'Down and Back' traces alcoholism, hockey, and family

Down and Back: On Alcohol, Family, and a Life in Hockey.

by Justin Bourne

Justin Bourne is plugged into life's mixed blessings. As the son of a famous hockey player, he has seen his share of them. Bob Bourne won four Stanley Cups with the New York Islanders. He was a great centre and a well-loved doer of good deeds off the ice.

He was also alcoholic, useless with money, and divorced from his wife and two sons, Jeff and Justin, by the time they were 11 and eight years old.

Jeff was born with spina bifida, and Justin grew up with a strong sense of duty to his single mom and  big brother. He followed the old man into professional hockey, and into alcoholism. Bob Bourne had the bigger, and perhaps luckier career as a player. Justin excelled as a hockey analyst, blogger, and commentator.

He has been dry, four years and counting. With this book Justin Bourne is publicly cheering for his dad to find sobriety, too.

Justin's autobiography is about intergenerational alcoholism. He is profoundly grateful for the support of his wife Brianna Gillies. Her dad, Clarke, and Justin's Dad, Bob, were Islanders teammates and pals.

When he and Brianna were first dating, Justin says "My roommates were sending me videos of Clark Gillies beating the high holy shit out of giant NHLers, just as a reminder of what I was getting myself into."

Down and Back is also a reaffirmation of Justin's personal 'higher powers' in sobriety – Brianna, his mom, his brother, his kids, and all the people who stood by him through his wasted years.

Bourne offers encouragement to readers whose lives are unmanageable because of booze. He presents a how-to, or perhaps a how-not-to guide for serious young hockey players. His book is also a romp for a quippy writer, clearly enjoying having his faculties sharp again, after years of IPA, wine and vodka fog.

A hockey scion's life is bittersweet

So, about those mixed blessings. The Bourne name won Justin easy respect among the Islanders faithful, but at the same time, the parental precedent boxed Justin into a psychological corner. It is hard enough to make your own way in hockey, without being measured against your dad, the star. 

Justin Bourne's first big goal was a full-ride NCAA scholarship. In 2004 he landed exactly that at University of Alaska Anchorage. He had a stellar college career. The downside? He was far from home for the first time. Far from the people he did not want to disappoint. Free to begin dabbling in drink.

Four and a half substantial chapters into his life story, alcohol entered the scene, and Bourne's decline begins.

Speaking of Alaska, shortly before arriving there as a very good Junior B player in British Columbia, Bourne describes his first hockey fight.

"His name was Ryan McMullan. He was not tall, no, but he was built like a fire hydrant and had actually thrown a punch before in his life, unlike me. Turns out he was an Alaskan (red flag, Bourne). I asked him to fight the only way I knew how, as dictated by my understanding of hockey culture, which was by saying, "Wanna go?" and I swear he hit me square in the nose three times before I ever got my gloves off."

Bourne is very good at these 'hockey bro' moments. He only picked this fight because he didn't want to be the guy who never dances. Bourne's writing is steeped in hockey code, and he is transparent about what parts of the game's culture he wears easily, and what chafes.

He plays some AHL years and then some ECHL years. He has average luck, some good, some bad, and at a realistic age, he resigns himself to the likelihood that NHL is not in the cards.

Long before the end of play though, he is writing about his daily grind, jotting minutiae about equipment, facilities, plays made and blown, good, bad and ugly teaching moments, a team bus load of sharp observations about the game.

Long before I got sober, I suspected I'd end up writing something like this. I used to write it in my head as I walked back from my son's daycare after dropping him off at 8 a.m., some two hours after I'd had my first drink of the day. I figured I'd lay out the insanity of how I drank—drink by daily drink—because truly, it was insane.

Only in hockey can a grim injury count as yet another mixed blessing. When Bourne caught a ferocious slap shot square in the mouth, the puck simultaneously pulverized his teeth, his jaw, and his career on ice.

Bourne figures the injury just hastened the inevitable. It was time to get on with the next thing in life, anyway.

A career in transition and a worsening addiction

Bourne was always a heads-up player, and so he transitioned relatively smoothly into video work, coaching, analysis and commentary. Relatively smoothly, because with each passing year, the drinking became more pathological, and like many alcoholics, he dedicated a depressing amount of mental energy to hiding his intake.

It's a familiar cycle: social anxiety and shame fed his need to be alone. And alone time is when he did his most destructive drinking.

Considering the rivers of liquor that he drank, it is a testament to the wiliness of the alcoholic brain that few coworkers knew how sick Bourne was. I shared some of Down and Back's details with a former close colleague and friend of Bourne. 

They were shocked, clueless as to the extent of alcohol their coworker pal had been absorbing. That's part of Bourne's message too. Alcoholics are everywhere, and they need our love.

Just before going into rehab – terrified but eager to get dry – Bourne says "I still don't have a conclusion about what I mentally lost by living the way I did …but at this point I was relieved that the weeks and months [of sobriety to come] would at least shuck a few layers of ice off my brain like a scraper on a frozen windshield."

Hockey, beer, and crusty windshields. This is a very Canadian book.

Given the value of Bourne's message to suffering addicts, regardless of nationality, maybe that's a mixed blessing too. 

Down and Back On Alcohol, Family and a Life in Hockey Penguin Random House. 304 pages. cloth $36.00