At 7:30 on a recent morning, Jeremy Forte, a firefighter in Imperial Beach, California, had just wrapped up a 48-hour shift. As the seven-member crew headed home, Forte drove right past a local bar that used to be a favorite haunt. A few years ago, he would have stopped for a drink, or two, or three -- and perhaps stayed on for hours. And he would have had plenty of company.
"There’s nurses from the hospital there getting off work at the same time," Forte recalled. "We’d be drinking with nurses, partying, having a good old time. And we didn’t think anything was wrong. That’s what people do, right? They get off work and have some drinks."
Jeremy is tall and lanky, with a thin mustache. He’s been a firefighter for 19 years. It’s grueling work, both physically and mentally. For a long time, drinking was how he coped.