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By Root 1432 0

left the program and went back to drinking. Sadly, on November 16, 1981, Bill fell down drunk in his own home, lacerating his head and bleeding to death. When his body was discovered more than four days later, doctors estimated that he had been conscious for more than thirty minutes after the fall, but didn’t recognize the seriousness of his injury due to the level of alcohol in his system. When I heard about Bill’s death, it saddened me deeply. I knew that could have easily been me had it not been for the turnaround I had experienced in my life.

And I was indeed a very, very grateful man.

11

REAWAKENING

AS THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE APOLLO 11 MOON LANDing approached, I was experiencing a reawakening in my own life. Following my personal epiphany in October 1978, the milestone from which I dated my sobriety, I was ready to plunge back into helping America’s space program be more farsighted and productive. I also felt compelled to help others fight their battles with depression and alcoholism. Perhaps they could learn from what I had experienced.

I had once been known as the “best scientific mind in space” according to Life magazine. I even carried a slide rule on the Gemini 12 flight in case I needed to correct the computer on the rendezvous maneuvers. That’s because I knew if the computer said we were twenty feet out of plane, I could count on ten of that, but not all twenty I could pretty much figure out rendezvous maneuvers in my head.

But the ten years since my moonwalk were not filled with achievements, bold accomplishments, and grand acclamations. It had been my decade of personal hell. By 1979, I felt that all that was changing for me. I still suffered occasional setbacks from depression, but overall my life was on an upswing. What helped me most was following the recommendations in the Alcoholics Anonymous “Big Book”—the book in which the twelve-step recovery program was originally outlined—to get my eyes off myself and start helping somebody else. I hoped to do that by attending classes and seminars in which I could study to become a consultant on alcoholism. I was forty-nine years old when I started a one-week course in June 1979, at the University of Utah’s School on Alcoholism and Other Drug Dependencies. I went from there to Rutgers University in New Jersey for a three-week-long-summer-school course at the Center for Alcohol Studies. Both of these courses provided tremendous keys for understanding my own alcoholism and recognizing alcoholic tendencies in others.

As part of our class work at Rutgers, I was assigned to do a project report on some facet of alcoholism. I chose the delicate subject of alcohol’s effects on pilots, specifically commercial airline pilots; and the employee programs designed to combat alcoholism at Eastern Airlines. Flying and alcohol seemed to go together for many pilots. I knew that to be true. When I was flying combat missions in Korea and later practicing to deliver nuclear bombs from our bases in Germany and other parts of the world, my first stop after landing was the officers’ club. Of course, a smart pilot doesn’t dare be impaired when flying, but once out of the cockpit and away from the stress, it is time to relax and let your hair down. Even as an astronaut, I drank regularly and heavily right up to a few days before lifting off for the moon. So I was acutely aware of how pilots tended to relax with the help of alcohol, and I also knew how addictive misusing alcohol could become.

My choice to study the employee programs at Eastern Airlines had not been arbitrary or accidental. My aunt had been a flight attendant with Eastern, and had later married a vice president of the company. Additionally, Eastern’s CEO and chairman of the board was none other than former astronaut Frank Borman. I thought for sure I’d be welcomed to do my research with Eastern.

I wasn’t. When I went to Eastern’s headquarters in Miami to explore what the airline was doing to help pilots who might have alcohol problems, I was informed that Frank had just revised Eastern’s procedures.