My Love Affair with Our National Parks
*This story contains some detailed descriptions of drug and alcohol abuse that may be disturbing to some readers.
I’ve always enjoyed the outdoors. I grew up in “the country” in the middle of Mississippi, where I spent a lot of my time fishing, building forts, camping, exploring, and getting lost on more than one occasion. My father, like his father, was an avid outdoorsman, and he passed along his love for the outdoors to me.
Somewhere along the way, my time in nature was substituted with bars, performance venues, parties, or lengthy hours in my bed nursing hangovers. Most of my outdoor time during this part of my life was usually spent on a porch or around a campfire drinking until the sun came up. I try not to look back sadly, or to demonize these times in my life. I have some incredible memories collected from my 20ish years of boozin’ and druggin’. But, the party lifestyle definitely took the front seat for a couple of decades, and in 2015, it finally caught up with me.
I had been to the ER at least 5 times that I can remember during that last year of using and drinking. The first was on tour in La Crosse, Wisconsin, in February of 2014. I was convinced that a meal from the hotel where my band was staying had given me food poisoning. Of course, it wasn’t the three-day bender of using copious amounts of cocaine, MDMA, mushrooms, pot, and enough alcohol to kill a giant that was making me feel ill. No, no, it was definitely food poisoning. I was in rough shape. I couldn’t stop shaking and throwing up, and we had a show in a few hours. I had pissed off the guys in my group many times at this point with the same old routine, so no one was willing to give me a ride to the ER. I dragged myself down to the lobby and hailed a cab in the -10 degree temperature outside.
I told the doctor at the ER about my heavy drinking, conveniently leaving out the other drug abuse, and that I thought I had food poisoning as well. They brought in a social worker to talk to me about alcohol abuse. I told them that I had it under control, and somehow managed to talk them into giving me a prescription for opioids. It blows my mind how many things I talked my way out of (or into) during those years. After a couple of IVs and some painkillers, I was back to business as usual.
Four more emergency room or doctor visits later, I found myself eye-to-eye with a doctor who changed my life.
I was a few weeks into a lengthy run on “The Sing-Off” tour with my a cappella group, Street Corner Symphony, in 2015. Every morning was the same. I would jump awake and shake violently in my bunk until I thought everyone was off the bus. Then I would try to steady my hands enough to drink a cup of tea with honey — and 2-3 shots of vodka. The first sip pretty much always sent me running to a spot where I could throw it all up. Then I would have a short window where I could stomach a couple of heavy-handed drinks. The trick was to drink enough to stop the shakes, and then to maintain that buzz until the show was finished. I’d usually pop an Adderall before the show, in the hopes that I wouldn’t look too sloppy. After the show, I would drink the way I wanted to drink, staying awake until the wee hours of the morning with the bus driver and my bandmate who was a night owl. At that point, I’d pop a Xanax or Klonopin to help me sleep. It’s a miracle that this combination of substances didn’t kill me.
The morning of my final ER visit found me with severe internal pain, the usual violent shakes, and my heart beating out of my chest. Even though I had resigned to the fact that my lifestyle would likely lead to my demise, I didn’t want to perish on this particular morning, so I told our tour manager that I thought I was dying. I had already played this card a couple of times on this tour, and panic attacks were par for the course, but this time felt different. They actually called the ER doctor to the venue, as I didn’t think I could get there. I had managed to get down a enough drinks before the doctor arrived to get rid of the shakes. For some reason, this time I decided to be entirely honest about my consumption, and about blood tests that I had recently received showing significant damage to my liver. Despite the fog I was in, I can still see and hear him telling me that I had about a year to live at the pace I was going. He said, “This is going to be the reason you die. Do you want to die?”
The words broke through for the first time ever. No. I didn’t want to die.
There were times where I thought I did want to die, but not like this. Nothing had ever broken through to me before. I didn’t want to keep doing this anymore. I was tired, scared, and knocking on death’s door. I had two options at this point: I could leave the tour and go to rehab, or I could finish the tour and get help when I got home. I called a meeting with everyone and told them I was staying on the road, but I couldn’t stop drinking or I would likely die from withdrawal. I told them that I was planning on detoxing and putting “the plug in the jug” when the tour was finished. Understandably, most everyone thought I was full of shit. And, at that point, I didn’t trust myself enough to know if I was or not. Either way, I continued to stay intoxicated until the tour ended.
We arrived back in Nashville in late April, and after a show in Nashville with one of my other bands, I poured out the remainder of my beer, drove home, and locked myself in the spare bedroom of my house. I knew this was a bad idea, and that I could die from withdrawal, but I decided I was going to detox myself. (Note: This is highly dangerous, and it can kill you. I do not recommend detoxing alone. I should have checked myself into a hospital, which would have made this process much better and safer.)
Since I knew I wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while, I put on Ken Burns’s documentary “The National Parks: America's Best Idea.” The next three days were spent in a fetal position sweating, throwing up, dry heaving, and worse — and experiencing some of the worst panic attacks of my life. The whole time, I was watching this beautiful documentary about the National Parks. I told myself that if I made it through this alive, I would make it my goal to visit all of the National Parks.
Days later, after I could get down a sip of water and a cracker, I made up my mind that this was the last detox I would ever go through. After a week or so locked up with Ken Burns in my house, I opened my front door to get some vitamin D. After that, walking in Shelby Park next to my neighborhood became a daily routine. I started going to meetings to support my sobriety a few months later, and I quit smoking and began running.
The first National Park I visited in sobriety was Mount Rainier National Park. I have now visited 16 National Parks. I’ve also rekindled my childhood love of the outdoors, and discovered my new love of running. Today my life looks completely different in so many incredible ways. I still work very hard on my recovery every day. And my recovery brought me the love of my life.
In 2019, I asked Sarah to marry me at the Grand Canyon.
Sarah and I will be hitting a total of nine National Parks on our elopement trip, six of which I have not been to. We’ll be getting hitched in Yosemite National Park, which became my favorite place on Earth after a trip there in 2016. When we get home from our wedding, I’ll be about a third of the way through all 62 National Parks.
Over five years into sobriety, I still find myself with tears of gratitude as I write this. I am grateful for the doctor who finally got through to me. I am grateful that I was finally ready to listen and to be honest with myself. I am grateful to be alive today. I am grateful for my recovery and all of the help I have received in the rooms of 12 Step, and through my other self-care practices. I am grateful for Ken Burns. I am grateful for the spiritual experience I have when I’m on a run, hiking up a trail, swimming in a water hole, camping, or looking at the stars. I’m grateful for this beautiful world we get to explore. I am grateful for a second chance at life, one that includes my love affair with our National Parks!
❤️️ Jeremy
