The Hill News

Former Rep. John Sweeney (R-N.Y.) says he considered suicide after his second drunk driving arrest, which took place just over two years after he lost reelection.

Sweeney gave a wide-ranging interview to The Saratogian that ran Sunday, in which he revealed he has been sober for two years since the arrest. The former congressman said the episode made him think about his obligations to his three children, which ultimately led him to turn around his life.

{mosads}"I was contemplating hanging myself," he said of his mindset following at the time. "I found myself in a place of despair that I couldn’t get out of. I had reached an end.

"I thought about what I had left on the shelf that I hadn’t done as a ! parent. I made the decision that I needed to surrender to something else," he added. "There had to be something else out there that would help me change. I wanted to live."

The upstate New York Republican won election in 1998, but lost to now-Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) in the Democratic wave election of 2006. Sweeney received a 30-day jail sentence in April 2010 for his felony drunk driving conviction, which came less than two years after his first one. 

Sweeney, 55, opened up about his troubles with alcohol abuse, saying that he took his first drink at 14 and 15 and was predisposed to alcoholism. He also talked about his drinking habits as a congressman:

While Sweeney said he would infrequently! drink w hile in his Washington, D.C., office or at the Capitol, he continued to incorporate alcohol into his work as a congressman, a job he loved.

“It was a huge part of who I was, to me, not just to the world,” he said. “This gave me value. This gave me a sense of purpose.”

He was sober his first 10 months in office, but a vacation to Cabo San Lucas with friends changed that, and he was once again “off to the races.” His ethic was work hard during the day and play hard after business hours.

“It was almost a manic existence of go, go, go, go, go, until you couldn’t go and then you slept,” he said. “For a couple of years it was a lot of fun, I won’t deny it. I was invincible, at least that’s what I wanted you to think, and I wanted me to think it, too.”

He said his problems worsened after he lost to Gillibrand.

“The only identification I had was that I was really good at my! job," he said. "I lost the one centerpiece of my identity, then everything spiraled down at an accelerated pace."

But he says now he is on the right path, participating in a 12-step program and spending time with his girlfriend and baby daughter.

“I’ve got a lot of wreckage from my past that I am still trying to clean up, and it will take me years. One of the things that I’ve come to recognize is that many of those things always involved alcohol consumption. Almost every time a drink was somewhere nearby, coming to that recognition was not easy,” he said. “Hopefully, I can be an example of hope for people, especially anybody familiar with my story.”