Feherty's thoughts return to the images of a hand and a knife and his daughter. "I couldn't see who was holding the knife," he says. "But I had this horrifying, sickening feeling that it was my hand. The image came back over and over. I'd walk upstairs and wake her up and hold her close, and I'd say to myself, She's here. Nothing's happened to her. That something dreadful would happen to one of your children is anyone's worst fear, and my mind was realizing it over and over again. I had to make it go away. It was men-in-whitecoats, cuckoo's nest madness. I thought, Why the f--- is this going through my head? Should I be put away? Am I a danger to my family?"
Feherty remembers the day when the fog began to lift: Jan. 26, 2005. He had spent the night before drunk and nearly comatose in his recliner at home, a drained bottle of Bushmills on the table beside him. He was almost catatonic with despair, and felt as if the only thing he could move was his eyeballs. As he wrote in his column in this magazine last July, Erin climbed up on his lap, grabbed his ears, leaned her fo rehead on his and said, "Dad, you need another bottle." "She looked so sad," Feherty says. "I thought, Holy shit! I do need another bottle. So I sent her to get me one because, why stop when you're not where you need to be? That was a turning point."
Anita watched her daughter fetch the whiskey, and knew then she'd had enough. The next morning, after dropping Erin off at school, Anita found David in bed, enduring his daily hangover. She told him he was an alcoholic, and that if he didn't quit drinking, she would take Erin and leave. "A daughter finds a man like her father for a husband," Anita says. "I didn't want her to marry an alcoholic. So I asked him for 90 days of sobriety. And he told me he would stop."
Those first few weeks were horrendous. He had the shakes. He had insomnia. He snapped at Anita, or his friends, "and David doesn't have a mean bone in his body," says a longtime friend. At the NEC Invitational last August, he was reading a Tiger Woods putt as part of his television foot-soldier duty when Steve Williams playfully offered Feherty his boss's putter and asked, "Would you like to putt it for him?" Feherty mistook the comment as an order to back off and shot back, "Why don't you take a half hour off from being an asshole?" (Feherty later apologized.)
"When we're working, we all ride herd on him," says Kostis. "We have his back — me, McCord, Lance Barrow. Though we still get nervous. David took up clay shooting a while back, and McCord and I would look at each other and say, 'A drunk, depressed Irishman with a shotgun? Not a good thing.'"
Feherty is the first to handicap his fragile sobriety. "Even now, people ask me how I feel. Well, I feel like a f---in' drink, that's what I feel like. The pain is unbearable sometimes, and I feel like shit, and I know release is just a drink away."
He's stumbled a few times since Jan. 26, 2005. He took a three-week alcohol-iday last June for his dad's 80th birthday in Ireland. ("I told people I got drunk once, but it was for three weeks.") A month later, in the middle of the night, he threw off his hotel room sheets and ripped open his locked mini-bar (he declines the key when checking in) like a grizzly going at a trash can. He drank all the Jack Daniel's he could find, which wasn't much — four mini bottles.
Otherwise, he says, he's been dry. "Earlier this year, on our West Coast swing, I'm watching TV in bed late one night when the phone rings," says Gary McCord. "It's David. He says, 'What are you doing?' I told him. He says, 'Can I come over and watch with you?' David has never done that. 'Why?' I ask. He says, 'Because the mini-bar is talking to me.' We watched TV for two hours, lying on the bed together — kind of a 'Brokeback' moment. I love the guy. Whatever he needs, David knows he can come to us for support."
Soon after he quit drinking, Feherty's hallucinations all but stopped. "They still come, but I can banish them now," he says. He still feels like he's hiding around a corner, running from something. "But this is easily livable, the way I feel now. It's taken a combination of pills, therapy and not drinking, but I'm better every day. Far too many people are owned by addiction and devastated by depression. There's such a stigma attached to mental illness that they're afraid to get help. You can get better, but you can't do it alone."
When the depression creeps in, as it does from time to time, Anita can spot it. "There's an absence in his eyes," she says. "His mouth seems to freeze, and his tongue can't move the words. He has a desperate look that makes everything else stop."
Feherty remembers the day when the fog began to lift: Jan. 26, 2005. He had spent the night before drunk and nearly comatose in his recliner at home, a drained bottle of Bushmills on the table beside him. He was almost catatonic with despair, and felt as if the only thing he could move was his eyeballs. As he wrote in his column in this magazine last July, Erin climbed up on his lap, grabbed his ears, leaned her fo rehead on his and said, "Dad, you need another bottle." "She looked so sad," Feherty says. "I thought, Holy shit! I do need another bottle. So I sent her to get me one because, why stop when you're not where you need to be? That was a turning point."
Anita watched her daughter fetch the whiskey, and knew then she'd had enough. The next morning, after dropping Erin off at school, Anita found David in bed, enduring his daily hangover. She told him he was an alcoholic, and that if he didn't quit drinking, she would take Erin and leave. "A daughter finds a man like her father for a husband," Anita says. "I didn't want her to marry an alcoholic. So I asked him for 90 days of sobriety. And he told me he would stop."
Those first few weeks were horrendous. He had the shakes. He had insomnia. He snapped at Anita, or his friends, "and David doesn't have a mean bone in his body," says a longtime friend. At the NEC Invitational last August, he was reading a Tiger Woods putt as part of his television foot-soldier duty when Steve Williams playfully offered Feherty his boss's putter and asked, "Would you like to putt it for him?" Feherty mistook the comment as an order to back off and shot back, "Why don't you take a half hour off from being an asshole?" (Feherty later apologized.)
"When we're working, we all ride herd on him," says Kostis. "We have his back — me, McCord, Lance Barrow. Though we still get nervous. David took up clay shooting a while back, and McCord and I would look at each other and say, 'A drunk, depressed Irishman with a shotgun? Not a good thing.'"
Feherty is the first to handicap his fragile sobriety. "Even now, people ask me how I feel. Well, I feel like a f---in' drink, that's what I feel like. The pain is unbearable sometimes, and I feel like shit, and I know release is just a drink away."
He's stumbled a few times since Jan. 26, 2005. He took a three-week alcohol-iday last June for his dad's 80th birthday in Ireland. ("I told people I got drunk once, but it was for three weeks.") A month later, in the middle of the night, he threw off his hotel room sheets and ripped open his locked mini-bar (he declines the key when checking in) like a grizzly going at a trash can. He drank all the Jack Daniel's he could find, which wasn't much — four mini bottles.
Otherwise, he says, he's been dry. "Earlier this year, on our West Coast swing, I'm watching TV in bed late one night when the phone rings," says Gary McCord. "It's David. He says, 'What are you doing?' I told him. He says, 'Can I come over and watch with you?' David has never done that. 'Why?' I ask. He says, 'Because the mini-bar is talking to me.' We watched TV for two hours, lying on the bed together — kind of a 'Brokeback' moment. I love the guy. Whatever he needs, David knows he can come to us for support."
Soon after he quit drinking, Feherty's hallucinations all but stopped. "They still come, but I can banish them now," he says. He still feels like he's hiding around a corner, running from something. "But this is easily livable, the way I feel now. It's taken a combination of pills, therapy and not drinking, but I'm better every day. Far too many people are owned by addiction and devastated by depression. There's such a stigma attached to mental illness that they're afraid to get help. You can get better, but you can't do it alone."
When the depression creeps in, as it does from time to time, Anita can spot it. "There's an absence in his eyes," she says. "His mouth seems to freeze, and his tongue can't move the words. He has a desperate look that makes everything else stop."
The cure these days isn't whiskey-induced oblivion. Instead, Feherty lies on his side and curls up, and Anita puts his head in her lap, holding a framed photo of Erin in front of his face. In the snapshot, Erin is digging her toes into the sand and laughing beneath a tangle of curly brown hair. "It reminds David what's waiting for him," Anita says. "And it always brings him back."
