Heavy Drinking

Heavy Drinking -
When Alcohol is feeding Life Doesn’t Matter!

By Ned Wicker

Erin Howard probably never thought life could get so messed up. She was locked up in the Erie (PA) County Jail, in lieu of $75,000 bail, after she was charged with drunk driving following a crash that killed her six year-old son Samuel on June 14.

Howard, 26, was given a 24-hour pass by a judge to attend her son’s funeral in Hamilton, Ohio, across the border. She had orders to attend the funeral and return by 3 p.m. the next day. She didn’t.

What she did do is shocking to society, but almost routine or expected for others, who have struggled with alcoholism, or understand just how powerful addiction is.

Instead of going back to jail, she decided to go to a bar called Tailgaters, about a mile from the church where the funeral took place. Her son’s father tipped off police to her whereabouts and she was arrested. She was being held there, awaiting an extradition order to Pennsylvania.

She had been charged with drunken driving, involuntary manslaughter, child endangerment and others, but now she faces another charge for escape.

Erie County District Attorney Brad Foulk told the Erie Times-News, “Who would have thought that someone who was extended the courtesy of attending a dead child's funeral would not comply with the terms and conditions of the furlough. It is absolutely beyond my comprehension."

For someone who is not an addict, it is beyond comprehension. For the mind of an addict, it makes perfect sense. Get a drink. The day she crashed her car, killing her son, she admitted to police that she had been drinking and smoking marijuana. There was no reasoning then. The boy was riding in the front seat without a seat belt. Why should this day be any different?

Rather than obey the judge’s orders and return to jail right after the funeral, she went back to what got her into trouble in the first place. She had been in jail for a couple of weeks, but just because she did not have a drink for that time doesn’t mean she was free of the addictive pull of alcohol or drugs. It’s sad that she went into the bar after the funeral, but it isn’t all that surprising.

Such a profoundly sad event would surely trigger a lot of negative emotion. She got a pass, but she had no supervision by a responsible, sober adult. Was there no family, no friend, or no acquaintance of any kind that could have helped out for one day? Why let her out alone?

She made her choices in life and she will bear the consequences of those choices. I do not know Erin Howard and I doubt that I shall ever meet her. Society will call her a drunk and a monster. People who know her story will call her “That woman, you know, the one who killed her son.”

She has a tremendous burden to bear, but the real villain in this story is the alcohol and marijuana that turned her from a mother into an addict, and orchestrated the traffic fatality. She made her choices, but she got a lot of help.

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