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.
I remember that poker game and the nights I felt so bad about the nights I had missed out on with my friends when they went out drinking and I felt like I couldn't go.
I decided, "You know what? I'm not missing out on any of my friends. My life is so good that whatever messed up was going on before, must be fixed."
After this, I had the most initially stable period of my drinking that I had had for a while and I drank straight without trying to quit for maybe a year or so after that until the dispatcher thing. But I remember making the decision and say, "It's either the Air Force or drink."
I thought, "Well, the Air Force that's got to be so dangerous. Might get killed overseas."
I ended up rationalizing myself into a drink, that it would be a huge disruption in my life to go in the Air Force, but just a minor disruption to
drink. I rationalized back into drinking. I remember going out with my friends to the bar thinking, "You know what? Let's do this again."
I remember a lot of nervous excitement and a lot of thinking, "This probably isn't a good idea, but fuck it. It'll be all right, won't it?"
I had that first beer and good God, I was off to the races after that. If I could have comprehended all the dumb shit that would happen between that beer and the next time I tried to quit drinking.
The dispatcher story took place after that last beer, another one of those choices, same as the Air Force choice.
I said, "Well, fuck it. Let's see what happens."
And that's what I did.
From that point on, I got this very strong desire to get out of Mental Health. As soon as I drank again, I got this big passion. I started to apply for other jobs. I got the idea that I could get a better job than Mental Health and the University of South Carolina Police Department was the one that I had in mind and that's the one I went for.
I applied there and we will talk more about the interview and everything on that soon. I sent my application off, and I ended up getting hired there in April 2008.
I'm very grateful today for all the time I had at the Department of Mental Health. They took such good care of me. I have very fond memories of the people who were so loving and kind. I've got a couple of more stories I can probably throw in here.
I remember one mental health facility was actually in the correctional facility. It was in the prison. It was interesting getting to actually go in the
adult correction.
Generally, there were a lot of incarcerated kind of like sex offenders there. They had both been insane and they had done some kind of sex offense, and there were also people with insanity pleas or some kind of things like that.
I remember going in there a couple of times, and thinking, "Thank God, I don't work here anymore."
And yet, it wasn't actually that bad going in there and seeing their daily life. The idea of scared straight actually works backward. It is more intimidating to imagine prison and jail. It is less intimidating for a lot of people once you actually go in there and see that this is something you can get used to and live through. It is nasty and it is awful, but once you see it, it actually gets a lot less scary.
Most of us have a greater fear of the unknown than we do of the known, and seeing the inside of one of the places you could be if you had done some of the worst things, it didn't actually look that bad, looking back on it.
Another day that's memorable, we would go in and do these sessions with the patients. You would just go in and check in, walk through some of the facilities, and I would sit down and get to know the patients sometimes.
I would say, "Hey, how are you?"
I remember talking to a girl who was like 15 or 16 and thinking she was really attractive like, "Why is she locked up? This is so crazy. She's so normal."
It struck me consistently, especially if you took the medications off the patients, that many of them are just normal people who had not been treated very well by other people. It seemed crazy to have all these people
locked up again.
The same epiphany as at DJJ, "Why are all these people who are just like me locked up?"
You can see that people are so absurdly similar when you take away the car, the money, or whatever job title, and you just put them in ordinary situations. You see how similar every single human being is to each other, and then it seems insane to be locking human beings up who are just like you and just like me.
There is got to be some better way and almost everyone that's locked up has been through a life of horrible mistreatment. There was hardly anyone in that mental health facility I knew who hadn't been abused in some way as a child significantly, often horribly, and then simply repeated that abuse on to someone else in their life.
Almost everyone in there got it first before they got it. How awful to then lock up some of the worst victims in our society who then aren't treated and rehabilitated before they victimize others, and then they are essentially punished for having chosen to be born?
That stuck out very well again at Mental Health.
After I got back to drinking, while I had been very sober for my time at Mental Health, I did not ever go out drinking or partying, or even hardly got to know anyone else there socially because I was staying sober.
While they had gatherings and stuff, I didn't go to any of them and with being sober, I didn't try to make any connections with anyone at work based on drinking until the last two months, and then by then, my habits had formed.
Right before my time at Mental Health was up and I was going to start at
USCPD, one night I went out with my friends to the bar as an ordinary start to the night riding in the back of my friend's car, which was I think an Infinity. I think it was one of those sports car varieties, he was driving crazy and the backseat was small.
I remember thinking it was so much fun.
"This is awesome. This is just so much fun. This is great. I'm so glad I'm back drinking again."
I was so happy to be back drinking. I went way over reasonable, I threw up on the side of the bar and I threw up everywhere.
I think the bar was Shaggy's or some shithole downtown Columbia, or maybe it was even West Columbia or Cayce.
Thankfully I did not throw up in my friend's car. I probably took a trash bag or something. I made it home without throwing up in his car. I did throw up while I was passed out. I somehow threw up all over the bed. I don't even remember doing it. I must have been on my back because it looked like I sat up and threw up all over the bed.
My friend and I slept in another friend’s double bed. He wasn't home that night. We stayed at his place, it was also his roommate's place. We slept in his bed and I managed to throw up all over the comforter and the sheets, and we woke up. Somehow, I didn't get to throw up on him, but I had thrown up all over the rest of the bed. We threw the comforter in and God I was sick. I just could not stop throwing up that morning and that was one of the worst hangovers I had.
I remember thinking how excited I was that night. The night before I had worked until 7 p.m. and I remember sitting in a hospital room with a patient. I think the patient had murdered someone and I remember he told me that
he had killed someone.
I thought, "Oh, this is great. He's confessing his sins to me."
He had killed someone and he was telling me about that. I really wanted to go drink so bad because it was uncomfortable to hear that stuff and my solution was just to go get drunk.
I remember thinking that I really wanted to get drunk, and then I went out, drank really hard that night and I knew I had to work at 2 p.m. the next day at Mental Health.
At about 7-8-9 in the morning, I was horribly sick, just vomiting, dry heaving, bile heaving, not constantly, but you know, every 5 or 10 minutes.
"Jesus, that was rough."
My friend drove me home and I took a trash bag or a store bag. I must have thrown up in it at least two or three times on the way back to my apartment. It was about a 20-minute drive, I got all the puke in the bag and none of it in his car.
I got out and I remember as soon as I walked into my apartment, I spewed right in the sink down my garbage disposal at 12:30.
Then, I hopped in the shower. I wasn't able to eat anything and I dragged my ass off to work. Holy shit, that was uncomfortable. Walking in, my head was killing me, my whole body felt like shit, I was totally dehydrated from throwing up and drinking the night before. I came in Saturday and the first thing they told me was that we had a kid restrained in the hospital.
I said, "Of course. This place is boring as fuck most days, but the day I come in with my first God awful hangover ever to work at this place, there
is some fucker that's tied down and I've got to go in for that."
I was hoping that I could go eat right away and maybe feel better, but no, we had to sit in the hospital with this kid for hours when I was horribly hung over and desperately trying to get some water down to feel a little bit better.
I think I probably grabbed like a Sprite or something because that was good on the stomach, "Jesus. Oh, man."
This was miserable.
We got through the day and I remember my corporal ordered some pizza that night at about eight o'clock. Six hours of having a brutal hangover at work with my gun and badge, on having to fool around keeping a kid restrained that was going crazy a shit.
I was thinking, "Thank God for this pizza. Oh, this is so good," and I felt a little bit better after that.
But man, it is good for me to remember these hangovers because it has been four and a half years since I've had a hangover now, and it gets to be really easy to forget how miserable it is to throw up and have a hangover for hours and go to work like that.
I'm amazed that nobody said anything. I don't know if anyone even noticed. I must have smelled like alcohol. That was a long day.
Another night, I remember, I didn't very often have to work third shift, but occasionally they would ask me, "Hey, Jerry, we had a guy call out he's sick. Can you fill in and work third shift for us tonight?"
I didn't very often work third shift and so I wasn't prepared sleep wise to work third shift. I had fortunately found a building with some really good
couches that was empty at night.
So, what I used to do if they stuck me on the third shift, I would go in this building, I would turn the radio up full blast right behind my head. I would knock out on this one couch. I would lay down and sleep in full uniform and everything on this couch that was in one of the mental health outpatient facilities, that was empty at night and where we would do checks.
I would check in at the building and say, "I'm doing a walk-through," and then I would say, "Everything is okay here."
Then, I would sleep there and they probably knew what I was doing if they thought about it. Then, a couple of hours later, I would say, "Hey, I'm doing a walk-through."
I would keep the radio up really loud in case anyone called for me and I don't ever remember getting a call while I was sleeping in there. It was usually pretty chill at night, but that's where I continued my habit of sleeping on the job as a police officer, and then I thought that was a pretty good deal.
Third shift sometimes I would get a couple of three hours of not very good sleep at night, but then I would just need to sleep a little bit more when I got home, then I would be good to go to work second shift again, especially.
So, as I wrapped up my Mental Health time, I started drinking again. My life started to get more complicated, and ironically, starting drinking again focused me so clearly, I thought so much about drinking, and then I often had a lot of fun while I would drink.
I would drink and I could be happy just playing "Rise of Nations" at home by myself getting drunk. I could look forward to that and I found that my life
was really difficult to live if I didn't have something to look forward to.
So once I started drinking again, I started looking forward to drinking, planning on drinking and going out with my friends, and then life started to feel like it made sense and life was good.
At first, it seemed pretty good. There would be a hangover there, I would drink a little too much occasionally, but at the time, it seemed like life was good, and I was living well.
I figured after a few months sober, that I was ready to go again. This carried me over into working at USCPD and definitely since I hadn't been drinking that much in the months before, it made it easier to get hired at USCPD.
I was trying to drink reasonably and I was trying to behave well to get the job at USCPD, and just after not drinking for so long, I got this real kind of relative reverence and respect, and tried to drink reasonably, and not abuse the privilege to drink again. That definitely helped me get hired at USCPD.
I tried really hard to do well, to follow every single rule at the Department of Mental Health, aside from perhaps the taboo of sleeping where I probably could have gotten suspended or fired for it.
Except for the sleeping thing, I was very straight and narrow at Mental Health and that allowed me to work at USCPD pretty easily because the main thing they ended up being concerned with was my conduct as a police officer at the Department of Mental Health.
Therefore, I'm very grateful for the time at Mental Health, which was my first job as a police officer.
I've shared what is, in my opinion, the most interesting of what went on
at the Department of Mental Health. I've shared it with the purpose to be useful in your life today, to help you see and understand the things around you and maybe get some insights and guidance based on my experience into what might be helpful in your life today.
I love you.
You are awesome.
Thank you very much for making it all the way to the end of this chapter and up next, my adventures and the last part of my time as a police officer at USCPD.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.