Our Stories

When it comes to addiction, it doesn't care who you are, what your position is, how much work you have to do, or who will be affected if you can't get out of bed. My story is long, and many of those I care about the most have been affected by addiction, the family disease. Would things have been different if I knew then what I know now, I will never know. Although the path has been challenging and turbulent along the way, I am grateful for this journey and thankful to be where we (my family) are now. 

One can only imagine how rapidly life can change because of one moment until it happens, and quickly it did for us. I suddenly found myself in a part of the aviation world many do not even know about, trying to navigate my way and unsure where to turn. While the airline company may have taken care of the pilot and aimed them in the right direction for help, I was standing there like a non-rev at the gate with the boarding door closed, now what? It was an incredibly isolating and very lonely experience with little support and few who would even understand. The only thing I could do was try to hold it all together the best I could hiding alone in the stigma.

Looking back, I wish there would have been one person with a similar relatable experience who would have reached out to me, or I would have been able to find them, who could have pointed me early on in the right direction, supporting myself, family, and the pilot in my life. My personal experience has fueled my determination to make a difference and be a voice for change so that the individual coming behind me can find that person to reach out to, someone who understands, and has been there. You are reading this because it only took one individual to stop and listen to a stranger and genuinely care; I will be eternally thankful as it has made all the difference in one family's life. In our pursuit to understand the disease of addiction, my pilot and I found ourselves at the NTSB meeting on pilot mental health in Washington, DC in 2023, it was there that HIMS truly entered my life and will forever be changed. 

It has taken a lot to go through this process, and its toll has been rough, but good things have slowly emerged from the initial shock of this new world. Because of the experience I endured, I decided to follow suit with my pilot and pursue a degree in mental health counseling with a focus on addiction and trauma. Although this journey may not be a norm or even expected, it has been a considerable part of our growth through all of this. We are dedicated to working towards being able to show support to others who find themselves in similar situations. 

I wish I could say this journey was short and quick, but it has been very long and very hard. It takes a lot of work and dedication towards the family, addiction education, and being very tenacious! It has been many hours of conversations, countless days of research, and years to get to where we are today. This has been the most challenging experience, and it has taken a lot of perseverance for our family to get through this, but slowly and surely, we are one day at a time. If I have any words for all of this, don't give up, there are those here who do care and will listen.

I don't  remember my first ride in an airplane.  Actually, I have no memories at  all of life before age five, when my family returned from Laos in 1966.   Then I have the good memories:  a house being built, my first pony and  the green quilt of the Oklahoma prairie as seen from the front seat of a  Cessna.  During one of my father's manic phases, he had started a  flying club with two airplanes, a 172 and a Sierra Beechcraft for his  fellow Engineering Professors.  About once a month, perched on a large  cushion, I got to keep a sharp look out for airlines, while we flew  around these strange patterns with him often wearing a weird hood  covering his eyes. I was alway amazed at his ability to pick out the  runway so easily.

Neither my parents nor any of the grandparents  drank or kept alcohol in the house.  Mom's side was Mennonite and Dad's  side was Hard Working Folk.  Except for the flying, I thought the adult  world as boring and glum.  In Stillwater Oklahoma High School seniors  with excellent grades only needed to attend morning classes.  Boredom  set in the very first week and on a lark I enrolled in the county's  Vocational Tech Auto Mechanics class.  At the time I didn't know an  Allen wrench from a Phillips head.  There was one other girl and sixty  guys in that program.  After eleven years of being in the brainy/nerdy  group at school it was very exciting to discover working class males,  mechanical things and best of all alcohol.

Strawberry Daiquiris  served up at my first and only VoTech party transformed me from a flat  chested, pimply faced, shy teen to a sexy and funny lady.  Memories from  that night include flirting, laughing and then some how suddenly  vomiting in a too white bathroom and panicking trying to clean it up.   There was no memory of driving home or going to bed.  The next morning I  woke up excited.  I had found what I was missing in life, vowing to do  that again.  But next time I would not drink quite SO much!  During that  senior year I also took up my father's offer to finance lessons with  his flying club, only $20 per hour.  I soloed on a clear, calm, chilly  morning before school.  My 250 lb instructor warned me that the plane  would perform better when he got out.  And like my heart, that Cessna  seemed to leap in the air and like that first drink, a passion for  flying was born.

With the exception of my instrument flying class  and Aviation History I had failing  grades my first year at OSU.  With  my parents encouragement I dropped out of college.  Opportunities for  flying and for partying seemed to open up magically and I took them.  I  worked my way up in the aviation world flying larger aircraft.  In the  alcohol world I worked downward,eliminating various types of spirits as  not agreeing with me.  Finding beer to be the only drink which would  allow me to stay up and remember how to get home.  In spite of one scary  night, drunk and fighting off a stranger in the back of a parked car  outside Wichita, Kansas, I wasn't to have an inkling that I had alcohol  problems until moving to Detroit in 1984.

Detroit airport was  encircled in Concertina wire and dilapidated homes loomed in the  neighborhood. It didnt take me long after arriving during snow flurries  in cutoff jeans and a Honda Civic to realize that I wasn't in Kansas  anymore.  The Part 135 cargo flying was running hot as the car companies  were doing "just in time" inventory for their plants.  Most nights I  would fly out a box of screws or such to an East Coast factory and  return.  Often dawn found me drinking a couple of beers with breakfast  as we had ten hours off and I needed eight for bottle to throttle.  I  quickly had a couple thousand hours and got my ATP, but no social life  at all.

I then met a red-headed construction worker/banner towing  J3 Cub owner.  It was love at first flight!  He picked me up for the  first date with an ice chest of beer.  We drank, danced and kissed!  I  was so elated.  By the next day I was so very low.  While recuperating  in a dusty pilot's lounge after flying executives to Canada I started  doing the math.  I was airborne that morning just under eight hours  since we had left the last bar.  I promised myself that this would never  happen again but I rationalized that Bill was my love, my soul mate,  the man I should marry.  We were wed within a year and my years of  attempts to control my drinking began.

In spite of my best  efforts (swearing off with an oath, never drinking at home, drinking  only natural wines etc.) three years later Bill and I ended a night of  bar hopping with a little fight, which left me with a black eye.  That  bruise lasted longer than all the previous regrets from my bingeing.   This was shortly after I had passed training and was a 727 engineer for a  major airline.  With just a little bit of yellow remaining, I put on  makeup and Ray Bans and suited up to show for a trip.  In a weird God  Coincidence, my former sim partner Claire was in the ladies room in ORD  Flight Ops. She said "Oh my God Tami, what happened to you!"  I was  mortified, for my conscience was much easier to deceive when I was only  lying to myself. And thus started the DRY period of Hell.  With white  knuckles and clenched fists, aided by flying as much as possible with  minimum time layovers, I DID NOT DRINK any more.  Emotional swings which  are so common in early sobriety came on strong.  Life as I knew it was  over, and with the alcohol gone my marriage was miserable too.

One  evening returning from a four day trip I had to pull over on the  shoulder of the highway because I was sobbing.  Much shaken, I called a  Mental Health Hotline later that night.  God bless the therapist to whom  I was referred because at the very first session she insisted I attend  Alanon.  My first meeting was in a church basement in Antioch,  Illinois.  The AA's met in a large social hall but they directed me to  the Alanon meeting, at the door of what formerly was the choir robes  closet across the room.  Eight women and one man sat somberly around a  large table.  Reading the propaganda hanging on the wall I decided I  would do one step a month and be well in a year.  Bill's drinking was  definitely the problem and for one dollar a night I could cancel my new  therapist and save a lot of money.

The AA's were laughing,  clapping and cheering in sharp contrast to the quiet, sometimes teary  sharing in our little Alanon room.  But the effect of the love and  comfort were immediate--no judgement of drinking here.  When I found out  the group met every single day of the week and went for pie afterward I  had companionship I desperately needed.  We went to the big AA Saturday  night speaker meetings.  I was amazed at the similarity of the inner  feelings and experiences.  Why, they drank just I did!

Sticking  to my plan to work a Step a month, five months later I got an Alanon  sponsor, a lovely woman about my mother's age to hear my 5th Step. I had  heard that we are only as sick as our secrets.  Tearfully, I told her  five mortifiying secrets.  She put her arms around me, hugged me and  told me that she loved me.  Then she said something that was to change  the course of my life:  "Do you realize that during most of those  situations you were under the influence of alcohol?"

In October  of 1992, my mother and I flew to Thailand to visit several students she  had hosted in previous years.  On her birthday the group shared a bottle  of champagne.  It had been nearly six months since my last drinking  debacle.  Could I drink just one little glass?  Succcess!  But the rest  of the night was occupied with alcoholic thoughts.  The very next  evening, our last in Thailand, a large group went on a river boat dinner  cruise. A male friend showed up with a bottle of whiskey, asking each  in our party if they would like a drink.  As he asked all around the  table, I practiced in my mind saying "No" as every other lady did.   Then, at my turn I said "Yes, please".  Inside my head I was stunned  those words came from my mouth.  However, no one seemed to dare or was  even looking at me. I said  to myself "Tami, don't drink it."  But I  did.  A small incessant buzz started in my head.  Inside my mind's eye I  could picture my friends' AA coins.  The words "To Thine Own Self Be  True" played and re-played in my head.  That night I went to bed  discouraged and hopeles.  I was defeated.

Back in Illinois,  instead of crossing the room to join Alanon, I stayed with the AAs.  I  stuttered saying the word "Alcoholic" after my name the first time.  But  no one was surprised I was there, they had thought I was a drunk all  along.  I don't know why but after admitting complete defeat in Bangkok I  have never had to take a drink again.  I do know I have been very, very  fortunate.  By circumstances, seconds, and inches, in both flying and  in recovery, various small miracles have occurred.  Repeatedly God has  done for me what I could not do for myself.

Bill wasn't ready to  quit driking yet and I felt I couldn't stay sober with him.  We amicably  divorded and I moved to California, where I met my second husband,  Jack.  We discovered BOAF at the San Diego International BOAF Convention  Banquet.  I was so surprised to see so many happy, healthy, well  dressed couples.  As a couple we had two goals:  To raise children and  continue to be an active part of BOAF.  Over the next twenty years, with  the help of AA, counseling and God we parented two daughters and  attended many BOAF annual conventions.

Jack had a heart attack in  April of 2018 on a hike during a Casa Palmera retreat for recoving  pilots.  Thankfully, BOAF friends were at my side that day.  He might  have died at a time and location where I would not have been along.  We  had already registered and booked a  room for the BOAF Calgary  Convention that summer, so I went, traveling by myself, a new widow.   The Calgary nest welcomed me and wrapped their arms around me.  While  drinking mint tea with sober pilot friends at a nearby Indian restaurant  I laughed a real belly laugh, my first since he died.

BOAF  carried me again the next year in Dallas where I was "volun-told" into  the Secretary/Treasurer position of BOAF.  I think my friends knew it  was better for me to be busy.  I count it a major God Coincidence that  when Covid came, and my 757 fleet was parked I had both our BOAF credit  card and BOAF history to be able to reach pilots on ZOOM.  Through that  isolating summer the daily Big Flock meeting was a life line for me.   Instead of being the worst thing that could happen to our group it  opened new horizons.  We have truly been launched into the fourth  dimension.  I am still grateful and living one day at a time.  I don't  know what the future holds for me, my life is still very unsettled but  this mjuch I do know:  BOAF will be a part if it because I will always  be a part of BOAF.

Tami H.

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