After viral drug bust, ex-Texas lawmaker tells his recovery story

Nevárez was tempted to cowl it up with extra of the lies, omissions and deceit that had marked the final a number of years of his life.

A private harm lawyer who’d been representing his Eagle Pass district for about six years on the time, he now likens the addict’s mentality to that of a mouse continuously trying to find a strategy to escape traps and nonetheless one way or the other preserve the cheese.

NOV. 2019: State Rep. Poncho Nevárez faces drug charge after he lost cocaine at Austin airport

It was the identical mind-set that led him to choose that any sober particular person would discover beautifully dense: taking medication to a federally secured airport in a receptacle with his personal title on it.

“It doesn’t even seem like a choice,” he recollects, including he didn’t even understand on the time the place he’d misplaced it. “There’s a part of you that’s dominated by the disease that tells you that whatever the risk is, it’s worth it.”

This time, although, there was no room for deception: Police had video of him dropping the medication.

Weeks later, as a gathering with prosecutors approached, he drank and used once more. The subsequent morning, weary and hungover, as he dropped off his son, Ponchito, at college, the truth of how his actions had been affecting others stirred one thing in him.

“You look sad, papi,” his 9-year-old instructed him from the backseat, stretching his small arm towards his father, providing him a pouch of Welch’s fruit snacks. “I like these because they make me happy because they’re good.”

“It broke me,” Nevárez mentioned. “I didn’t just need to change — now I wanted to… I just kind of intuitively felt that If I tried to defend it, or if I tried to make it go away, I wasn’t going to survive it, and I’m not talking about the fallout. I’m talking about living.”

At the assembly with legislation enforcement, he got here clear and realized he was eligible for pretrial diversion, an alternative choice to prosecution for offenders who keep out of hassle and adjust to different phrases, akin to mandated counseling or group service.

That was Oct. 14, 2019. Ever since, Nevárez says he has maintained not simply abstinence, as he likes to emphasize, however the aware on a regular basis alternative of sobriety.

Now out of the Legislature and away from political life, he’s been capable of concentrate on his roles as a father and husband, heart his skilled consideration on his legislation observe, and launch a music profession on the facet. His twangy, bluesy rock-and-roll band The Red Floors launched its first album in August 2021, and he’s making ready to drop a second within the coming months.

More than three years into his recovery, the previous state lawmaker says he is ready to see clearly the ways in which the Pink Dome in Austin, with its quick tempo, emotionally grueling debates and sometimes cutthroat maneuvering — compounded with the heaviness of grief on his coronary heart after dropping two folks very near him inside six months — had slowly develop into poisonous to him.

“I don’t want people to think that I have a grudge against the place because I don’t,” he mentioned. “It’s a wonderful place. And it can be wonderful and terrible all at once. All of that was me, not the place. And I think that place will change anyone — it’s just what you let it do to you.”

Words with out music

“I can’t bear to smile / There ain’t nothing here that’s real / And I speak in tongues / to further some old place I left behind” —“Philistines and Muddy Waters” by  The Red Floors

State Rep. Terry Canales, a fellow average border city Democrat from Edinburg, broke down in tears as his pal instructed him he’d been battling dependancy and the way exhausting it had been to maintain it away from him.

“With 20/20 hindsight, almost like an A&E special: I missed all the signs,” mentioned Canales, his Austin house roommate and deskmate within the Texas House. “The Legislature is a rocket. It’s an adrenaline rush…. Everyone is so focused on what they’re doing. So hyperfocused, it’s easy to miss someone you love suffering right next to you, literally right next to you.”

It’s not that Nevárez was caught napping on the House flooring or lacking essential votes — he was nonetheless dealing with his legislative tasks, former colleagues mentioned, which even additional obscured what he was coping with internally. But these closest to him, like Canales, seen he was extra erratic than normal.

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As the extra senior member, Nevárez had at all times been a big-brother determine to Canales. He’d typically name Canales after work to ensure he was getting his sleep when he was invited out to one of many many dinners lawmakers attend throughout session.

Nevárez was wide-eyed when he entered the chamber as a member of the minority social gathering, however the actuality of his limitations and the unruliness of partisan politics was slowly beating him down.

Being one thing of a liaison between members of each events had pulled again the curtain on a number of the ugliest sides of lawmaking — and compelled him to replicate on his personal participation in it.

Nevárez made nationwide headlines in 2017 when he was involved in a heated scuffle on the House flooring with a Republican lawmaker who had threatened to name immigration authorities on folks protesting an anti-sanctuary cities invoice.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: Texas legislator threatens to shoot colleague in altercation

“I was starting to crack,” Nevárez mentioned, including it occurred not lengthy after his sister and greatest pal had died. “It was a really good example of me just being wound too tight already.”

By the 2019 session, it was Canales who was getting his pal’s voicemail and questioning why he wasn’t residence.

That 12 months, Nevárez recollects doing every part he may to discourage a vote on a permitless carry invoice, which didn’t go that 12 months. (It did throughout the next session in 2021, when he was now not in workplace.)

“I was really, really hung up on that and how a lot of my colleagues, they would have voted for that thing, and then privately they’re like, ‘please don’t let it get out of committee,’” he mentioned. “But I’m no worse than they are because I’m playing the same game, right? And so, you know, the feeling that way, it was less about them and more about me.”

Former state Rep. Chris Paddie, R-Marshall, one other good pal of Nevárez’s who entered the Legislature concurrently him in 2013, was equally caught off guard when he learn the news about his arrest.

Paddie mentioned he may relate to the pressures that Nevárez has described as having performed a task in bringing him to a darkish place.

“People view the Legislature and serving as being all glamor and fame and don’t realize there’s real challenges, there are stresses, there are tremendous sacrifices that are made, not only from your business but family sacrifices, and in his case, your health,” Paddie mentioned. “His situation shined a little bit more light on the fact that hey, we’re just real people, and people have problems, they have challenges.”

MORE: House fracas ‘isn’t over,’ exemplifies tension over immigration debate

Some of the worst criticism Nevárez acquired as a politician was for a choice he made that 12 months to tack an unrelated modification onto a invoice he co-sponsored that will have enhanced protections for home violence victims.

“Christmas tree bills,” or items of laws that find yourself ornamented with tons of riders, are a typical prevalence towards the tip of session as lawmakers desperately search Hail Marys on dying proposals. Nevárez was identified for being particularly deft at this.

State Rep. Brooks Landgraf, R-Odessa, went to Nevárez to ask for his assist with an effort to permit a radioactive waste firm to delay cost of greater than $4 million in charges to the state. Nevárez agreed.

Weeks later, Gov. Greg Abbott vetoed the invoice and blamed Nevárez for its downfall.

“The bill author’s good idea about domestic violence has been dragged down by a bad idea about radioactive waste,” Abbott mentioned.

Citing the debacle, Texas Monthly named him as one of many “worst lawmakers” in its biannual listing, describing him as “hotheaded, assertive, mischievous, and prone to brawling.”

Nevárez doesn’t remorse providing the modification, but when he needed to do it once more, he mentioned he would have chosen a unique invoice because the car, as he felt “horrible” for spoiling a great invoice.

“The defects and character that I have, my lack of patience, my lack of humility, my ego, my obsessive compulsive disorder of wanting things to be perfect, right?” he mentioned. “All these things that I had been able to check to a certain extent, well, now I couldn’t check them anymore.”

Taking care

“Mama told me / The more I drank, the less I would forget / Mama told me / ‘It’s an anchor, son, and it’s wrapped, wrapped around your neck’” — “Whiskey Ain’t Free”

Nevárez’s son wasn’t the one particular person in his household who sensed one thing was amiss.

In August 2018, his eldest daughter, Renata, had simply seen “A Star Is Born,” the musical romantic drama that illustrates the devastating results of drug and alcohol dependancy.

She grew emotional as she instructed her dad that for some motive, the addict character reminded her of him.

“I was like, ‘Why did this movie hit me so hard?’” she remembers considering. “In that moment, I didn’t know, but in my gut, I knew something was wrong.”

At the time, denial was the one response Nevárez had. It was the identical when his spouse, Rossy, would confront him, suggesting he had an issue. He denied, deflected and even known as her loopy.

But after his mistake on the airport, he knew it was time to be trustworthy together with her.

“I told him, ‘I’m going to support you, obviously, for my kids and everything, but you are going to change, and you’re going to go to rehabilitation,’” Rossy mentioned. “‘You’re not going to be able to fail because we’re all with you,’ and I knew he was going to do what he said he would because he’s very disciplined. He sets out to do something, and he does it.”

The news of his drug arrest broke unexpectedly, leaked on a conservative weblog, a few month into his recovery journey in November. He put out an announcement accepting accountability and saying he was dedicated to remedy.

The reactions from the general public ranged from criticism and condescension to like and encouragement. Some known as for his resignation.

Then-House Speaker Dennis Bonnen, one in every of a number of Republicans who confirmed their assist for him on Twitter, known as him not lengthy after the news broke to inform him he didn’t count on him to step down from his committee chairmanship. (Nevárez had already introduced per week earlier that he wouldn’t run for re-election.)

“I told him if he was seeking help, all he needed to give a damn about was taking care of himself and his family,” Bonnen mentioned. “If you take everything away from somebody, what’s the motivating factor to go through the really hard and painful process of rehabilitation?”

The most troublesome a part of the day was that he’d made the self-admitted mistake of pushing aside telling his three youngsters what was happening. That day, he and his spouse have been on a visit to California. They made the youngsters promise not to have a look at their telephones, they usually rushed residence.

The household remains to be therapeutic from the trauma, however they’ve “hit the reset button on transparency,” Nevárez mentioned.

“It’s incalculable how much of an effect their contact, their encouragement, their forgiveness, their love had,” he mentioned.

Despite it being “the longest day of his life,” one way or the other the predominant feeling wasn’t anguish; it was aid. Relief that he didn’t should lie anymore, to his household, his mates, even his therapist.

“I actually slept pretty well that night,” he mentioned. “As awful as I felt that day because I needed to get home, I also felt free.”

‘Beat the monster’

“Cocaine dust on my mirror / Trouble’s drawing nearer / Been thinking some of what / What I’d like to be… I want to feel something better” —“Something Better” (Unreleased)

Below Nevárez’s laptop monitor in his workplace in downtown Eagle Pass, he retains a to-do listing he wrote in the summertime of 2018 on a notecard from his household’s 17-acre ranch.

Every merchandise has been marked completed, besides one: “Beat the monster.”

“I see it every morning, and I have to resist the urge to cross through it,” he mentioned. “Because I’m not done with this. And I’m never going to be done with it. It just sits there, and it reminds me.”

ALSO READ: Texas Rep. Poncho Nevárez reflects on 292 sober days since cocaine arrest

After his first three months of abstinence, Nevárez was bodily doing the appropriate factor and going to assist group conferences.

Sometimes it felt as if he really had already beat the monster. He’d promised Rossy he’d go to a rehab clinic, however as the primary day neared, he needed to postpone.

The first step of Alcoholics Anonymous is admitting to being powerless over an dependancy, but he had reservations. He had abstained for this lengthy, hadn’t he? But Rossy insisted.

“I’m so glad she did,” Nevárez mentioned. “I had to have two feet in this thing if I was going to have a chance to live.”

He spent 35 days at a clinic in Mazatlán, a resort city alongside the western coast of Mexico, the place he says he benefited from having time for introspection, sharing his story and studying from others.

Since then, he’s continued to go to conferences, develop into a sponsor and located a brand new sort of remedy in music.

On a latest Monday, Nevárez, sitting for an interview in one in every of his residing rooms, relished the straightforward consolation of listening to the thump, thump, thump of a bouncing basketball exterior on his driveway, an indication his son was close by, inside earshot, and less than 200 miles away.

Comeback story

The sounds of guitar in vibrant and full Nashville-tuning, a preview of an unfinished tune on his new album, blares by audio system in a small management sales space a fraction the dimensions of Nevárez’s former Capitol workplace. The three-booth recording studio is simply over the border in Piedras Negras, Mexico.

He faucets his pen in opposition to the facet of his leg to the music and periodically scribbles notes in a journal on his lap.

His ankle is resting on his reverse knee, revealing his tan leather-based Lucchese cowboy boots which are embossed with the Texas House of Representatives seal and his title.

“Me gusta la acústica,” he shouts over the music to his producer, letting him know he favored the tune acoustic.

This is Nevárez’s new House flooring, the place that offers him a thrill and a way of objective.

“There’s just something so cathartic about it,” he mentioned about making the album. “Maybe there’s an audience for it, maybe there isn’t, but I just, I have to do it. It makes me feel good.”

Nevárez says he’s typically requested whether or not he’ll return to politics. The reply is a agency no.

“I could see myself getting sucked into this vortex of telling this story, just for the simple purposes of reassuring somebody that I’m OK to vote for, and I’m not interested in that,” he mentioned.

He understands the motivation behind the query for many individuals, however their targets and his targets are now not aligned.

“Everyone likes a good comeback story,” he mentioned later that evening, grinning and spreading his fingers, palm-side up, gesturing to his residence, his daughter sitting in entrance of him on a bar stool within the kitchen having one other one in every of their late-night chats. “This is my comeback.”

taylor.goldenstein@chron.com

LISTEN: Former state Rep. Poncho Nevárez deconstructs three of his rock band’s songs