(bright music) - Addiction affects millions of families across America, often hidden behind closed doors.

Today, we are joined by Danny Johnson, owner of Sacramento's Taylors Market, who lost his wife Kathy to alcoholism.

Danny joins us today to share his story of love, loss and resilience.

Danny, why are you so willing to talk about Kathy's condition and your loss?

- There's a lot of shame and stigma around alcoholism and/or addiction, and it's needs to be brought out of the shadows and into the forefront 'cause it's a mental illness and it's a disease.

It's not a weakness.

So I wanna share this story, and I told Kathy when she was going through this, we had an open discussion about it.

I said, "If you don't overcome this and you don't make it out of this," which was her fear, "that I will share your story."

And she kind of chuckled and she goes, "I bet you will."

And I said, "You're gonna change lives."

And I feel that she has at this point.

- How did Kathy's condition evolve from a glass of champagne, as you said, into a full fledged addiction?

Tell us a little bit about what you saw evolve.

- Yeah, it was, you know, bring a bottle of champagne home and, you know, we'll have a glass and it helps ease my stomach a little bit.

One glass turned into two, and then pretty soon it was, the bottle would be empty.

And then I noticed just some other behavior that I was like, all right, maybe this is just a fad or a passing thing.

And it just evolved from champagne to wine to, pretty soon it got into vodka, which is like the go-to, for someone that's really into throws.

- [Scott] Really?

- It seems to be that way.

I'm not an expert on any of this.

I just know what happened to me in talking to other people.

And they always seem to, like, once vodka gets involved, it's just kind of one of those things.

I don't know what it is.

- In hindsight, as you look back, were there even earlier signs that kind of forecast where this was going that today, you look at and you might recognize, but at the time, in real time, either you just kind shrug them off or you just don't think of it and notice it at all?

- Yeah, there was signs.

Coming home and finding her passed out.

Not 100% sure.

You know, is this because of drinking or she just doesn't feel well?

And it's correlated to drinking.

Looking back on it, it was 100% drinking.

But you also have your own sense of denial going, "No, this can't be happening."

So you know, that's probably the biggest thing.

- Well, you know, as someone who knew you and Kathy for years, and seeing you both out with all of the community and civic participation that you all have been involved with in just contributing to our community and our region, it was not obvious.

It seemed like she carried it in a way that no one would've ever known.

And especially with the schedules that you all kept.

Should we be surprised by that?

- Not really, because there's a lot of people that are functioning, high functioning alcoholics, and you would not know.

And I didn't know until I started this journey.

And towards, you know, after Kathy passed, started being open about it, I've had so many people come to me and say, "I know exactly where you are.

I've been there.

I know someone."

The whole thing.

There's a lot of deception involved.

And she even said that.

She goes, "I have become a master of disguise and deception."

- What's interesting is, as you're telling this story, is that her words to you, as you're sharing this conversation or these conversations, she sounds like Kathy.

Very rational, very reasonable, very intelligent, and all this.

And I guess, you know, for most of us, the common caricature of someone who is suffering from a disease like this is far different.

How did you reconcile that?

Because it sounds like the way that she's communicating that she reasonably could have a conversation and she reasonably could do whatever it is that she needed to do to try and address this issue.

Give us some insight on that.

- She would have good days and bad days, and it turned into, it's a cycle.

So there'd be three or four days of heavy, heavy drinking.

And then a couple days of recovery, and then a couple good days.

And on the good days, we would have these conversations.

We were always very open in our communication, and we would talk about this and she would be like, "I'm gonna do better.

I will do better."

But then she would also say, I didn't understand what going on in her mind, and she would say, "The first drink is my choice.

After that, I don't have a choice."

- [Scott] What does that mean?

- And I took it as, once she took that first sip, then it was off to the races for her and her body just kept saying, "I want more and more and more and more."

And then it becomes a physical and a mental dependence.

They don't think they can survive without it.

This disease, it crosses socioeconomic lines.

You know, a lot of people have the stigma of someone underneath the freeway drinking a bottle out of the bag.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- It doesn't discriminate.

It can affect anybody and anyone, but the ones that are hidden are the ones, it seems, like what happened with Kathy and I.

You know, everybody's like, "Oh, you know, business owners involved in the community.

That couldn't happen."

Yeah, it couldn't happen to anybody.

- What are you going through as you're living through this entire experience?

And how many years was this that she was fighting this?

- So this started, it become a problem 2014.

- 2014.

- Right.

So, and she passed in 2022.

- When she passed- - Oh, 2023, excuse me.

- When she passed, was she by herself?

Was she out somewhere or?

- She was home.

She was home.

She was on a bad streak.

I had just lost a cousin who we were super close with.

We were all the same age in an auto accident.

We'd done a lot of stuff.

And so she was kind of grieving that, and her way of grieving was in the bottle.

It's a brutal way to say it, but that's a reality.

And she was on a bad streak.

And I was fearful.

And the morning, on Friday morning, February 10th, when I left for work, I knew she was in bad shape.

And I'd made the decision when I get home, I'm just taking her straight to the hospital.

She can't sustain this.

It's getting critical.

I didn't make it home in time to do that.

- [Scott] Oh, wow.

- I come home and found her.

She has passed away on our couch.

- How did you carry that?

And when you found her, and based on what you just said about what you were going to do, what was going through your head?

- My first thought was I failed her.

You know, that's a kind of a basic, I think, human reaction.

And then I realized, I went back to what I've learned by being involved in Al-Anon was I didn't cause it.

I couldn't cure it, and I couldn't control it.

And I realized that, her and I had talked about this, I had talked about this with my children and told them, "I'm probably gonna find your mom dead one day.

This is the reality."

And even Kathy even knew that.

She goes, "You're gonna walk in and just find me one day."

So I didn't stay in that space very long because I just had to go, all right, I knew this day was kind of coming in my gut and in my heart.

So now I need to turn a huge negative and try to turn it into a positive, like we talked about her and I had talked about.

So that's why I'm very open about what has happened.

- And so, were you able to avoid what most of us would think of would be very normal emotions?

You know, anger, guilt, all of those things.

Because you seem very matter of fact at this point- - I had a little bit of guilt.

I wasn't angry.

You know, we were together over 40 years, and I never was angry at her.

I'd never spend a day angry at her.

I had a little disappointment.

I didn't get angry until probably it was about a year after she passed.

And I was just like, "You kinda left me with a mess."

Not really a mess.

But the way I kinda, we always had like a scripted life that we'd talked about.

I'm like, "This is not how the script was.

You tore the script up."

And I went like a month that I was angry.

And I'm like, all right.

That's not a good, it's an emotion to have, but I gotta move past that.

I can't hold onto that.

- Despite the tragedy of the end of her life and her battling this addiction, what is it that you want us to know about Kathy as we're hearing about this journey?

- She was an extraordinary human being.

I mean, she was extraordinarily talented.

Whatever she touched seemed to turn to gold.

Whether it was decorating the store, decorating the restaurant, putting on parties, cooking, she was a gourmet cook.

She was a seamstress.

She made a lot of her own clothes, or would take clothes and take them apart and go, "Okay, I'm gonna put my own flare on this."

19, no, 2012, we had a 50th anniversary party for Taylor's, and she made a tent to go in our backyard.

We tried to get a tent for it.

And she goes, 'No, I can make that."

- [Scott] Really?

- And so she made a tent for a 40 by 40 space.

- Wow.

- Yeah.

She sewed it.

And I said, all right.

She's like, "Just grab the tape measure."

And she goes, "You're gonna get the dumb end of it."

So I let her do all the smart end of it.

We measured it.

I go, "How do you know it's gonna fit?"

And she goes, "'Cause I know my measurements."

She sewed it.

We put it together, it fit perfectly.

To this day, that just absolutely amazes me.

- [Scott] Wow.

Wow.

- So whatever she touched, she was very good at.

- This not only affected you, but it also affected your family.

- [Danny] Correct.

- How did her battle show up in terms of your family and the things that they had to deal with?

- It affected the girls.

I have two daughters.

And it affected them, you know, they lost their mother, but they lost their mother before she passed.

She wasn't the mother that they knew.

- That's an important distinction.

Share with us a little bit more on that.

- So people talk about grief.

Well, as a family, we were grieving her loss before she passed because she wasn't engaged with us.

There was so many things that she missed.

She missed Christmas, she missed Thanksgiving, different holidays because she was in the bottle, as I say.

And so trying to navigate that dynamic.

And it affected us, but it was kinda like the elephant in the room.

I mean, we would celebrate, but we'd be like, "All right, mom's upstairs," or we were someplace else, mom's at home.

And there was always like that drip, drip, drip.

There was a concern of what we were gonna find when we come home.

So yeah, there was a pre-grieving of the whole dynamic.

And then now there's a post-grieving.

It sounds a little callous maybe, but there was a sense of relief because she was at peace we felt because of the chaos that she was going through, and we're at peace.

Now, is it the peace that we want?

No, but it's the peace that we have to accept.

- There's a phrase.

You mentioned Al-Anon a few minutes ago, and there's a phrase that is associated somewhere in Al-Anon, I believe, called detach with Love.

That's what it sounds like, that you were engaged in, and your daughters.

- Absolutely.

- Can you share with us a little bit about what that means and how that plays out.

- That took is out a lot.

It's something that we learned in Al-Anon, and it took a lot to wrap my head around that you could love someone, but you had to kind of detach from them because of the fact that they could still love you, but they didn't love themselves.

You know, Kathy would tell me, she goes, "You are the man of my dreams.

I just haven't fulfilled my side of it and become the woman of your dreams."

And that was hard to hear.

Because I'm like, "That's not the woman I know."

But, you know, alcohol took that.

Detaching with love, it's a really broad brush and you have to tailor it to how it fits you.

And that's what I had to do.

And I just had to go, okay, you know, here's the love of my life struggling, but there's nothing I can do to help her.

She has to, you know, have a breakthrough on her own.

And that's the most difficult thing about this disease, is you can't just throw a blanket on it and go, 'All right, well, this protocol works.

This protocol works, or this protocol works."

Every individual is different.

And it's the same thing with detaching with love.

You have to figure out what that means to you and how you can do that.

- In you surviving this experience, standing with Kathy through this journey that she was on, and now beyond that, what have been the critical pieces of support that have helped you most get through this?

- My girls.

I have some close friends that I shared this story with, that they were very supportive.

My mother and my sister were very strong.

My mother, very old school.

When this first started, she didn't know anything about addiction or alcoholism.

And she thought it was a weakness.

And now she understands it's a disease.

And so that's kind of like, been a breakthrough for her because she lost some friends earlier in her life to this.

She beat herself up a little bit going, you know, I could have handled it different.

And I'm like, "No, you know, you just didn't know."

It's an education thing.

So a lot of people have been very supportive in the community.

The people I've talked to, they're like, "Thank you for telling this story."

- So I assume that there was an ebb and flow with Kathy.

You talked about good days and bad days.

Did she avail herself of things like rehab or any sort of programs or anything like that along the way?

- Absolutely.

She went to three different rehabs.

A couple different detoxes.

She was involved with AA.

But she would get to a point and like plateau.

And then again, they get complacent and she's like, "Oh, I got this."

And then what they would call it slipping, slide back into, you know, the disease.

And you know, once you have it, it's there.

Once your body is wired to that, it doesn't go away.

You just have to fight that feeling.

- What advice can you give to someone who is in the role of you or your daughters who has a loved one that is battling this challenge from the perspective of, you know, if they're involved in AA and they're involved in rehab and they're involved in all these things, there's a natural human tendency to, you know, try to throw more at it.

And that it's my responsibility that I'm gonna cure you, and that, you know, we're gonna conquer this together.

What advice would you give them in terms of how to balance that support and being there with also trying to protect, frankly, their own health and sanity?

You gotta take care of yourself first.

- To your point, the initial instinct, especially for someone that you're, you care for so deeply is to protect them and take care of them.

And you soon realize, you can't.

And if you don't take care of yourself, then it just gets into be more chaos and more chaos.

Took me a little bit to figure that out.

And then once I figured it out, my goal was, I just gotta try to keep her safe and comfortable.

The best advice I have is don't give up.

Understand it's a disease.

Don't be ashamed of it.

You know, talk about it.

Find someone that you trust and you can talk to, but don't be ashamed of the fact that you have someone in your life that suffers from this disease.

Because most people know someone - Oh yeah.

Even if they know it or not.

- Correct.

So are there particular resources in the community that you would point us toward if we're either personally dealing with this challenge or we have a loved one?

Where would you send them?

- I would reach out to AA if someone's actively involved in addiction.

If you wanna take care of yourself, Al-Anon is a great resource.

If you get into a situation where it turns into a hospital visit, the Substance Use Navigator Program that they have at UC Davis is doing wonderful things.

- [Scott] What is that?

I don't know much about that.

- So in the emergency room at Davis, they have these navigators they call them, and they're counselors and a lot of them are in recovery.

And so when they do an assessment, the ER doc does an assessment of what's going on.

They're like, "All right, we need to bring a navigator in 'cause there's some addiction issues."

- Actually, we do know this program.

We actually had someone who was involved in this program before.

What is it specifically, from your perspective, as a user of the program, what is it that this navigator program can do that typically is not available in the rest of the community?

- So what they do is they go and visit the person in their room, and they try to meet them at their level.

And they go, "Okay, do you want out of this?

Do you want a way out?

'Cause I might be able to help you with this path.

We have these resources."

And they start talking to them and listening to them instead of, commonly what's happened is ERs, they're so overwhelmed, they just give them a piece of paper, say, "Hey, man, you gotta stop drinking or stop using.

This is what you gotta do to sober up.

Here's some resources, have a nice day."

So just that interaction and making the person feel a little human that someone actually cares other than their families 'cause sometimes, they put up a wall with a family or friend, but this is person's completely independent and they're just coming in and going, "Hey, I kind of know where you are.

I can possibly help you."

And it seems to work.

And it's done some great work.

- You have been very upfront and you've gone out speaking, you've spoken to students, you've spoken to others in the community about this.

What resonates with you from the experience of going out and speaking about this?

I mean, is there one particular interaction that kind of like leapt out at you in terms of the impact that you're having?

- So when I go over to Davis and I speak to med students, nursing students, and they've changed their curriculum to where now they start talking about this issue early in school instead of later.

And so about halfway through my presentation, I'm telling the story.

I asked everybody in the room, I said, "Hey, if what I'm saying doesn't resonate, if you don't know someone by, you know, that old six degrees of separation, but less than that, a couple degrees of separation.

Cousin, fam, cousin, you know, friend, mom, dad, aunt, uncle, that this disease affects, raise your hand 'cause I want to congratulate you because you've been untouched."

And to this day, so I've been doing this a little over a year and a half, not one person's raised their hand.

- Not one.

- Not one person.

I've yet to, even at Taylor's when I'm talking, I have customers come up to me and they'll thank me and they'll ask me how I'm doing.

They always say to a person, "I know someone.

I understand.

I don't understand completely, but I know someone."

Not one person's ever told me, "That doesn't affect me.

I don't know one person who's not affected by some kind of an addiction issue."

- In just a few words, when you think about that impact, what is that?

If you could talk to Kathy right now, you'd communicate about that sharing and what it means to other people?

That's exactly what I told her.

- You're gonna save lives.

She's making a difference.

She's making a difference.

I'll share one story.

Person I know was struggling with alcohol, didn't know it, I didn't know it.

His wife takes Kathy's memorial card that we had done.

It was kind of like a playbill, this is your life 'cause she loved theater.

Put it on his steering wheel, said, "I don't want you to become Kathy Johnson."

- [Scott] Wow.

- That person came to me and he goes, "Your wife's saving my life."

- And I think we'll leave it right there.

Thank you, Danny.

- Thank you.

- Thank you for sharing and thanks to Kathy too.

- Thank you.

- And that's our show.

Thanks to our guest and thanks to you for watching Studio Sacramento.

I'm Scott Syphax.

See you next time right here on KVIE.

(lively music) - [Narrator] All episodes of Studio Sacramento, along with other KV programs are available to watch online at kvie.org/video.