RAF MILDENHALL, England -- Editor’s note: This is the second in a three-part series highlighting a Team Mildenhall member’s personal journey through alcoholism and out the other side. Look out for part three, coming soon. Part 1 can be found at https://www.mildenhall.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/4354760/recovery-resiliency-leap-of-faith-takes-snco-from-adapt-to-warrant-officer/
Two steps forward, two steps back
Peltonen graduated from the ADAPT program after six months and thought at that point, everything was better. He believed he now had the tools and could drink responsibly – but that wasn’t the case. Although not immediately, he soon fell back into his daily drinking pattern and would drink excessively on the weekends, then repeat the cycle.
“The internal issue was still there. I wasn’t really working on myself and I wasn’t establishing a baseline of who I was, to handle and cope with these stressors. The Air Force talks about the ‘Pillars of Wellness’ – physical, mental and spiritual – those are the things I was still lacking in that regard,” he recalled. “I had the tools, but I wasn’t surrounding myself with a social network; I wasn’t physically exercising as much as I should have; I wasn’t exploring the spiritual path, whatever that might mean.”
Fast-forward to 2018 – his marriage had crumbled and a divorce was looming.
‘I need help’
“On a Friday, I started drinking my sadness away over the weekend, then Monday I went back to ADAPT – again voluntarily – to tell them I’d regressed back to drinking and needed help,” Peltonen explained. “Capt. Patience and his team were there and met with me once again to decide what we could do differently this time around.”
He then returned to the same in-patient facility in Dallas for another 30-day program, this time trying different methods than before. After graduating the second time, he returned to the second half of the ADAPT program, again meeting with his command team halfway through. This time, the doctor advised him to choose abstinence from alcohol. At the weekly meetings there were random blood tests to check whether attendees had been drinking or not. After working hard to gain his sobriety once more, he graduated for a second time.
“By that point, my leadership had changed and I thought I had things finally figured out. I had the tools from last time, but this time I decided I was going to be abstinent, try going to these meetings and do other things that had been discussed. I got rid of all the alcohol, was sticking true to it, and was doing everything suggested throughout the ADAPT program and the in-patient meetings.”
From highs to lows
Around six months later, Peltonen was feeling really good about himself.
“I was about seven-months sober, my life and work were going well, my leadership seemed to appreciate me, I had orders to California – which was wonderful – and everything was looking good. Then around Christmas-time, I drove to Minnesota to see my family and decided to have a celebratory drink. I thought, ‘It’s Christmas, I’m with my family – one drink won’t hurt!’ But that very quickly made me slide back down that track, because once the alcohol hit me, I would start feeling like life was good and thinking it wasn’t that big of a deal. The mental gymnastics I would do to convince myself, and trick myself into drinking, was significant.
Wake-up call
“The holidays finished and I had just driven back home after New Year’s Eve. It was January 2019, and I was playing video games with my friends online. I had relapsed, and one of my friends said to me, ‘Hey, did you hear what happened to Doug? He’s in the hospital.’ Doug was my friend and former drinking buddy who I really looked up to and had been a mentor to me as an Airman. He was about six years older than me.”
Doug had decided to go cold turkey and stop drinking on New Year’s Day, but had done it without medical supervision. His plan was to just cut out alcohol completely.
“He’d told his leadership, wife and friends he was going to check into a hotel, lock himself away there and stop drinking over the weekend, to just kick the habit,” recalled Peltonen. “On the Saturday, nobody had heard from him, so they went and knocked on his hotel room door. He answered but had kind of a glazed look on his face. They called an ambulance, he went into a coma, and two days later he passed away.
“I saw myself in Doug in a lot of ways,” remarked Peltonen. “We both drank the same, and I remember when I was drinking, I would always tell myself that I would stop when I was 40, or 50, thinking, ‘Let the party go on a little longer – I have time!’ But when my friend died due to drinking, I had the feeling of mortality and got really scared.”
The future looks bleak
It was at that point Peltonen felt like he was floundering and was at a loss of what to do. He didn’t want to lose his orders to California but was worried that if he sought help it would also mean losing the assignment he wanted so much. What caused him even more worry was that this would be the third time and he could potentially be kicked out of the Air Force.
“I spent January trying yet again to do controlled drinking,” he said. “By this point I was sleeping with a towel on my pillow as I would sweat overnight; I would wake up in the morning dry heaving over the sink and splashing water over my face so I could go to work in a reasonable state. During that month I just kept repeating the cycle – I would be shaking at work, feel miserable, get home and try and try and taper myself. But once the alcohol hit me, I just thought, ‘Well, let me just drink the rest of this night away.’ It was just a reoccurring cycle.”
On Feb. 3, 2019, after drinking over the entire weekend, Peltonen hit rock bottom.
Finally – a lifeline
“No amount of drinking was increasing my happiness, and I felt so lost, lonely, isolated and defeated. I remember just looking through my phone, scrolling through my contacts thinking who I could ask for help. There was one person who stood out – Philip Reaves. He was someone who lived near me and he carried himself with a fashion of integrity, and was a man of character, that I sent him a text message.
“I don’t remember exactly what it said as I was very drunk at the time, but I basically asked him if he had time to talk,” he recalled. “I’m very grateful to him, because he immediately said, ‘Sure,’ and came over to my house, picked me and my dog up and took us back to his house.”
They sat on the front porch together, Reaves gave him a water, and they talked for hours before he drove Peltonen home.
“I fell asleep on the couch and when I woke up around 8 p.m., I saw a missed call from the first sergeant – at this point I had his number saved on my phone. I called him back and when he asked me if everything was alright, I knew where the conversation was going. I admitted to him that no, it wasn’t, admitted I’d been drinking, and told him I needed help,” explained Peltonen.
So, for a third time he checked himself into ADAPT, this time seeing a different doctor. Peltonen described how he was in such bad shape when he was en route to the detox clinic, the doctor told him that if at any point he was feeling woozy on the way, to sip some beer because he was suffering from withdrawal symptoms. This was to ensure he arrived there safely and didn’t fall into a coma on the journey there.
“I went through the detox, then to my third and final in-patient session. That time they sent me to San Antonio. It was while there that I felt a change. I’d already made peace with myself to the fact that I was getting out of the Air Force, and would probably go and live with my mom,” he said. “I also noticed the other in-patients were the same – they can only teach you so many things, and it’s kind of like a quick recovery rather than a long-term solution.”
Listen and learn
While there, he also learned some skills and finally decided that he was tired of feeling defeated and tired of feeling the way he was about life, relationships and work. He realized his best course of action now was to do as he was being told, and just listen to the advice of others.
“By then, if someone said ‘jump,’ I asked how high; if they said, ‘Go to 90 meetings in 90 days,’ or ‘exercise daily,’ I’d do it,” Peltonen remarked. “There were many times I wanted to stop and give up, but I remembered that promise to myself during my last in-patient session, and decided I wasn’t going to listen to that inner voice any longer; I was just going to do what I was told and stop overthinking things – so that’s what I did.”
‘Tyttö : My saving grace’
“There was a three-month period where nothing was fun or interesting. I played video games and watched television, but nothing was enjoyable. I had to grit my teeth and buckle down to keep true to that promise to myself that I wasn’t going to drink and I would seek help if I did feel like drinking. I would go on walks with my dog, Tyttö (‘girl’ in Finnish), an Australian Shepherd – she was my saving grace and was the reason I got out of the house to take her for walks. I would have stayed in the house, but I had an obligation to take care of her, so I hiked with her and went to the lakes.”
Six months after graduating from the ADAPT program for the third and final time, Peltonen started applying the tools he’d learned from the meetings, and decided he was finally going to take ownership of his actions.
“Yes, the world can be cruel and unfair, but I thought, ‘What’s my role in this? What can I do to change it?’ I stopped looking at the world and life in terms of what was going on right at that point and started thinking about the future positively. I started forming my own goals and taking it day-by-day. I thought to myself, ‘I’m not going to drink today, and that’s what matters!’” he said.
He soon hit a year of sobriety and started seeking opportunities to help him expand in the Pillars of Wellness between physical, mental and spiritual. One of the first things he then did was tell his chief that he wanted to cross train into cyber security and asked for help to make it happen.
“He said, ‘Absolutely – here’s what I’ll do; what are YOU going to do?’ I told him I could get the security- plus certification and start college to get my bachelor’s degree in cyber security. This was in 2019/2020 timeframe,” recalled the master sergeant.
Between them, they came up with a game-plan for the year ahead. Both did what they agreed, and after a year he was approved to cross-train into cyber security.
Using the ADAPT program in the correct way – voluntarily asking for help from his leadership – went a long way in ensuring he was able to keep his Top Secret clearance. If he hadn’t reached out but instead let it get to the point where he had been ordered to attend, his story would have had a completely different ending.
Maintaining his clearance meant he could continue to pursue his goal of a new career in cyber security, which would eventually lead Peltonen to embark on an even bigger dream – one he’d never thought possible.
Editor’s note:
Learn more about Peltonen’s struggle in Part One, and the journey which steered him to a much brighter future in Part Three of his story, on the RAF Mildenhall website.
The Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention and Treatment program promotes readiness, health and wellness through the prevention and treatment of substance misuse by providing comprehensive education and treatment to active-duty service members.
The ADAPT clinic offers services including education, outreach and treatment.
- Educational services include alcohol brief counseling, and substance brief counseling, which provide evidence-based practical strategies to reduce alcohol consumption and related negative consequences
- Outreach teaches alcohol and drug abuse awareness and prevention at weekly newcomers’ briefings, the first-term enlisted course, commanders’ calls and unit immersions at the request of commanders and first sergeants.
- Treatment occurs when members meet diagnostic criteria per the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders for an alcohol-use disorder or substance-related disorder. The ADAPT program provides evidence-based treatment using cognitive behavioral coping skills training and motivational interviewing training during a 16-session program involving weekly sessions for eight weeks, then biweekly sessions for eight weeks.
For more information on the ADAPT program, call DSN 314-226-8602/8603, or commercial, 01638 548602/548603, or walk in to the ADAPT clinic at RAF Lakenheath, building 922.