There was no triggering event, no incident nor injustice that could help Danny Chadwick understand why, after a year of hard-won sobriety, he started drinking again.
He simply woke up one day last fall with a “case of the ‘F’-its,” he said, which led him to a predictable place: passed out in the camper that his ex-wife lets him park on the remote Franklin County property she got in their divorce.
Chadwick, who is 71, called his Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor to say he would get back in touch when he got sober. His sons stopped dropping by. They could tell from the sound of his voice on the phone that he was drunk, which explained why he wasn’t showing up at their kids’ sporting events.
The days began to blur together. He takes the winters off from his handyman business, meaning he had more than enough idle time to drink himself into a stupor. He began as early as 4 or 5 a.m., slugging from a half-empty can of Coors Light on his nightstand. He would drink 24 beers or more most days, the empties often scattered across his yard or workshop.
Chadwick had been allowed to drive despite three DUI convictions, but the Department of Motor Vehicles had mandated that he install an ignition interlock. The device tests for blood alcohol levels and won’t allow a car to start if a driver has alcohol in their system.
Chadwick was spending upwards of $500 a month on booze and could no longer afford the interlock’s $100 monthly rental cost, he said. So, he drove to the mechanic and had it removed. Mechanics must notify the state when that happens, and Chadwick’s license was immediately suspended.
No matter. The nearest convenience store was only half a mile away. Patience was the real issue. The store didn’t start selling alcohol until 6 a.m.
As Chadwick’s bender dragged on, he was consumed by shame. He had started drinking during his hell-raising teenage years. His habit worsened as he grew older, but he managed to make a life for himself. He started a limousine company and built his own house. He achieved stints of sobriety — a year or two here, five there.
But alcohol always caught up to him. Looking back, he can clearly trace its destructive influence. There he was, barely a dollar to his name, his health failing him, his family wary of him. Booze had taken so much. Why not his life, too?
I’m going to drink myself to death, he thought in his brief moments of clarity. Whether it was a wish or a warning, he wasn’t always sure. His alcohol consumption, he said, led to “one nightmare after another.”
Vermont has a drinking problem, but you’d be forgiven for missing it. It’s been overshadowed by the opioid epidemic, the disruptive impacts of which are more recognizable and easily quantified. Vermont’s high-end breweries and distilleries depict imbibing as a social pastime for people with discerning taste, and for many, it is. But if you stick around for last call, you’re likely to notice some uncomfortable truths.
More than 60 percent of Vermont residents drink, a figure that’s nearly 20 percent higher than the U.S. average. While most do so within limits, many cannot. Vermont ranks in the top 10 states nationally for per capita alcohol consumption, rates of binge drinking and the share of residents thought to have a diagnosable alcohol-use disorder, estimated at about 12 percent of adults — 66,000 people. The disorder is defined as the inability to control one’s drinking, despite negative consequences.
“It’s been one nightmare after another.” Danny Chadwick
The state also has higher-than-average rates of chronic or “heavy drinking,” defined as more than two drinks a day for men and more than one drink a day for women. Ten percent of Vermont adults report such behavior, compared to 7 percent nationally.
It’s not just college kids hitting the bottle hard, either: All age groups, including teens and seniors, report higher-than-average rates of risky drinking behaviors, surveys show.
Theories abound as to why. Research suggests that rural areas — especially those with long, cold winters — report higher drinking rates. Perhaps it is no coincidence then that the two founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith, grew up in the Green Mountains.
Another consideration: Vermonters are relatively highly educated, which studies have linked to higher rates of alcohol consumption.
And Vermont also embraces its craft beers and liquors. “Alcohol is glamorized here,” said Heidi Moore, a recovery coach at the Turning Point Recovery Center of Bennington. “But behind closed doors, a lot of people are abusing it.”
Whatever the reason, the toll of excessive drinking on Vermont is immense.
Alcohol is a leading driver of calls to police and has been implicated in roughly 100 fatal car crashes over the past five years. It also contributes to hundreds of other premature deaths, as well as an untold number of falls, fights and frayed personal relationships. And while the state says it cannot easily determine how much of substance use treatment dollars go toward alcohol, the cost of excessive drinking and its many ramifications is likely in the tens of millions.
None of this is news to officials at the Vermont Department of Health, who for years have highlighted the risks of excessive drinking through awareness campaigns that target teens and young adults. “We know we have a problem,” deputy health commissioner Kelly Dougherty said.
But the message from policy makers often doesn’t reflect that. During the pandemic lockdown, as drinking spiked in Vermont, lawmakers made it easier to buy booze by legalizing the sale of to-go cocktails. The move, which Gov. Phil Scott called a “needed lifeline” for the food and beverage industry, has twice been extended, and a bill to make the change permanent is working its way through the Statehouse.
And now, a growing body of research has found that even moderate drinking poses significant health risks. Vermont may be ready for an intervention.
This spring, the health department will launch a new alcohol-related public service campaign targeting adults. Some lawmakers want to go further and have proposed raising taxes on booze for the first time in decades.
Dr. Javad Mashkuri, an emergency room physician at the Central Vermont Medical Center, hopes more people will begin to recognize alcohol for what it is: a drug.
He recalled an old joke among doctors: “Alcohol is the pink elephant in the room, or the Rodney Dangerfield of substances,” he said. “It just doesn’t get the respect it deserves.”
On the Rocks
Consider the following, all of which occurred in Vermont over the span of roughly a week last month:
Police cited more than two dozen suspected drunk drivers. They included a 53-year-old West Rutland teacher accused of arriving at work intoxicated and a 22-year-old Burlington resident who allegedly crossed the centerline of North Avenue at 50 miles per hour and smashed into a box truck head-on, injuring both drivers.
A woman in Pownal reported to authorities that her belligerently drunk husband had choked and threatened to kill her. And a 31-year-old Bennington woman spent her final days in the intensive care unit at Southern Vermont Medical Center as her organs slowly failed. The official cause of death: chronic alcohol use.
“Alcohol is the pink elephant in the room, or the Rodney Dangerfield of substances. It just doesn’t get the respect it deserves.” Dr. Javad Mashkuri
In the decade since former governor Peter Shumlin trained a spotlight on the opioid crisis, most people have come to recognize the destructive power of illicit drugs. But alcohol, by far Vermont’s most abused substance, rarely faces the same scrutiny, even as it upends lives.
Roughly half the calls about substance abuse made to the state’s 211 helpline are from people struggling with alcohol. And recovery centers say the majority of their clients have a drinking problem.
Police arrest drunk drivers daily. Vermont cops performed 1,700 sobriety tests on suspected drunk drivers last year, or an average of five a day. Repeat offenders must complete at least 20 hours of counseling to get their driving privilege back. Demand for that was so high in the Northeast Kingdom last year that the local mental health agency began offering a class instead of one-on-one services.
Alcohol also fuels tempers: Intoxicated people are routinely implicated in violent encounters, from fights outside Burlington bars to late-night domestic assaults in rural Lamoille County.
Chadwick, the Franklin County man, was charged twice with assaulting his ex-wife during their marriage. He said he has been involved in more alcohol-fueled altercations in card games and at deer camps than he’d care to remember. “I’m a mean drunk,” he said with a shake of his head. “I don’t take much crap when I’m drinking.”
Excessive drinking can be devastating to mental health. Many turn to alcohol to quell anxious thoughts or to unwind after a stressful day. But scientists have found that alcohol can change the brain’s chemistry over time and make a person more anxious and depressed.
“People have the impression that alcohol may help them feel better in the short term, but in the long term, it’s pretty destructive,” said Dr. Steven Runyan, medical director of the inpatient psychiatric unit at Rutland Regional Medical Center.
Up to a third of the patients on Runyan’s unit on a typical day have alcohol problems, he said. And while it can be hard to unpack what came first — the drinking or the mental illness — the alcohol certainly doesn’t help.
Nor does it promote good physical health. Drinking can wreak havoc on the body, starting with the liver, which metabolizes booze. Heavy drinkers often develop fatty livers that can cause mild abdomen discomfort. Many will go on to develop alcoholic hepatitis, in which the liver becomes inflamed and swollen. Over time, some of the heaviest drinkers will develop cirrhosis, in which scar tissue builds up and replaces liver cells. Cirrhosis can cause irreversible damage and lead to fatal liver failure.
Excessive drinking has also been closely linked to mouth, stomach and breast cancers and has been shown to increase the risks of heart disease and stroke.
Tracking how many people alcohol kills is difficult, but researchers have developed ways to estimate.
“People have the impression that alcohol may help them feel better in the short term, but in the long term, it’s pretty destructive.” Dr. Stephen Runyan
One recent national study looked at dozens of causes of death that were deemed either wholly attributable to heavy drinking, such as alcoholic liver disease, as well as those partially attributable, such as heart disease, stroke and certain cancers. It found that the number of deaths caused by alcohol-related diseases had more than doubled over a 20-year span, from fewer than 20,000 in 1999 to nearly 50,000 in 2020. That didn’t account for deaths from fatal car crashes, homicides and other alcohol-related injuries.
Some 450 Vermonters are estimated to have died from alcohol-related causes in 2021, a sizable increase from a few years earlier and more than the number of people killed by COVID-19 during the deadliest year of the pandemic.
Older people drove much of the increase. It can take time to develop the chronic illnesses associated with heavy drinking. But younger people are dying, too, even while more are turning away from booze.
As Seven Days previously reported, surveys show that people 30 and under are drinking less often than they did in the past, in part because they have become increasingly wary of booze’s ill effects. Vermont has a growing sober community, evidenced by robust mocktail menus and alcohol-free gatherings. At the same time, though, professionals in the addiction field say they have been encountering a growing number of people in their twenties and thirties suffering from severe alcohol-related illnesses.
That is to say: Of the young people who are drinking these days, more seem to be doing so in very risky ways.
Heidi Moore’s first client as a peer recovery coach at the Bennington County Turning Point center was the recently deceased 31-year-old woman. Moore agreed to talk about the woman as long as the client’s name was withheld.
The two met in the emergency department four years ago after the woman, a nurse, sought care for an alcohol-related injury. A treating nurse pulled Moore aside to say she was worried her patient would be dead within five years if she didn’t quit drinking.
Moore convinced the woman to start attending regular counseling sessions, and soon she was a beloved figure at Turning Point.
“She was so sweet, kind, always smiling,” Moore recalled.
But nothing Moore said could convince her to stop drinking, and her problems piled up. She got fired from jobs for showing up drunk, then lost her nursing license. Her health began to fail — first her liver, then the rest of her body. She ultimately landed in an ICU.
“I watched in slow motion how alcohol systematically, like any other drug, took every single thing away from her,” Moore said.
Moore spent more than a week by the woman’s bedside as she came to grips with the seriousness of her situation. At one point, Moore asked the woman whether she had ever expected that alcohol would land her on her deathbed.
She had not. She was still so young, she said. She thought she’d have more time to turn her life around.
The First Step
People with addictions can struggle to recognize that they have a problem, and that can be especially true for heavy drinkers, whose chosen substance is not only legal but widely accepted. Most people who meet the criteria for alcohol-use disorder do not feel that they need treatment, studies show, even when they acknowledge that they have all the symptoms.
Some defend their drinking habits by drawing a distinction between alcohol and street drugs. “I can’t tell you how many times I have been told, ‘I don’t need to go to meetings; I’m not one of those people,'” said Amber Robbins, a case manager at Northeast Kingdom Human Services.
The gentle prodding of a concerned friend or family member may be enough to convince someone they have a problem, Robbins said. More often, though, the dawning realization stems from “some sort of pain,” such as a DUI, a lost job or a broken relationship.
Gregory Hewitt’s wake-up call came after a literal look in the mirror. The Rutland man’s drinking had started as a social outlet. As a restaurant worker, he enjoyed collegial nightcaps. But at some point, Hewitt’s relationship with booze darkened. He began to drink not only at night, with friends, but also throughout the day, including at work, sneaking out to his car for a shot of vodka the same way that his colleagues took cigarette breaks.
Alcohol, he said, “became such an integral part of my life.”
His problem, like many other people’s, worsened during the pandemic. His restaurant shut down, and drinking was an easy way to fill idle hours. He consumed more, then more still, until he was up to nearly half a gallon of hard liquor a day.
He eventually noticed blood in his stool and headed to an emergency room. When a physician told him his drinking had led to intestinal bleeding, he was shocked.
While waiting to be discharged, Hewitt met a peer recovery coach from the Rutland County Turning Point. The coach offered to connect him with help if he was interested.
He wasn’t — a dismissal Hewitt later chalked up to stubborn pride.
He managed to avoid alcohol for the next few months but was soon back to drinking as much as before. Then, one morning, he looked in the mirror to find that his skin had turned yellow overnight — “‘Simpsons’-level yellow,” he said.
He knew what that meant: His liver was failing. He headed back to the ER, then called Turning Point soon after.
“I can’t keep doing this,” he told a recovery coach, the first step in his now three-year recovery from alcohol addiction.
People who give up booze cold turkey after drinking heavily for years can face not only uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms but also life-threatening complications, including seizures. Once that occurs, there’s an increased risk of it happening again during a detox period. That’s why heavy drinkers are encouraged to detox under supervision, but it can be difficult to find places to go.
Several detox facilities have closed in Vermont in recent years, citing staffing challenges. They include Chittenden County’s Act 1 program, which was run for decades by Howard Center.
Rehab centers will take lower-risk patients but say they’re not equipped to handle patients with histories of seizures. Hospitals, meanwhile, have strict guidelines for admitting detox patients, usually starting with a requirement that they no longer have any alcohol in their systems.
When Chadwick decided in January to sober up, he went to the Northwestern Medical Center in St. Albans and asked to be admitted for detox. He was denied, he said, even though he has had two withdrawal seizures in the past.
Afraid he would have another while alone in his camper, he bought Valium — a medication used to help people taper off alcohol — and took the pills on a schedule he remembered from his last stay at Act 1. Doctors strongly recommend against this approach, but Chadwick said it felt like his only choice.
Chadwick spent a full week on the couch in deep discomfort, the longest period of detox he’d ever had. But he did not have a seizure, and on the eighth day, he dragged himself to an AA meeting, his first in months.
People who manage to get through early days of sobriety must then find ways to maintain it.
Many Vermonters have succeeded through programs such as AA or services that seek to leverage the power of connection and personal accountability. Medications such as naltrexone and acamprosate can also play a role, and a much bigger one at that, according to experts.
The medications, while not as effective as those used to treat opioid addictions, have been shown to help blunt cravings and reduce the urge to drink for some people, especially when combined with counseling. Only a fraction of people with alcohol-use disorder receive medication for it, though, studies show.
Providers at Central Vermont Medical Center want to change that. Marissa Patrick, a nurse practitioner, and Mashkuri, the ER doc, have met with primary care providers across Addison County to educate them on how the drugs can be an effective treatment tool.
The efforts seem to be paying off: The hospital has tracked an uptick in the number of prescriptions of naltrexone, Patrick said. The University of Vermont Health Network has also recently distributed a tool that she created to help more providers better manage patients with alcohol-use disorder.
People who overcome serious alcohol problems often say they had to make difficult changes in both their routines and their relationships.
Hewitt, for one, had to stop hanging around with friends who had unhealthy relationships with alcohol.
He also had to switch supermarkets, he said, because the Hannaford where he usually got groceries has its own liquor store, and he could feel that Pavlovian pull toward the vodka aisle as soon as he got out of his car.
He has been sober long enough now that he can return to Hannaford without fear of slipping up. That’s a relief, he said, since his mother shops there, too. She lets him use her rewards points when he checks out so he can save a little cash.
More Taxation, Less Intoxication?
In response to its drinking problem, Vermont has emphasized treatment and education. Recovery coaches provide around-the-clock coverage at every emergency department, and tens of millions of taxpayer dollars are spent each year treating addictions, including those to alcohol. Meanwhile, the health department’s upcoming media campaign — titled “One Less” and scheduled to launch around April, which is Alcohol Awareness Month — seeks to encourage adults to reexamine their relationship with booze.
But experts say any meaningful attempt to curb excessive drinking must include hitting people where it hurts: their wallets.
A proposal in the state legislature would increase excise taxes on alcohol retailers and producers for the first time since 1981. The bill, introduced late last month by Rep. Kate Nugent (D-South Burlington), is a page out of the anti-smoking playbook, and one that study after study has found to be effective in curbing unwanted behaviors.
Nugent, who is also the executive director of Winooski Partnership for Prevention, a nonprofit that seeks to promote sober living among youths, said she hoped to create a better balance between the revenue alcohol brings into Vermont and its cost on society.
“It’s not even just the deaths, which are heartbreaking,” she said. “It’s also the social impact, on families and kids.”
Alcohol tax rates vary widely nationwide. Washington State, for instance, levies a $36 tax on every gallon of liquor, compared to no tax at all in New Hampshire. Tennessee has a nation-leading $1.29-per-gallon beer tax, while a handful of states, including Massachusetts, tax booze less than 10 cents.
Vermont currently ranks in the middle of the pack in terms of alcohol tax rates. Nugent’s proposal would hike the tax on every gallon of beer from 26 cents to $1.36 and every gallon of wine from 55 cents to $3.75, and would mandate future annual increases tied to inflation. It would also double the sales tax on hard liquor, to 10 percent. And it would require that all alcoholic beverages contain labels about their cancer risks, a step recently recommended by the U.S. Surgeon General.
The proposal would raise an estimated $15 million extra in its first year, according to Nugent. Most of that would go into a special fund meant to expand mental health support at Vermont schools, along with treatment and supportive housing for people with alcohol-use disorder.
For consumers, the tax on an average beer would go from about 2 cents to 8 cents, Nugent said. That might not be enough to dissuade someone from buying a beer while out to dinner. But over time even minor tax increases can encourage some of the heaviest drinkers to cut back, research has suggested.
Two states that most recently raised taxes on alcohol — Illinois and Maryland — have reported less binge drinking and fewer car crashes involving intoxication.
Several other states have considered hiking alcohol taxes to address rising alcohol-related deaths. One recent push in New Mexico — the state with the highest rate of alcohol-related deaths — failed after an intense lobbying campaign by the alcohol industry.
Nugent’s bill is unlikely to move this session, but she hopes it will be the start of a longer conversation about excessive drinking. She said she tried to strike the right balance between addressing the problem without harming alcohol businesses, which are an important part of the state’s economy.
The Vermont Brewers Association did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the bill, while the Distilled Spirits Council of Vermont said it would need more time to vet the proposal and its potential impacts.
More expensive beer won’t impact Chadwick, so long as he can help it. He’s two months sober and determined to stay that way. He talks to his sponsor every night, and their phone calls often end with him receiving a reading assignment. “Working me hard,” he said with a grin. He attends daily AA meetings and has 12-step literature taped to the walls and fridge of his camper.
Chadwick has been thinking a lot lately about how to process his shame. He talks about how his mother was an alcoholic; he knows more now about the generational cycle of addiction. He realizes that he raised his kids while drunk. “I didn’t ask to be an alcoholic, but I am,” he said.
But there was a noticeable shift in Chadwick when he completed the survey of his past and began to talk about his future. He became less certain, bashful even, and it felt at times like he was talking about two different people.
In a way, he was. “A lot of people like me when I’m sober,” he said. “They got no use for me drunk.”
He struggles to make sense of the support he has received from people around him despite everything he’s put them through. His sponsor took him on, no questions asked. “All you had to do was call,” he’d said. Chadwick’s ex-mother-in-law, meanwhile, recently invited him to visit her whenever he is struggling. “Until that feeling goes away,” the woman, in her early eighties, told him.
He hopes the months ahead will be filled with busyness — jobs for his home repair business or afternoons spent puttering around outside with his dog, Sugar. He’s making plans to have the ignition lock reinstalled so that he can get his license back.
He also wants to heal old wounds. Two of his grandchildren have refused to let him meet their own kids out of fear that he might show up drunk one day and scare them. He doesn’t blame them, he said, even though it “hurts me right to death.”
He is desperate to prove to them that he’s serious about changing this time. He also knows from experience that the gleam of his newfound sobriety will eventually wear off. That the “little devil” who has sat on his shoulder for so long will reappear, perhaps as he passes the nearby convenience store with its cases of beer.
Standing in the small camper where he almost drank himself into an early grave, Chadwick vowed to never resume drinking. Then he paused for a moment, as if remembering the AA promise to be truthful and the countless other times he had let his guard down. He rephrased his words to something that felt, at least for now, a bit more honest.
“I hope I don’t go back.”
Correction, March 25, 2025: This story has been updated to note that nearly 52 percent of U.S. residents drink. A previous version contained an error.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Vermont’s Hangover | The Green Mountain State has long had a drinking problem. It’s time to talk about it.”
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This article appears in Mar 19-25, 2025.
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