Clean & Sober

An Addict’s Life is Turned Around - Then Cut Short

By Blair Anthony Robertson

(Reprinted with Permission from the Sacramento Bee)

Hooked on drugs and forever chasing after his next drink, Doug Butler lost everything that mattered - his family, his job, his home and especially his self-respect.

When he wasn’t shivering himself to sleep under a bridge, he was in jail for one petty crime or another. When he wasn’t stoned, he was working day labor so he could cash a check and buy more drugs. By the time he hit bottom, the affable man once known as the life of the party knew he needed to change or he was going to die.

Somehow, Butler not only cleaned himself up, but went to college and became a hero to many others as a drug and alcohol counselor, seeing himself in everyone he helped. Determined to stay sober, he spent the past eight years piecing together all he had destroyed in his life. Four years ago, he remarried the woman he had divorced. He won back the love of his grown son. He became executive director of the addiction counseling agency Clean and Sober. He bought a house and had a wide circle of friends who held him up as practically a saint.

With his life whole again, Butler was seemingly free of his painful past. But the damage he had done to his body was the one thing he could never escape. Last Friday, not long after telling his wife, Carol, he loved her and hanging up the phone at his office, the 50-year-old Butler collapsed, clutching his chest and gasping for air. By the time Carol Butler raced to the hospital, he was dead.

Those who cared about Butler take comfort in knowing he had cleaned up the wreckage of his past and found redemption before he died, and that his example will continue to inspire others.

“If anybody was ready to go, it was Doug,” Carol Butler said tearfully, seated in the living room of the Roseville home the couple bought last year. “He went back to everybody in his life that he thought he hurt, and he apologized.”

Doug Butler’s journey from lonely, broken man to beloved figure began on the same streets of Sacramento where he returned time and again to rescue others still trapped in that desperate life. Butler told the addicts where he had been and how he escaped. He stood by them when they seemed to have no one else.

“He made an absolute mess of his life, and he turned it all around,” said Frank Fawcett, 47, a recovering drug addict. “That’s why he worked so well with people who needed help. They knew where he was coming from.”

“He was like a father figure to me, just by being a friend and understanding and listening and showing that he had confidence in me,” said Dion Peterson, 46, who met Butler at Clean and Sober in 1999.

Butler saved lives and made many friends as a counselor, but rebuilding the family he shattered years ago wasn’t so immediate.

Carol Butler remembers their early years, when he would steal her money and run off for days doing drugs.

Butler once had a solid construction job. “He made good money and spent every bit of it on drugs and drinking,” Carol Butler said. “Eventually, people got tired of it and wanted nothing to do with him.”

“In that whole 17 years, he was gone,” she added, “I prayed for him every day. I knew he was a good man and had a lot going for him, and it was all being wasted.”

Once a year or so, Butler would call and ask to speak with Brian, promising to pick him up and go out for pizza. Excited, young Brian would wait by the front window, but his father never showed.

Even as Brian Butler, now 26, grew into an imposing young man, 6-foot-3 and 230 pounds, in many ways he was the still the brokenhearted boy confused about his wayward father.

“I felt unwanted and betrayed,” he said, remembering those childhood years. “I didn’t understand the effects of drugs and alcohol. I thought he just didn’t want anything to do with me and my mother.”

When he was 16, Brian Butler encountered his dad at his worst, living on the edge, dirty, disheveled and drunk. “It hurt knowing that was my dad. How could someone bring himself to that level?” he said. “I told my mom I was through with him.”

Many painful years passed, and Butler eventually went into recovery, transforming from addict to highly regarded counselor, reaching out to scores of people at the Loaves & Fishes complex, where Clean and Sober has its office.

“Doug set footprints out for everybody to walk in,” said Denise Manchester, a 34-year-old recovering addict.

As part of his recovery, Butler eventually tracked down Carol, and they began talking regularly. He invited her to a Clean and Sober banquet, where he made a heartfelt speech. She saw the impact he had on others.

“I was totally overwhelmed,” she said. “The closeness that these people have. They are so loyal to each other. They are what families should be.”

Protective of his mother, Brian Butler attended the banquet, too, but he wasn’t so easily moved.

“That’s great,” he remembers thinking. “That’s a five-minute speech. Where were you for 15 years? If he had done his part, my mom wouldn’t have had to bust her ass working three jobs to put food on the table for me.”

Brian Butler says it was 18 months more before he let his guard down. By then, his parents were married and he was seeing his father as a reliable presence in his life who treated his mother with love and kindness.

Choking with emotion, Brian Butler said, “Just in the past three or four years, I saw in him what I have not seen in people I have known my whole life. His acceptance, his love and his passion for people who have no one to stand up for them.”

The son began stopping by his father’s office just to hang out.

Watching his father work, he learned to see homeless persons as individuals, complete with the raw emotions and trail of wreckage he knew firsthand.

At the time of Butler’s death, the son had also come full circle - from being disgusted with his father and putting him out of his life to embracing Butler’s compassionate side and wanting to be just like him.

“That’s why it’s hurting so much,” Brian Butler said shakily. “In a sense, we were just starting our lives together, and my mother was finally happy.”

Carol Butler says her husband’s life will inspire her as she faces the difficult times without him. With just a receptionist’s income, she fears she will not be able to afford the house they bought, but she is convinced that everything will work out.

“We had a perfect marriage. I fell in love with him all over again. He called me four or five times a day to say ‘I love you.’ Doug made me feel like I was the most special person in the world,” she said.

Last Friday, he made another one of those calls. All was good in Doug Butler’s life. His wife and son loved him. So many others admired him. His story was an ongoing inspiration.

Around noon, he felt deep pain in his chest that wouldn’t let up. This time, he was on top of the world. But there was no saving him.