Deaths fuel a desire to swear off drinking

Brent Nichols didn't intend to drink a drop that day.

But he took one look at his best friend lying there in bed in the Colonial Motel room in Ogden, saw how the cancer and liver failure had eaten away at Billy Tobias, watched his friend sucking down a last supper of Popov and cigarettes — and Nichols gave in.

"The next thing I know I'm down at the liquor store getting another gallon. We'd already been through one," Nichols recalled.

After a night of drinking, the 53-year-old man went out again later for cigarettes. On the way back to the motel, an Ogden police officer pulled him over for making an illegal lane change.

And that was 10. Ten DUI convictions from among double that number of DUI arrests.

So, Nichols never made it back to the motel room. Never delivered the smokes to his friend or said goodbye. He only found out later Billy Tobias died that night in the motel room.

"I have to live with that," said Nichols, who is now inmate No. 30889 in the Utah State Prison system. "I'm pretty sure the way we were drinking that night had a whole lot to do with that."

"I remember the first time I got drunk. It was the night of my graduation in 1968. I drank a fifth of lime vodka, and I threw up all over the place. My behavior was totally out of control. I turned over the table of food at the party. I should have known right at that minute I was an alcoholic." — Brent Nichols

Nichols is one of thousands of chronic alcoholics who work the courts and the rehabilitation system to avoid hard prison punishment. Time after time, Nichols was arrested drunk behind the wheel but would quickly admit himself to rehab before seeing a judge. Judges in St. George and Ogden primarily lent Nichols leniency for his willingness to get treatment.

But through 30 years and a grundle of DUI convictions, he never got better, never learned his lesson, never quit getting drunk and driving.

"I played the system," Nichols, 53, acknowledged. "But hopefully, those days are over."

Because after a string of DUI convictions and half-dozen additional arrests, Ogden District Judge Brent West finally sent Nichols to prison last summer.