59 and Sober on the Streets of Music City

One man, alone from Michigan living in the woods with nine others who were at first strangers and now are friends is battling sobriety.

He is 59 and has been sober for a total of nine months thus far. He said at first, he was shaking all the time, but that has since passed. Now, he is starting to feel what normal is supposed to feel like.

He came to Nashville after growing tired of his family, he told me while outside at a busy intersection. “They drank all the time and always argued,” he said. Alcohol can often lead to heightened arguments that are needless while sober.

“That's all drugs and alcohol do, they cut off your emotions in the end.” - Ringo Starr

Carded for alcohol

The sun beats down on his leathery face as he keeps his hands in his pockets to keep his jeans in place while he walks slightly hunched. It is clear to see that he walks with pain in every step as if the soles of his feet are raw. His hair is gray and wiry and when he talks he keeps one eye slightly clinched.

His meals sometimes come from trashcans in downtown Nashville on a Friday night. Tourist are quick to throw away a half-eaten sandwich, which becomes his dinner at times.

“The government passed that law so they card ya’ up until you're 105 years old now,” he told me. I laughed and responded, “Well, you don’t look anywhere close to 105.” He shook his head and said, “But, I can’t buy a drink cause I don’t have ID.”

“My life was a wandering; I never had a homeland. It was a matter of being constantly tossed about, without rest; nowhere and never did I find a home.” - Jan Amos Komenský, a Czech philosopher (1592-6170)

A life of crime and time in the pen

I guess you could say the tattoos were a gift from the penitentiary. His arms were laced in human skulls, evil faces and more.

Eddie Estepp has had a long life of crime, “I’ve done over 30-years of my life in the penitentiary,” he told me. But many would question, what started him off on the wrong foot?

Estepp told me, “My mother and father was drinkers, there was always alcohol involved in our lives. There were six boys and two girls, all six of my brothers has been to the penitentiary – I got two in the penitentiary now in the state of West Virginia.” Like his brothers, he too spent time behind bars for theft, felony assault, evading police, receiving stolen property, grand larceny and even “Riot in the 1st Degree.”

Alcohol was part of the problem. He said, “Alcohol was my drug of choice.”

Now that Estepp is out of the pen he has changed his way of thinking. While standing outside on a beautiful fall day in Tennessee he said, “You know, I always thought a good looking truck, a good looking woman and a bottle of liquor was a man’s way – well a man’s way is working and keeping a roof over his kids head, and paying his debt to society, being a part of the community and helping others.”

Today, Estepp is clean and sober, “God’s turned my life around. I no longer steal, I no longer drink, I’ve been clean for six months now going on seven. Like I told ya, I just got out of the penitentiary and I’ll never touch another drink of alcohol, never.”

I asked, “What would you say to someone wanting to put the bottle down?” He looked to the side and then said, “Find that higher power because nobody can quit alone, you need that higher power. Jesus Christ was mine.”

American poet Charles Bukowski (1920-1994) knew alcohol well and often wrote about the issues that surrounded the drink involving fictional characters that came to life page after page. In a 1978 novel called Women, Bukowski wrote, “I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn't have a god, politics, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. I didn't make for an interesting person. I didn't want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone. On the other hand, when I got drunk I screamed, went crazy, got all out of hand. One kind of behavior didn't fit the other. I didn't care.”

Dark Subject, Dark Composition

As with anything, there are rules in photography and rules in life. The rules in life are often hard facts whereas photography, an art, has rules that are loose.

Typically, I don’t aim for dark pictures, but some subjects and locations call for it. I felt this was one that called for it. Striking a balance between light and dark are usually important, but sometimes the darkness can illustrate the true darkness of the subject, a problem or the future.

The Photo:

In this photo, after someone called 911, the man tried to explain how sober he was to police and paramedics. The Metro Officer gave him a choice of the hospital or jail. After the man thought wholeheartedly about the two choices, he picked the hospital.

Prior to police arriving he fell over the edge of a wall, hit his head and then stumbled over to a set of steps leading down to the edge of the Cumberland River and passed out.

Police and rescue spend a considerable amount of time on intoxication calls. Officers often give the choice of a hospital visit or a jail visit in order to allow someone time to sober up or even seek help. The reasoning, is the fear of someone accidentally harming themselves just as this gentleman proved was likely. Of course not on purpose, but on accident.

Public Intoxication:

The FBI National Crime Report annually lists over 1,500,000 arrests for public intoxication. Of course, not all agencies report total statistics to the FBI.

Auto Vehicle Accidents:

An analysis of alcohol dependence among trauma center patients found that the prevalence of alcoholism was substantially higher among vehicular crash victims and other trauma patients than among the equivalent general population group. More than half of trauma patients with a positive BAC at the time of the trauma were diagnosed as alcoholics. – SOURCE: "Alcoholism at the Time of Injury Among Trauma Center Patients: Vehicular Crash Victims Compared with Other Patients,# Accident Analysis and Prevention, Vol. 29, No. 6, 1997.

Crime and Alcohol:

Among the 11.1 million victims of violence each year, 1 in 4 were certain that the offender had been drinking before committing the crime. – U.S. Dept. of Justice

About 1 in 5 alcohol-related incidents involved a weapon other than the offender’s hands, feet, or fists. – U.S. Dept. of Justice

About a third of all convicted inmates in local jails described themselves as having been daily drinkers at the time of the offense. – U.S. Dept. of Justice

Alcohol and College:

Death: It is possible that more than 1,800 college students between the ages of 18 and 24 die each year from alcohol- related unintentional injuries, including motor-vehicle crashes -Hingson et al. 2009

Roughly 20 percent of college students meet the criteria for an alcohol use disorder in a given year (8 percent alcohol abuse, 13 percent alcohol dependence). -Blanco et al. 2008

95% of all violent crime on college campuses involves the use of alcohol by the assailant, victim or both. – National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, Inc.

Drinking Underage:

Excessive drinking is responsible for more than 4,300 deaths among underage youth each year, and cost the U.S. $24 billion in economic costs in 2010. –Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Treatment Vs. Criminal:

One study found that each dollar spent on substance abuse treatment saved $5.60 in terms of fewer arrests, incarcerations, food stamp use, and less child welfare and medical costs. In other words, if $75,000,000 were spent on public intoxication arrests last year, then $13,392,857.14 could have been saved and utilized for treatment. . – National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, Inc.

“A man who drinks too much on occasion is still the same man as he was sober. An alcoholic, a real alcoholic, is not the same man at all. You can't predict anything about him for sure except that he will be someone you never met before.” ― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

Help Someone Today

"We can't help everyone, but everyone can help someone." - Ronald Reagan

A little too much party?

"I am more afraid of alcohol than of all the bullets of the enemy." - Stonewall Jackson

Life

This was shot on a very busy street in downtown Nashville at 9:30 PM.