My Journey
I was born in 1978 in Ohio and grew up with a mother and father who loved me and took me everywhere they went. My dad was a former hockey player and so naturally I took an interest in the game of hockey. But, the outlook was pretty grim – the first time my parents took me to the local hockey rink, I was around two years old. I got on the ice and was full of fear, wobbling around, doing a side shuffle, holding on for dear life against the boards of the rink. I was giving my best “Spiderman” impersonation. The second time we went out, I went directly to center ice, laying face down, and was more interested in licking the ice than skating. My parents had a conversation, and it would appear after a couple times on the ice, I wasn’t going to be the next hockey player in the family. My dad continued to have patience with me in the early days as I developed. He became my coach and mentor that eventually led me to a professional hockey career.
In 1980, when I was two years old, my dad was involved in a drunk driving accident. He was thrown from the inside of the vehicle and landed 100ft from his sports car. Lacerations under his neck, stomach, crushed ribs, broken jaw, and when the ambulance arrived on scene and took him to the hospital, they had labeled him “dead on arrival”. My dad was dead for a moment in time. He revived and eventually recovered and this was the beginning of being a child of an alcoholic.
Learned behaviors later led to me following in my father’s footsteps. At the age of 14, I got into drugs and alcohol that progressively became worse as my addict self took over. My professional hockey career later on in life was shortened due to my passion switching primarily to drugs and then a close second was alcohol, and hockey became third. I had coaches along the way who tried to help, one of which is a coach today in the NHL, Pete DeBoer. We had multiple conversations of “being and acting like a professional”. I was 20 years old at the time. He told me to “get serious as I was going to play professional hockey the following season”. He noticed that I liked to party too much and eventually traded me away from the Plymouth Whalers to the Kitchener Rangers. He said to me that “this is a fun place to play where I could have fun”. This was a hard blow because the Plymouth Whalers were a contending team that year for the Memorial Cup with the talent that produced many NHL players. In other words, what Pete was saying is that I wasn’t a contender. My drinking escalated… work hard, play hard was my thinking. Dying by the time I was 30 years old was something I had come to terms with.
Fast forward to July 29th, 1999. Life wasn’t getting any better for me. I had my 21st birthday party at my parents house while they were up at our family cottage. My friends still remember that party as there were eventually police officers who showed up to try and break the party up. The night for me was and still is today in my mind a blur. I blacked out at some point in the night from all the booze I had consumed. What I do remember is the house was full to the gills with people. The cars wrapped around multiple streets that looked like some kind of precession. The next morning my uncle came over and saw the state I was in. He wanted to take me to the hospital to get my stomach pumped but I shrugged it off and said that I was OK. The house was a wreck, holes in the walls, bottles everywhere, and it was obvious that there had been a party. I tried to clean up the mess along with some friends that stayed over to help. I even had some friends patch the walls up to try and hide and fix the damage. I knew that conversation when my dad got home was going to be a doozy. My previous coach, Pete DeBoer was right, I needed to start acting like a professional so I checked myself into rehab a few days after my 21st birthday. This was a 30 day program at Hazelden in Minnesota. I ended up getting sober for a short period of time, roughly 6 months before I reverted back to old behaviors with drinking and now drugs that I never tried. The event that was the nail in the coffin for me was in the minors playing for the New Orleans Brass back in the 2000-2001 hockey season, I was 22 years old. Ted Sator, another former NHL coach had to release me from the hockey team two weeks before playoffs started due to my off ice habits. He said to me, “Smitty, some guys can do this off the ice and some guys can’t, and you’re not one of them”, as he walked me to my car. This was the tough reality, and a harsh lesson! You would think this would be a turning point for the better. It wasn’t. The feeling of being angry, frustrated, embarrassed, was on a whole other level. How would I tell my dad of what happened? How could I go home and face the music?
I took off and went to Pensacola, FL where I had a former teammate living down there that I could stay with. I waited for another teammate to head down there and get away from everything. This was the height of my addiction. I found myself one morning in April of 2001 after a night of not sleeping, drunk, and sitting in the sand on Pensacola Beach, asking myself… “Is this what life’s all about?”. Watching the waves roll in looking out into the ocean thinking, “had I experienced enough pain?”. This wasn’t the end of my addiction days but it was the beginning of a spark that ignited something in my thought process.
Relationships that I had with women, didn’t have a standing chance because I wasn’t healthy. I got engaged to a gal back in the fall/winter of 2001-2002. She eventually couldn’t stay in that relationship and engagement. The ring was given back to me and the wedding was called off. Good for her that she loved herself enough to get out. The pain I felt at that time was deep. You know that pit in your stomach ache?Drugs and alcohol ruining another area of my life. I picked up the phone, February 17th, 2003, and the first person I chose to call was my mother. She came over to my house that day. After explaining to her what had happened, she said to me, “you have a choice when I walk out of your house today. You can either pick up the phone and get some help, or keep on the path you’re currently on”, which was utter pain and suffering, and leading me closer to death. As a mother, she talks about “shaking leaving my house that day”, but it was the best thing that she could’ve done for me. It was healthy because she didn’t enable my addiction or try to comfort me. I made the choice that day when she walked out that I wanted to live. I had hit my bottom in this progressive addiction. So I picked up the phone to call a friend who I knew that was clean and sober. He became my mentor which led me to finally becoming sober.
Today I’m 44 years old, and fortunate to share with you that I’m a husband, and now a father. Those old intensions of being dead by the time I was 30, are long gone! I have over 19 years of clean living from drugs and alcohol. I have used the tools of support group meetings, the fellowship of men and woman who I sit with weekly to share stories, fitness, nutrition, and other hobbies that have helped switch my negative addiction into healthy ones. I have joy and fulfillment back into my life!
As I mentioned earlier, I am a father, to a 2.5 year old boy. Gabriel is going to ask me questions one day that will hopefully be eye opening about his father. My job is to help him on his journey and in doing that, my learned behaviors from childhood have been changed – the chains of addiction have been broken. he won’t see his father acting weird because of mind altering substances. Because here’s the thing… when I was two years old, I licked the ice. I don’t want the ice to lick him.
My mission now is to share my story to as many people as possible, in an effort to help others that are suffering from not making the necessary changes in their life, to live a life that they truly desire. The good news is you can change today and get the help you need to live a life that allows you to learn how to analyze negative behaviors that you want to replace with positive ones. This will not only add value to your lifestyle, but will impact future generations and others around you.