Fighting Forward: How a veteran physician rebuilt his life

When Wayne talks about his life, he doesn’t sound bitter. He sounds wide awake. Not just sober, but present—and even grateful.

That might not be the picture you get at first. He’s a doctor and an Army veteran—the kind of person who built a thriving internal medicine practice after retiring from the U.S. Army in 2013. For a while, things were golden—successful career, family, stability. But like a lot of people, Wayne hit a wall when COVID-19 showed up.

Wayne in the U.S. Army during an overseas deployment.

His practice collapsed. His marriage followed. He started drinking. Not the casual kind. He became, in his own words, a “full-blown alcoholic.” Then came a prostate cancer diagnosis. That’s four lifequakes, all stacked on top of each other. It would have broken a lot of people completely.

But here’s where Wayne’s story shifts.

“I had to go to detox,” he says. “I was that bad.” He ended up doing stints at programs across the Northeast—Gate House, Elliot Hospital, Starlight in Connecticut. That last one, Starlight, is a place that treats veterans only. A farm-turned-recovery center where the silence lets your mind slow down just enough to notice how broken it really is. They referred him to Harbor Care for transitional housing.

Wayne doesn’t romanticize any of it. “I was broken in a lot of different ways,” he says. “Your spirit breaks. Your brain doesn’t work the same. You think you’re just drinking, but you’re changing the way your mind works.”

Then came Buckingham Place, a Harbor Care transitional housing facility for veterans in Nashua—and something new shifted. “It wasn’t just about being sober,” the 62-year-old says. “It was about recovering. Growing forward. Becoming a better person.”

Buckingham offered him more than a roof—it gave him room to breathe. A little apartment. Case managers who listened. A Monday group meeting that turned into something he started looking forward to. “I told everyone—don’t just hide in your room. Come out, sit in the lobby, have some tea. Let’s talk. Let’s reconnect.”

That might sound small, but if you’ve ever been in a dark place, you know how big that step can feel.

Wayne started showing up—for himself, and for others. He went to church and joined a gym. He helped neighbors run errands. Slowly, he began piecing together the life he wanted next. “It’s easy to get comfortable and stay,” he says of his 14 months at Buckingham. “But Buckingham isn’t forever. It’s a launchpad.”

He got his medical licenses in order. Found a job in South Jersey, in a private practice just outside of Fort Dix. “I saw my first patients on Tuesday,” he says, sitting in his office during a break. “It’s not the same life I had before but it’s a good one.”

Wayne only has these few items to give away on his final day in NH.

He still takes Antabuse, a daily medication that makes drinking physically unbearable. He says it with dry humor: “Of course it only works if you take it. So does a ham sandwich.”

These days, Wayne talks a lot about gratitude. About his sons, now in their twenties. About road trips with podcasts instead of road rage. About planning his days so he can enjoy them and not escape them.

When asked if he ever thinks about the past—the marriage, the drinking, the practice that collapsed—he pauses. “Sometimes I go to that place. You know, if I had done this, maybe that wouldn’t have happened. But I try to live in gratitude. Not resentment.”

If there’s one lesson Wayne wants to pass on, especially to anyone struggling with addiction or transition, it’s this: You can start over, but you’ve got to work for it. Detox is a beginning, but recovery is where the real work and real joy live.

Harbor Care didn’t “fix” Wayne. We gave him the space to believe in something he’d nearly lost faith in—hope. Hope for a future that’s not the same as before, and maybe even better.