"Charles Knowles remembers very little about that sunny afternoon in Florida almost ten years ago. He certainly doesn't remember much about the night before. But one image is firmly burned into his brain: He was sitting alone on the wooden deck of a friend's house in Delray Beach with a half-empty bottle of Bacardi in one hand and a gun in the other."
"For the previous seven years, Knowles had an on-off affair with alcohol. He had become an avid long-distance runner, getting so good that even at age 47, he was running a sub-five-minute mile. Plantar fasciitis and knee problems eventually put a stop to his effective diversion-and alcohol reentered his life. By that point, Knowles had steadily nourished a decades-long relationship with booze. It was not a good one. By age 18, he recalls, he was already drinking most people under the table."
Charles Knowles experienced a decades-long dependence on alcohol that escalated into a severe relapse in middle age. He used long-distance running to moderate drinking, achieving sub-five-minute miles into his late 40s, until plantar fasciitis and knee problems ended that distraction and alcohol reentered his life. Drinking intensified during a family holiday in Florida, leading to heavy intoxication and a moment on a friend's deck where he held a bottle and a gun and contemplated suicide. Knowles recognized at age 30 that he was an alcoholic and routinely drank heavily after work despite never drinking on duty as a surgeon.
Read at Esquire
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