a business or respected career, that then my drinking wouldn't be an issue, that I could just have a few drinks here and there and things would be fine.
I found to my surprise that having the beautiful girl, having no drama from work, having an absolute dream work situation with my own business, owning my own home, having everything perfect in my life did not fix my drinking.
Not only that, but those old habits, those crazy old things from my drinking before would resurface regardless of my new life situation and that scared the shit out of me.
Because of all I've described in this book, I carried a deep self-destructive streak. One of the last nights I drank, I acted out in a way that had nothing to do with being unhappy with my ex-wife. It came from a death wish, from a disease, from sickness, from insanity.
My ex-wife and I were close almost every day, and yet I would still get drunk and numb out with my addictions on those very same days.
I would be present with my ex-wife in the morning, and then later I would drink, play video games, and lose hours to my addictions, even with everything in my life finally good.
That was when one of my friends said, "You need God, man," when I told them. Thank God I was honest with my friends online. They were the few people that I had a pretty good level of honesty with in my life. I just showed them, I told them honestly what my life was like.
Thank God, I woke up soon after that, after I also gambled online, something I never thought I would do again, something I had not done the whole time I was a police officer.
The last time I had gambled online was right when I started out in corrections as I talked about. Then, I gambled online one more time the last night I drank in April 2014.
That scared the shit out of me because while I tried to tell myself, "Oh, you know, you're never going to be that bad drinking. You won't wreck another car again. You won't betray anyone while you're drinking. You won't gamble again while you're drinking."
When I gambled again I felt like, "Shit, I might wreck another car. I might do something I can't take back."
I knew if I wrecked another car, I might die, and if I betrayed my ex-wife as a married man, it would destroy me.
It was bad enough with the dispatcher when we hadn't even agreed to be in a relationship. I knew if I did something like that to my ex-wife, whom I love and adore and think is the best in the world, it would destroy everything I had.
I realized it didn't matter if I wanted to stop drinking. It didn't matter if I wanted to stay sober. I would change my mind soon enough and figure, "Well, alright. That was just a little bit of a bad spell there. We got through
that."
That's when I prayed.
I said, "God, please, I'll do anything to get sober."
One of the thoughts that crossed my mind was, "Well, you just offered anything that you'd do to get sober. Maybe those Alcoholics Anonymous meetings would be a part of anything that you just offered."
I thought, "Well, okay. I can do that. I can go to an AA meeting. That's not from God. That's not asking that much."
I didn't even think I believed in God at the time except when I got really desperate. As soon as I wasn't desperate, I forgot about God again, except when I said "damn God" or "Jesus Christ" throughout the day.
Whenever something went wrong, I would say, "Oh, Jesus Christ." I would die in a video game and say, "God fucking damn it."
After three months in AA, I hit critical mass, spiritual awakening, whatever you want to call it. I got so miserable. It was similar to the death of my Officer Banfield persona.
The Jerry Banfield, the drinker persona died and made way for a new sober Jerry Banfield, ready to be the best of service possible.
I narrate this book out of all the courage and love I've heard shared in Alcoholics Anonymous. I've heard men and women courageously share stories in as much detail as this in AA meetings and those stories gave me the courage to open up about my stories.
I see a world I'm imagining where we all love each other and are connected in peace and bliss in utopian happiness. We are cleaning up the
earth and all that good stuff.
That happens by individuals sharing their stories honestly and really reaching out to connect to each other.
There is a girl in AA that has aggravated the hell out of me several times. She has got a lot of good sobriety and she does a lot for AA. She has got years sober and I've heard her speak three or four times.
I've heard her speak twice recently and I got so mad I could barely stand it. I didn't even clap when she spoke.
She says, "My story's really boring, you know. It's the same as everyone else's."
I say, "No, the fuck it's not. Your story is extremely interesting if you will own the details of it."
She says, "Oh, it got bad, and then it got worse, and then you know how it is?"
I said, "No. No, the fuck I don't know how it is."
The guy after her that just told his story recently, he talked about very clear details of what he went through and experienced, some of his lowest moments similar to what I've done in this book because people can relate to direct experiences and stories.
I don't relate to someone saying, "Yeah, it got bad, and then it got worse."
What the fuck does that mean? I don't know.
I've shared this with the understanding that when you hear stories like
this, there is some kind of healing component in it, that it gives you a perspective on the world.
If you have never done a bunch of these crazy things before, then instead of looking at someone with just pure judgment, saying, "You're just an asshole, a jerk, a shithead" or whatever, you might look at this and say, "Alright, I understand how someone could do those stories and I see that someone who's living like that today has the potential to help a lot of people."
I see people coming into Alcoholics Anonymous meetings rough as hell, off the street and what I see is someone who has got assets, someone who has the ability to help a lot of people if they choose to do so, if they seek the help they need to do so.
When I came into AA, people did not think I was going to get sober. I came in a week after I had drunk the last time, and I had an attitude.
"I'm just here because God sent me basically, except no God thing.
Don't talk to me about God. I'm just here because this is what I do. I'm a member here now and this is what I do now. I stay sober and I go to AA."
People did not think I was going to make it.
I shared one day in an AA meeting, "I'm sober today. I really want to drink. I hate AA. This is miserable. It's not working and I'm going to drink tomorrow."
Thank God I didn't. I stuck with it. I kept praying to God.
I said, "God, please, I didn't get this far for me to get drunk. Please let me stay sober. Please let me remember I love my ex-wife and my mother."
I wanted to drink so bad.
What I see in narrating this book is the chance to show you what it looks like to really put your life stories out there, and I imagine that the girl who doesn't share the details of her stories, will someday.
There was another lady who just shared her story and is like 15 years older than me or so, she shared for the first time that she had been a stripper and she was a little embarrassed about it.
She has got a lot of sobriety already and what I've noticed is, those with great sobriety, especially if they are older tend to really get into details with their stories. I got comfortable and was able to become a better person when I was hearing the details other people shared.
I heard a guy one day talk openly in an Alcoholics Anonymous open discussion meeting, about how he was struggling with some very painful things from his childhood and how this book had really triggered him off and he ended up getting drunk.
I knew that was the guy I could share anything. He was one of the first people in the world I opened up to with some of the stories that I've told you about in here.
Between this book and my "Speaker Meeting 2017" book, I've covered absolutely everything.
I've felt frustrated before listening to other authors' books.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.