Part 2: Battling the addiction

Three Montanans battle lifelong addiction
February 21, 1999
Bill Broderson woke up in the Benefis Healthcare detox unit, watching a shadow on the wall that looked like a gorilla.
"It was a fat guy running around the ward naked in the middle of the night," he said. "So I got a nurse, and they locked him down."
By Eric Newhouse
Tribune Projects Editor
Alcohol has turned Broderson‘s life into a real-life nightmare.
He‘s not alone.

Bill Broderson enjoys a cigarette in a smoking area of Benefis Healthcare between counseling sessions. He says a saint sits on one shoulder counseling him not to drink, but that the devil has a louder voice.
-- Tribune photo by Larry Beckner
More than 120,000 Montanans – about 15 percent of adult residents – range from problem drinkers to full-blown alcoholics, according to the state health department.
Some have managed to quit drinking, but about 75,000 remain in need of treatment, state health officials say. Many are closet drunks, who seem to function normally — as did Anne, who led a double life in Great Falls for years.
The American Medical Association defines alcoholism as a chronic, progressive, apparently genetic disease. Untreated, it brings denial, fear, even death.
Alcoholics aren‘t the only ones affected. It‘s estimated that one alcoholic has a direct impact on the lives of at least four family members, friends and co-workers.
Tammera Nauts knows that cycle well. She‘s the addictions specialist for the Great Falls School District, and an alcoholic who lost her husband and nearly lost her daughter over her drinking.
Here are Bill, Anne and Tammera‘s stories.
Bill‘s story
Bill Broderson faces a life-or-death choice, if indeed he has a choice.
Broderson, 49, had lost 25 pounds and was down to 137 as he sat in detox last week. His hands were shaking, his liver was shot and his eyes were as round and glassy as a calf‘s.
"He is not trying to drink himself to death," said Dirk Gibson, the addictions program supervisor at Benefis Healthcare. "He just can‘t stop."
In fact, Broderson has been through the state‘s chemical dependency centers in Galen and Butte more than 50 times. He can‘t count the number of other 30-day treatment programs he has undergone.
Broderson has no job and no insurance. State law says no one can be denied treatment because of an inability to pay, so Benefis will write off the cost of his treatment, $400 to $500 a day.
His treatments at the Montana Chemical Dependency Center in Butte run $3,000 to $4,000 a visit. Most of that is paid from a state alcohol tax.
At 14, Broderson started drinking. He dropped out of school and spent as much time as he could on the golf course, a 12-pack tucked away in his cart.
"There was always alcohol in his home," said state Rep. Hal Harper, D-Helena, Broderson‘s best friend in junior high. "I think he just got sucked down the tube."
In his 20s, Broderson was having blackouts. "I woke up in Idaho once and had no idea in hell how I got there," he said.
Through the years, he has tried many times to quit drinking, he said.
Sober for a year once, he had been admitted to MSU-Northern‘s School of Nursing, had been given a grant to cover his tuition, and had worked a deal to paint rooms in exchange for food and lodging.
Then a friend invited him out, bought him a soft drink, but drank a beer in front of him.
"I thought if he could have a beer, I could have one, too," Broderson said. "But after one beer, I wanted another. In the course of a week, I had sold my Volvo, my fishing gear and most of my possessions."
He has since been living in downtown Great Falls, subsisting on food stamps and odd jobs.
A few weeks ago, he tried to commit suicide.
"I just gave up," he said. "I‘m not contributing anything. I‘m just taking up space."
Even as he sat in the hospital, Broderson was craving whiskey.
"I need a shot," he said softly. "There‘s a guy on my shoulder who keeps saying, ‘No,‘ but the guy in red on my other shoulder, he has a louder voice or something."
It‘s tragic, Harper says.
"If he could have gone down a different road, who knows what he could have done," Harper said of his childhood friend. "He was smart, popular with the girls because he was so cute. He could have done pretty much anything he put his mind to.
"But now, it‘s just amazing he‘s still alive."
Anne‘s story
Anne, a Great Falls grandmother, is a less visible alcoholic.
She was outgoing and efficient, unflappable in her handling of the public, the phones and her balky computer before she retired. She drank only in social situations — and at home.
Now a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, Anne asked that her name not be used.
She, too, has a family history of alcoholism and a difficult childhood. Unlike Broderson, who is physically addicted to alcohol, Anne has been diagnosed as a psychological alcoholic who instead uses the drug to cover emotional pain.
An only child with an alcoholic father who ignored her and a mother who smothered her with attention, Anne "never felt like I fit in."
Drinking helped her feel like she belonged, but that feeling always dried up the next morning, when she dried out.
"A lot of alcoholics drink because they‘re lonely," Anne said. "I call it the ‘hole in the soul‘ disease, because there‘s a void in your life that you‘re always trying to fill."
Anne said she spent her life trying to please others but ignoring her own needs. "Neither my husband nor I ever knew who I was because I was changing so fast trying to become what I thought my husband wanted."
After three suicide attempts came a divorce. After two DUI tickets came a recovery program.
But even a psychological addiction is hard to kick.
"I spent a lot of my early recovery in pain," she said. "I‘d want a drink so bad. I‘d look at the clock and say, ‘God, let me stay sober for the next five minutes.‘ A lot of days, I got through five minutes at a time."
It was also important for her to examine the psychological roots of her illness.
"I spent a lot of time trying to peel away my excuses and my defenses," Anne said. "But when I finally got to the bottom, 98 percent of the time I realized that I was driven by fear that I was inadequate."
Tammera‘s story
Tammera Nauts began drinking in her early teens, when her family would party with friends after racing sailboats. She would sneak a beer or pour some liquor in a pop can.
"I always felt like I was a little different," she said. "I never fit in. But when I drank, it filled a void and made me feel like I was a part of the crowd."
Her first big drunk came when she was 14: "I drank eight shots of whiskey in half an hour, blacked out and was raped.
"I didn‘t tell anyone," she said, wiping a tear from her eye. "There was the additional shame of having put myself in that position. I felt I was partly responsible for the rape.
In her later teens, she added marijuana and amphetamines to her binges before she turned her life around the first time.
"At 18, I got into Transcendental Meditation, became vegetarian, didn‘t drink or smoke, didn‘t even use sugar," she said. "It was the epitome of a lifestyle I wish I could get back to today."
Three years later, she got a job in a restaurant with a great wine cellar. She began drinking again, and became a heavy cocaine user.
She married at 20, became a mother at 21, went back to school and got a divorce.
"I knew there was something wrong — I was spiritually bankrupt, my body was breaking down, and none of my relationships were working out — but I never attributed it to alcohol," she said.
Then the alcoholic mother of an alcoholic friend killed herself.
That killed Nauts‘ denial.
"That was the first thing that really opened my eyes to the power of alcoholism," she said.
Discovery was painful.
"I began to realize that alcohol held my family together," Nauts said. "Our connection to each other was that we drank together.
Clean for 12 years, she is now a certified chemical dependency counselor, helping others avoid the problems she has experienced.
Nauts considers herself lucky to have survived alcoholism, but she has paid a price.
"I lost my husband and almost lost my daughter," she said.
Nauts says conquering her illness has been good for her.
"Knowing that I could survive something so devastating and that I chose life makes me feel like I can do anything I set my mind to and that I can create any kind of a life I want to," she said.
"It‘s very empowering, although I know there‘s a higher power who is lovingly supporting me," Nauts added. "I couldn‘t do this on my own — I‘m just not that powerful."
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