Guest Contributor – Michael Letzeisen
College Confidence and Early Patterns
From my college days on, Alcohol was part of my life. In college my drinking took off as it was my way of fitting in. I gained confidence in myself and was able to break away from the shy guy to the friendly guy. I was friends with many of the athletes and the motto was win or lose Bison always booze. I soon became the person who would drink whenever. If someone needed a person to drink with or go to a bar it was me. We were a small school and had class superlatives. Early on everyone knew I would be voted most likely male to be seen at the bar, which of course I ended up being.
Drinking Through the Career Ladder
After college I started my career in athletics. As most people know athletics is a work hard party hard type of atmosphere. The main office for the college conference I worked at was Cape Cod which the only thing to do in the winter mostly was to go to bars. It was also the vacation spot for many so the summer would also be going to bars and the beach. My main sport at the conference was ice hockey. Part of my job was to go out to see the membership at games and to also observe officials. The conference spanned from Maine to Pittsburg and as far south as Maryland. Even though my alcoholic tendency weren’t too apparent it was the perfect job as I would be in a different city each weekend which provided different liquor stores (packies as I call them because I’m from the Boston area) and bars.
During my time on the Cape, I ended up getting a DUI. In Massachusetts they passed a law called the Melanie Law. This law had increased penalties for repeat DUI offenders. The day of my appearance in front of the judge was also the first day of Melanie’s Law being enacted. Even though I got a continuance without a finding it was my first strike and if I got another DUI I would be subject to strike two. At that point I swore I would never drink and drive again. I was very cautious throughout the next years of my life. I would only have 1-3 drinks when I was out, however when I was home or at a location, I knew I wouldn’t be living all bets were off.
In 2012 I left the Conference and moved to Upstate New York in my first role on a campus as an Assistant Athletic Director. At the College I met a girl who lived next door to me and drank somewhat the same as me. She had just graduated form the college and was a full-time staff member. Most of the staff lived in college owned houses adjacent to campus. It was common for us staff to drink like the college students. We even did our own “Thirsty Thursday” where we would go out to a bar. We would go to the bars every weekend after the games and drink. An activity we would do to get away from campus was go up to the Finger Lakes and drink our way from one winery to the next. This was common practice for all of us staff members.
During my first year at the College the Women’s Hockey team made it to the Division III Frozen Four which was held in Wisconsin. The team ended up winning the National Championship. The Athletic Director decided it was a good idea as I was the most responsible person to keep the National Championship trophy until we ended up back on campus. That night I drank with the parents as we all celebrated the National Championship victory. The next day the Assistant Coach of the team knocked on my hotel door as I was an hour late for the bus. I was still drunk and needed to change and pack up. I walked on the bus drunk and in front of the whole team with the trophy. I was fully embarrassed about my actions and felt I left everyone down, which I did. At that point I thought I might have a drinking problem but never seeked help.
Marriage, Fatherhood, and Escalation
In 2015 the girl, who ended up being my girlfriend, left Upstate New York and moved to Massachusetts as I took a job as an Assistant Athletic Director for a Division I University. We lived in my parents’ basement. It was often that on my commute home to my parents’ house I would pick up a six pack of craft beer, because I only liked the higher percentage of alcohol beers, and drink it all that night. This was another sign I might have a problem. Again, I didn’t seek help and just thought I owed myself some beer after working a long day.
My girlfriend and I ended up buying a house, got engaged and had our first kid. Life was great, I was married to the girl of my dreams, started a family with her with our daughter, had a house and was in the career I always wanted, at the top level in Division I.
During that time my wife would make comments from time to time about my drinking, like how we couldn’t keep alcohol in the house as I would finish bottles in one or two days and how six packs would be drunk in one night. We also had a couple of times where she would sit me down and say I think you have a problem. I’d stop or slow down for a time and then start back up. My wife also didn’t drink at that time anymore as she stopped drinking once she was pregnant with our daughter. Deep down I think I knew I had a problem, but didn’t accept it and just drank. I figured I worked hard and was an adult, so I owed myself a drink or five/six at the end of days. My drinking was always big at home not when we were at parties or at a restaurant because I didn’t want another DUI.
When COVID happened, the world shut down and for the first time in my life I wasn’t working games. My whole life changed perspective, and I didn’t know what to do. I was one of a few that still went to work because we were fortunate to have a renovation project take place that I was overseeing and needed to keep an eye on the facility.
When the world started to open again so did athletics. Our men’s and women’s basketball teams returned to campus and started practice. Soon after games started up my drinking heavily started, and the progressing was on the rise. I ended up becoming embarrassed about how much I was drinking and I would fill the bottles with water just to hide how much I was actually drinking. My wife would call me out on it and say why do you have to drink too much and why do you put water in the bottles. At that time my wife was pregnant with our son which would complete our family. I was excited to have a second child, especially a daughter and a son. My personal life was going to be complete. However, the excitement also grew concern on how I was going to be as a parent moving forward and how I could be a good Dad to both my kids. My wife would talk to me about the drinking however I would always just leave it alone and continue to drink. At night she would go up to the bedroom and I would stay downstairs in the breezeway drinking and watching whatever game was on. I remember one occurrence she made comment on how much she hated hearing the freezer door open and the ice cubes hitting the glass for a drink. I decided I could change that and just leave the ice alone and drink Jameson without ice. I was drinking close to over a bottle to a bottle of Jameson a night. My drinking also led to not paying bills and using the money to buy booze. Almost every night my pregnant wife would cry herself to sleep while I drank.
COVID, Health Scares, and the Breaking Point
In December of 2020 I ended up getting COVID right before Christmas and went into isolation from my wife and daughter. I was devastated and thought I let her down and didn’t want to pass on COVID to her as she was pregnant or my daughter. We still didn’t know what COVID would do to people were dying.
During my time in isolation, I thought about my drinking almost every day. I wanted a drink so bad and thought I really had a problem My wife gave me a couple of beers every so often with dinner that she would leave at my door during isolation, and I would drink it quickly. One day I ended up ordering Christmas gifts for my wife and had my cousin pick them up and drive them out to me. I also asked if he could get a bottle. He delivered everything to the window of the room I was isolated in and I drank that bottle of whiskey within the matter of two hours or less. That is when I knew I had a problem. Before leaving isolation, I ordered a bottle from a delivery service and when I left my room to reunite with my wife and daughter the bottle arrived. After putting my daughter to sleep that night I went for the bottle rather than going to bed and spend time with my wife.
In January of 2021 I started having chest pains, dizzy spells and numbness in my legs. I thought it was just high anxiety and stress from getting games back underway and having so many COVID restrictions I needed to ensure other were following just to have games take place. In March I ended up fainting on one of my colleagues and soon after was diagnose with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS). Based on this I thought I could take it on and be brave about it. One of the worst things you could do with POTS is drink as it dehydrated your body. With POTS you need to over hydrate and have high intake of sodium/salt to keep your body and blood flowing at a normal level. I also lost my right to drive due to my medical condition.
The progression of drinking had reached a boiling point. I was drinking each night and hiding my drinking. I tried saying I was only drinking nonalcoholic beer and had tried that for a while, but it didn’t taste or gave the same feeling as whiskey. I would end up having a nonalcoholic beer and go in the fridge outside pretending I was getting another but actually pouring Jameson into it and coming back inside. I would find every excuse to get out of the house and go to packie to pick up a bottle.
Throughout my life I was very angry and upset. My anger would always come up rather than me talking things through. I said things I didn’t mean. I would yell at no reason at all, was stressed out every day and had extremely high anxiety.
In August of 2021 I had an incident at work in which I couldn’t feel my legs and needed assistance to get up. I also couldn’t drive home so a co-worker of mine drove me to meet my wife. A week after the incident my boss called me and said HR wouldn’t allow me to come back to work until I received medical clearance. The medical clearance took three months, and I worked remotely doing all I could to keep things afloat while relying on my staff to keep things going on campus. I ended up missing the entire Fall athletic season and drinking heavily each night this time it was a bottle a night. I finally got medically cleared and worked a playoff game. It didn’t end up going well as my legs froze up from numbness and I knew at that time I could no longer work in athletics within the area I worked in. My career was over. That led me suicidal thoughts. I would cross a bridge every day to work and from work wanting to drive over the edge. I’d want to fake an accident and die because of it.
At work I would be on the sidelines of games watching the clock count down and thinking of where I would buy my booze that night trying to go to a different packie each night so no one would catch on to my problem. My days of worrying about drinking and driving were over. I would be waking up, going to work, finishing the day, picking up a tea at Dunkin, going to pick up a pint of Jameson at a packie, emptying out the tea and pouring in the whole pint so that if I got pulled over the cops would think I was drinking tea, picking up a full bottle of Jameson, getting home cooking dinner, put my kids to bed, say goodnight to my wife although most nights she just went to bed on her own, getting my drinking glass and filling it up while sitting in the breezeway drinking until I passed out or the bottle was done and going to pass out in bed. I’d wake up the next morning and do it all over again. Some nights my wife would come out in which I would panic and hid the glass while she would say why don’t you come to bed. She knew I was in trouble, and I knew I was in trouble, but I didn’t want to seek help.
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