North Bay police constable Steve Taylor has made some horrible decisions in his life. In Part 2, he talks about the role PTSD and alcoholism played in making those decisions, about whether he wants to go back to the police service, and his chances of surviving with the odds stacked against him.
See Part 1:Troubled cop Steve Taylor on drinking, and life with PTSD.
His 45-day jail sentence aside, Taylor realizes all too well that what he is really facing is a life sentence.
“I will always be an alcoholic, I will always have PTSD, but now I have the tools to manage them. This is my life now. I have to change my thinking to stay alive so absolutely it’s a life sentence.
“They say with time it gets easier, the symptoms get less, but I’ll always have it."
With the drinking and driving, Taylor says it was never about thinking he could do it, and as a policeman could get away with it.
“Clearly that’s not the case. I’ve been charged three times. Bottom line is I got behind the wheel because at the time I honestly believed I was fine. My judgement and my brain is so broken that I had a hard time figuring out if I was drunk or sober. That may seem very hard to understand, but it’s true.
“That’s not an excuse, it is what it is. That’s where I was at those times when it happened. It just never occurred to me that I was drunk, that I shouldn’t be driving.
“Your thinking, your thought process and your judgement gets so distorted. It affects every part of your life.
“The things that I did in acts of addiction, I did them freely. You couldn’t pay me to do those thing today.
“You could say, ‘Here Steve, drink this 60 ouncer of vodka’. No! Why not? Because it’s going to kill me, because it’s against the law, because I might kill myself, I might kill an innocent person.
“I know you don’t drink and drive, no one has to tell me that. No-one’s beaten themselves up or punished themselves more about that fact than myself. I just cannot believe that this is now my life. It’s surreal.”
When asked if he deserves to keep his police job, Taylor pauses and takes a moment to reflect.
“That’s an interesting question,” he responds with a sigh.
“If I put myself in the taxpayer’s shoes, absolutely not. I understand there is a lot of anger, it’s caused a lot of issues. It’s eroded the public’s confidence in the police service and law enforcement.
“The thing is I didn’t ask for any of this. I got this job and it’s all I ever wanted to do since I was a little boy. I threw my heart and soul into it, but at the end of the day I have an injury because of my job.
“I was well adjusted, a normal person before I became a policeman. Now, three impaired charges later, suicide attempts, a broken family, lost house, lost material possessions...PTSD and alcohol have probably cost me between 100 and 150 thousand dollars.
“I can get that back. The only thing I can never get back is the time. I’ve lost opportunity and time with my kids, my own life, my parents, my girlfriend. That time, it’s gone, I’ll never get that back.
“Something that seems to be a common theme in some of these social media posts is that I haven’t been punished. Well, I’ve been punished more than a civilian would be punished. I was punished by the criminal court, I was punished by the Police Services Act, I got a $20,000 cut in pay at work. Nobody else gets that. So I’ve certainly been punished. And at the end of the day I’m the one who has to look in the mirror. I’m going to carry this for the rest of my life.
“I took an oath to be a policeman and do all the things that policemen do and I stained the badge.
“So do I deserve my job? If it was somebody else I’d say no, so I probably don’t think that I deserve it. But it’s not like I woke up one day and decided I’m a member of society who has a good job, who does volunteer work, who seems well adjusted and has everything that they want…and then one day wakes up and says, ‘Well, I’ve had enough of that, let’s destroy my life. No-one wakes up and says they’re gonna do that.
“Do I want any of this? Absolutely not. Can I believe this is my life now?
“I’m having a hard time, to be honest, believing how I went from where I was to where I am now, and how fast it happened.
Despite the hardships he’s faced, and perhaps because of them, Taylor believes his experiences would make him a better police officer.
“Oh absolutely, no question in my mind. Being a policeman for 15 years, being on the drug unit, I thought that I understood addiction and mental illness. Then I thought, police in general don’t.
Taylor says he used to study current case law and kept up on changes that were happening in different parts of the province, but realises now he had no idea about addiction.
"Truly, I had nothing. I didn’t have a clue. I had no idea about mental illness like I do now. It’s totally changed me, totally changed my perspective. The system is absolutely broken.
“I don’t know how many times I locked someone up because they had a small amount of a controlled substance on them for personal use because they are addicted to it, and I put them in jail. That’s not going to help them.
“They believe if they don’t have it, they will die, so putting them in jail does nothing, and I see that now.
“I’m not saying it’s the police fault, I don’t know whose fault it is, but the system is broken. Mental illness and addiction is running rampant, and something has got to change.
“The way things are now, it’s not working. It’s a revolving door with people who are suffering.
“I spent last weekend in jail. I got sentenced to 45 days in jail. That’s not going to help me. When I’m done I’m going to know I don’t ever want to go there again. If anything it’s putting me at risk for relapse for leaving my recovery.
“I’m certainly not saying I don’t deserve to be punished, because I do. I’m accepting my responsibility.
“But I need long-term supervision. I need all the help I can get. This is serious.
“People think the PTSD is somehow going to get me out of these impaired charges, somehow get my job back. Well right now I don’t care about my job, I’m fighting for my life. That’s the God’s honest truth. Having a dual diagnosis, the odds are stacked against me. Statistically I won’t make it.”
Taylor says spending time in jail is hard and has humbled him, but it’s also opened his eyes wide.
“I used to put people there, and certainly nobody wants to go to jail. Policemen definitely don’t want to go to jail. It’s hard. It’s embarrassing. It’s devastating.”
But despite all he’s gone through, and the challenges he still has to face, Taylor is trying to remain optimistic about his future.
“For the first time in a long time. I understand what’s wrong with me. I’ve been misdiagnosed over the years but right now I’ve got a good support system, my girlfriend, my family doctor, my sponsor and two co-workers who have gone above and beyond for me. I don’t know what I would do without them.
“There’s a lot of things that I have right now that I didn’t have before. A lot of support, accountability…and I need that because I know that sitting right here is my addiction, lifting weights just waiting for me to slip up, or let my guard down and pick up that drink, then it’s over.
“I know if I drink again, one of three things is going to happen and I’ve already got two under my belt. Institutions, incarceration, and the last one is death.
“If I pick up a drink and leave recovery, that’s what I have to look forward to, and it will be quick. Drinking is so bad I wouldn’t be alive for a month. Either the alcohol would kill me, or I would kill myself.
“I’ve spiraled, gone to a dark place, risky behaviour, just completely out of control. If I were to describe PTSD in one word, I would say chaos, and addiction I would say insanity. Put them together and you have insane chaos and that was my life. “
If Taylor does lose his police job, and that is a real possibility in a few months, he faces an uncertain future.
“I think I would be good as an addictions or mental health counsellor. I’ve been through it. I understand it. I can relate. If you’re not an addict and have PTSD, you might sympathize, but you’ll never understand.”
