• Alcohol-impaired susceptible to rages of fire
• Coffee brandy ranks as state's drug of choice
• A history of alcohol
• Alcohol's effects on the body
• How reporters researched and wrote this series
• Alcohol-related deaths in 1991

The deadly potential of alcohol abuse was clear in the March 23 crash at a tollbooth on the Maine Turnpike. A drunken Gary Sledzik, 44, of Webster, Mass., driving his pickup at more than 65 mph, slammed into a car, killing Barbara Maxfield, 36, of Bradford, N.H., and her 13-year-old daughter, Brooke Willis. Sledzik pleaded guilty to manslaughter and 12 other felony charges. Two days after this story was first published, he was sentenced to seven years in prison. Staff photo by David A. Rodgers.

It ravages our state like an insidious and relentless virus.

It fuels half of our fatal fires, suicides, homicides and accidental deaths.

It conspires silently in thefts, rapes, domestic violence and child neglect.

It jams our hospitals and prisons.

It tears families apart.

It spares no one.

Even those who aren't directly afflicted share the financial burden of this scourge. And the price we pay is staggering: an estimated $1 billion a year - $853 for every man, woman and child in Maine.

This plague is alcohol, and it is the most pervasive problem challenging our state.

''It's everywhere,'' says Dr. George L. Higgins III, chief of the department of emergency medicine at Maine Medical Center in Portland. ''It's in all of these subtle things. It's in child neglect, it's in child abuse, it's in domestic violence, it's in depression, it's in thought disorders, it's in people who are losing their jobs.

''It's in people who can't keep their marriages, it's in people who are in legal trouble. It's in the sexual predators.''

Staff art. Source: Figures on the costs of abuse were updated by Dr. Robert Dana of the University of Maine from a 1982 study, "A Partial Estimate of the Cost of Alcohol Abuse in the State of Maine." The state budget figure is from the Legislature's Office of Fiscal and Program Review.

The Maine Sunday Telegram and Portland Press Herald spent six months tabulating the cost of Maine's alcohol abuse. Reporters talked to more than 500 people - doctors, lawyers, criminals, juveniles, judges, and national experts - about alcohol abuse. They listened to mothers who lost children in drunken-driving accidents; to teen-agers who grew fond of liquor at the age of 10; to prisoners who robbed, killed and set fires after they'd drunk themselves senseless; and to alcoholics who have ruined their health.

The reporters assembled and analyzed databases, reviewed more than 6,000 pages of alcohol studies, police and court records, medical journals, emergency room statistics and death records.

The research led to an inescapable conclusion: Alcohol is Maine's deadliest, costliest and most formidable adversary. Illegal drugs like cocaine, marijuana and heroin caputure the public's concern. But it is alcohol, a legal and widely accessible drug, that wreaks the most destruction and garners the least attention. In Maine, a predominantly rural state, alcohol is the overwhelming drug of choice.

Staff art. Source: Maine Office of Substance Abuse.

Alcohol is a chemical that slows the activity of the central nervous system and acts on the brain to induce a feeling of euphoria, that aura of false self-confidence that loosens lips and decreases inhibitions. In excess, it can cause drunkenness, stupor, a coma or even death. Over time, it can inflict lasting damage on the stomach, the liver, the heart and other organs.

Each year in Maine, alcohol buries at least 400 men, women and children.

They die from spoiled livers, cancer, heart disease and pneumonia brought on by years of chronic alcohol abuse.

They perish in fatal fires after passing out drunk with lit cigarettes or food on the stove. They get careless with their woodstoves or electrical heaters. Often they're too drunk to even smell the smoke as it circles their beds.

Forty to 50 percent of the people who die in accidents have consumed alcohol. They suffer fatal falls, they drown, they freeze to death, they choke on their food or crash their snowmobiles after drowning their judgment in liquor.

Alcohol is found in 50 percent of the suicides where a blood-alcohol test is carried out. In 50 to 70 percent of our murders, the killer has been drinking. More than half the time, the homicide victims are drunk too.

More often than not, the people involved in these episodes have had more than just a couple of beers. They've consumed 12, 16, 20 or more drinks. Many of them are so drunk they're in stupors or in borderline comas.

Routinely, the amount of alcohol in their blood is double, triple, quadruple and sometimes five times as high as the state's legal driving limit of 0.08 percent.

For the average person, a blood-alcohol level of 0.06 percent is enough to impair judgment and decrease inhibitions.

Alcoholism thrives throughout Maine, poisoning our cities, small rural towns and islands. Some communities have struggled more than others. Maine's Americna Indian reservations have been devastated by alcohol. Their tribal cemeteries are filled with young men and women who are victims of alcohol abuse. They die from liver disease, car accidents, homicides and suicides, at rates double and triple the state average for such deaths. ''Alcohol is such a devastating thing in our community,'' says Clayton Clease, health planner for the Passamaquoddy Tribe in Pleasant Point. ''I've carried a lot of caskets to the grave and it's heartbreaking because most of them were preventable.''

Despite crusades against drinking and driving, plenty of hard-core drunk drivers continue to threaten our roadways, killing an average of 66 people a year since 1992. A total of 2,004 men, women and children have died in Maine's drunken-driving crashes during the past 20 years. One hundred and thirteen thousand people have been arrested for drunken driving in Maine in the past decade. And national experts say thousands more repeatedly drive drunk and never get caught.

Staff art. Source: Maine Office of Substance Abuse.

''Alcohol is the unreported story in homicides and accidental deaths in Maine,'' says Dr. Erik Steele, administrator for emergency trauma services at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor. ''If, on a daily basis, we put several people in a plane and crashed them into a mountainside because the pilot was drunk, there'd be an outrage. We'd hop right on that problem.

''But because these alcohol-related deaths are spread out geographically and chronologically, we don't grasp the full dimension of it. We see the boating accident, the car crash, the bitter spouse, the shooting incident, but we miss the booze.''

Along with killing and maiming innocent victims, drunken drivers jack our insurance rates up 12 percent.Injuries and property damage due to these crashes cost us roughly $52 million a year.

Alcohol abuse takes a toll on the state's highways, and even on its woodland trails. Last year, 116 people were charged with OUI while riding snowmobiles in the state.

Twenty-four people died in snowmobile deaths in 1996 and 1997; 13 of those were alcohol-related. From 1991 to 1996, 41 percent of all snowmobile fatalities were alcohol-related.

Along with drunk drivers, criminals with alcohol addictions clog our courtrooms.

Booze, police and prosecutors say, is a recurring theme that runs through 80 to 90 percent of their cases.

''It's a plague,'' says Mark Dion, deputy chief of the Portland Police Department. ''People think it's only drunk driving that involves booze. But it's a lot more than that. All the crimes that cause people to gasp when they read their newspaper usually have alcohol involvement. Booze is the silent co-conspirator.''

It costs Maine an estimated $42 million a year to arrest, prosecute and imprison criminals who are drunk or drinking when they steal, brawl, rape, kill, neglect their children and beat their spouses.

One-third of Maine's families are headed by parents who abuse alcohol. Each year, 700 children are taken away from their families; in two-thirds of the cases, the parents are too drunk to care for them, or they abuse them while they're intoxicated. Repairing, counseling and supporting alcohol-ravaged families costs an estimated $175 million a year.

''The alcohol problem is overwhelming,'' says Sandy Hodge, a supervisor in the state Department of Human Services. ''We see everything from parents who spend all their money on booze to parents who use alcohol to loosen their inhibitions and have sex with their children.''

Staff art. Source: Maine Office of Substance Abuse.

At least one in four people admitted to our hospitals are there because of alcohol-related ills.

These chronic alcoholics require intensive medical care for their scarred livers, bleeding stomachs and bad hearts.

Emergency rooms and hospitals are overrun with drunken patients who have fallen down stairs, burned themselves, broken their bones in brawls, gotten shot.

Many of these ailing alcoholics and emergency-room patients don't have private insurance, so the cost is passed on to those who are insured and pay taxes. The same is true for many alcoholics who seek rehabilitation and are too poor to pay. The bill for medical care for treating alcohol-related illnesses is roughly $166 million each year.

Ten percent of all workers are alcoholics or problem drinkers. They go home from work twice as often as their healthier colleagues; they use their sick benefits three times as much and are five times more likely to file for workers' compensation.

Staff art. Source: Maine Office of Substance Abuse.

The estimated annual cost of lost productivity and mistakes created by hung-over workers or employees who drink on the job: $587 million a year.

While many states grapple with illicit drugs such as cocaine or heroin, Maine's drug of choice is alcohol.

In 1996, 81 percent of the people in Maine seeking help for substance abuse were alcohol abusers, compared to 52 percent nationwide.

Nearly 52 percent of adults in Maine report that someone in their family has a severe alcohol problem. Nearly 100,000 Mainers are considered alcohol abusers or alcoholics.

Children in Maine are drinking at earlier ages now, and they binge-drink more than their counterparts in New England and across the country.

Forty-five percent of all high-school students say that by age 13 they had tried alcohol; 8 percent of them say they were drinking regularly by the time they turned 13.

Some 35 percent of 12th-graders admitted during a recent survey that they had had five or more drinks on one or more occasions in the past two weeks, compared to 31 percent of their New England peers and 30 percent nationally.

Mainers have a fondness for hard liquor. The state ranked third-highest in per-capita spirits consumption among the 18 states that control their liquor distribution or sales.

Mainers rank 14th-highest among the 50 states for the share of spirits bought. Thirty-one percent of the alcohol purchase in Maine is liquor, as opposed to beer or wine. Last year, people in the state bought 1.7 million gallons of spirits, 2.5 million gallons of beer and 2.7 million gallons of wine.

Staff art. Source: Maine Office of Substance Abuse.

And although alcohol devastates the state, claims the lives of hundreds of Mainers each year, costs millions in treatment, hospital care, prison beds and drunken-driving crashes, little is being done to thwart this deadly adversary.

The state government collected $64.4 million in alcohol taxes last year. Only a fraction of those taxes - $7.4 million - was spent on substance abuse treatment. That amount is paltry compared to the $1 billion it costs to repair the harm caused by booze.

''Everyone talks about the war on drugs but no one talks about alcohol,'' says Dick Loomer, recently retired as director of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence in Maine. ''Alcohol is the biggest problem in our state, yet no one wants to deal with it. It's like there's this great big elephant standing in the living room and no one sees it till it steps on someone they love.''

Briana Carney was 16 and eight months pregnant when she hollered goodbye to her mother for the last time.

''I'm off, Mom,'' she said.

''I love you,'' Laurie Carney replied.

''I love you too,'' Briana said.

After Briana went out the door on that 1996 Labor Day weekend, Laurie Carney read a card her daughter left behind. It thanked her for the baby shower she'd just thrown for Briana.

Briana Carney, 16, and her unborn baby died from injuries sustained in a single-vehicle crash in Garfield in September 1996. The father of the baby, Lloyd McPherson, was behind the wheel with a blood-alcohol level of 0.10 percent, investigators said.

''Thank you for so much that you've done and so much that you'll do for me in the future,'' wrote Briana, a perky, dark-haired girl who excelled in school and planned to go to college despite her oncoming motherhood.

Later that Friday night, Briana sat in the passenger seat of a 1987 pickup as Lloyd McPherson, the father of her baby, drove along a country road in Caribou.

McPherson had drunk some beer that day, and just before 10:30 p.m. he lost control as he sped around a curve.

The truck skidded into a field and rolled over, ejecting Briana Carney through the rear window. She was rushed to the hospital, where she died by morning.

Doctors removed her baby by Caesarean birth. The 6-pound girl was perfectly formed, but she had been deprived of oxygen during the accident. She couldn't breathe on her own. Her grandparents agreed it was best to take her off life support.

''We took turns holding her,'' Laurie Carney remembered. ''Her little heart beat for a while and she let out little sighs and then everything stopped.''

Briana Carney and her baby girl were two of the 55 victims to die in alcohol-related crashes in 1996.

Though drunken-driving fatalities in Maine have dropped considerably since 1976, when 139 people lost their lives, there are still thousands of drunken drivers who refuse to stay off the roads.

Unlike social drinkers, who for the most part have gotten the message to limit their drinking before they get on the road, these hard-core drunks rack up two, three, four and sometimes as many as 10 drunken-driving convictions.

Last year, of the 5,917 adults who were convicted of OUI, 1,582 had two prior drunken-driving convictions during the past 10 years; another 626 had three or more OUI convictions during the same period.

Police estimate that each of these habitual drunken drivers gets behind the wheel 100 to 200 or more times a year drunk. And they're not turning the ignition key after just a few drinks. They weave along Maine's roadways after they've had four or five pitchers of beer or a dozen or more drinks of hard liquor.

In 1996, 2,776 of these drivers were arrested with blood-alcohol levels between 0.16 and 0.22 percent; 680 drove with levels between 0.23 and 0.29 and 106 had blood-alcohol levels higher than 0.30.

After 0.27 percent, the average person can't stand and slips into a stupor. At 0.35 percent, circulation and breathing start slowing down; the threat of a coma and death are likely.

Because they're so intoxicated when they drive, persistent drunken drivers are four times more likely to kill when they get behind the wheel of a car.

Most of them are alcoholics who don't think rationally; the risk of getting another OUI, of killing themselves or innocent motorists, is not as important as quenching their addiction.

Suspending their licenses is futile. Eighty percent of them drive anyway.

Many of them never even bother to get licenses.

Staff art. Source: Maine Office of Substance Abuse.

''They're predators,'' says David Crook, district attorney for Somerset and Kennebec counties. ''And they don't give a damn about anybody.''

Lloyd McPherson's blood-alcohol level was 0.10 percent when he drove off the road and killed Briana Carney and their baby. Like McPherson, 21 of the 50 drivers at fault in the 1996 alcohol-related crashes had prior OUI convictions.

One driver had been convicted of OUI five times; five drivers had been convicted three times; three drivers had been convicted twice and 12 had one previous OUI conviction.

Carney's baby, just a few hours old, was the youngest to die in Maine's 1996 drunken-driving accidents. Eighty-year-old Rosina Denning was the oldest.

Denning was killed as she crossed Main Street in Norway one February evening after playing beano at the American Legion Hall. Kenneth Dembski, 60, struck Denning as she crossed the street just before 10:30 p.m. His blood-alcohol level was 0.15 percent.

Dembski, who had an OUI conviction before the accident, was later convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 26 months in prison.

Like Lloyd McPherson, the majority of the drivers in the 1996 crashes were males in their late teens, early 20s or 30s, which holds true for drunken-driving crashes nationally. Most of the accidents occurred on weekends, late at night or in the early morning - typically the most dangerous time to be driving.

Sometimes both of the drivers involved in collisions had been convicted of OUI before. Such was the case in a York County accident in 1996.

Just before 10:30 p.m. on Aug. 16, 27-year-old Roland Daney wove erratically west along Route 202 in Lebanon when he nearly plowed head-on into State Trooper Robert Shea's cruiser. Shea turned around, flashed his blue lights and pulled Daney over. As he walked up to the car, Shea spotted an open can of beer between Daney's legs.

Staff art. Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Daney took off and Shea sped after him. Daney had reason to be concerned about a trooper pulling him over. He'd twice been convicted of OUI and he was driving on a suspended license that night.

Daney fled at a speed of 80 mph for the next two miles.

As Daney roared west on Route 202, Dawn LaPierre, 47, was heading east in her four-door Toyota sedan. LaPierre attempted to make a left-hand turn and plowed into Daney.

''My heart went in my throat,'' Shea recalled. ''I knew it was going to be bad.''Daney died within minutes of massive head injuries.

''There was nothing I could do for him,'' Shea said.

When Shea went to check LaPierre's car, she was caught between a scream and a cry. Her radio was blaring and her face was bleeding. Another trooper would later note alcohol on her breath.

Like Daney, LaPierre's license had been suspended in the past for OUI. Her blood-alcohol level that night was 0.11 percent. She has been charged with OUI.

Daney's was 0.35 percent; he'd consumed almost enough alcohol to put himself in a coma.

''Between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. on the weekends, 40 percent of the drivers are believed to be drunk,'' Shea says. ''It's pretty frightening.''

Out of the 53 who died in 1996 the majority of them were young people like Briana Carney.

For parents like Laurie Carney, burying a child who died in a crash that didn't need to happen is unbearable.

The memory of her bright, brown-haired Briana and the infant lying together in a coffin often overwhelms Laurie Carney. She prays to God each day, telling him to watch over her two angels until she herself can get to heaven to look after them.

''If I could have seen the future I don't know if I could have decided to have children,'' Carney says, stifling tears that come all too easily.

Step into Maine's busiest emergency room on any given night and smell the booze.

In 1996, 11 percent of the patients rushed to Maine Medical Center for car accidents, falls, stabbings, shootings and broken bones had either been drinking or were intoxicated. So far this year, the number of alcohol-related trauma cases at the hospital has already risen to 14 percent.

More than half of the alcohol-related trauma cases seen at the state's three largest hospitals are the result of motor vehicle or motorcycle accidents involving drunken drivers.

''It's a huge issue,'' says Dr. George L. Higgins III, who oversees Maine Medical Center's emergency room. ''Many of the patients we see are here as a direct result of alcohol. Domestic violence, falls, burns. Alcohol poisoning. We see it all.''

August 1992: A 27-year-old man is injured in an assault and rushed to Maine Medical Center, where he dies. His blood-alcohol level alone - 0.462 percent - is enough to kill most people.

August 1993: A 31-year-old man with a blood-alcohol level of 0.37 hits a pedestrian with his car. The driver is taken to Maine Med. He lives, but spends 31 days in intensive care.

January 1997: A 77-year-old man takes a spill and spends five days in the hospital, including one day in the intensive care unit. His blood-alcohol level at the time of his accident is 0.248, a level that can upset balance and muscular coordination.

These snapshots of alcohol-related injuries are typical of the medical price Maine pays for its abuse of alcohol. Alcohol-related trauma and chronic diseases linked to alcohol abuse and alcoholism create a costly medical burden.

Nationally, the numbers are staggering. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism estimates that from 1985 to 1990, the economic cost of alcoholism and alcohol-related problems in the United States rose by 40 percent, to $98.6 billion. Ten percent of those costs can be attributed to medical care for alcohol-related accidents and illnesses.

Everyone ends up paying for it, whether it's through higher taxes, higher insurance costs, broken families, emotional pain or health problems.

From 1985 to 1994, 758 Mainers died from alcohol dependence, alcoholic cirrhosis or other alcohol-related liver problems. The medical bills accumulated by such people whose alcoholism is left untreated are at least 100 percent higher, on average, than the bills of people who aren't alcoholics.

But the health-care problem goes way beyond the stereotype of the gutter drunk with the ruined liver.

Alcohol is the only drug that affects every organ in the body. And, for a drug, we consume it in huge amounts, flooding our bodies with alcohol from our head to our toes.

An average drink contains 12 to 14 grams of alcohol, notes Dr. George Dreher, a psychiatrist and family practice physician at Maine Medical Center whose specialty is addiction.

''Alcohol is taken in enormous quantities as a drug,'' he said. ''Of all the mood-altering drugs that are in use right now, alcohol is the one that's used in grams and grams.''

If you are a regular heavy drinker, you are changing the chemistry of your brain and ruining your stomach.

Chronic alcohol abuse can lead to heart disease, high blood pressure and stroke. It's responsible for almost half of the cancers of the mouth, larynx and pharynx. It causes neurological and respiratory problems, depresses the immune system, and fuels hormonal problems that lead to impotence and infertility.

The fruits of alcohol abuse show up in the waiting room of the family doctor, where 20 percent of patients have health problems linked to alcohol. They show up, too, at local hospitals, where 20 to 40 percent of all admissions are alcohol-related, according to national studies.

In 1996, 53 percent of the people in Maine's alcohol addiction treatment system said they had been treated at least once in a doctor's office during the previous 12 months. During that same time, 38 percent had been treated at least once in a hospital emergency room.

Alcohol is also a major cause of injuries, illness and lost productivity in the workplace.

''Look at the big brick buildings of Portland, and at least 10 percent of that population in there, if not alcoholic, are in the early stages,'' says Loomer, the former director of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence in Maine.

Substance abusers, according to Dr. Robert Dana, a substance abuse expert at the University of Maine, are late to work five times more often than other workers. They request early dismissal or time off from work twice as often. They use three times the level of sick benefits and they are five times as likely to file workers' compensation claims.

Like the rest of the country, Maine sees more work-related injuries on Mondays than any other day of the week, says Dan Cote, vice president in charge of safety at Maine Employers Mutual, which insures 20,000 employers in the state.

Cote and others suspect that many of those injuries may be alcohol-related. Weekend drinkers come in to work hung over and tired, and are less alert to potential dangers on the job. They also may still have some alcohol in their systems from the night before, and that impairs their judgment.

Nationally, alcohol is reponsible for up to 40 percent of industrial fatalities and 47 percent of industrial injuries.

Richard Hendsbee, 21, of Winslow, died in a 52-foot fall from the Casco Bay Bridge in Portland on Aug. 3. The college student, who had been drinking with friends before the accident, had a blood-alcohol level five times the legal limit, enough to poison him.

Along with flooding our hospitals with intoxicated trauma victims, alcohol fills our morgues. Drunk on beers, whiskey shots and vodka kamikazes, Richard Hendsbee cartwheeled off the Casco Bay Bridge 52 feet to his death last summer. The 21-year-old college student's fatal fall made headlines and stunned southern Maine. Hendsbee's blood-alcohol level of 0.40 was five times the legal limit and enough to poison him.

Though Hendsbee's fatal fall got plenty of attention, alcohol-related accidents remain mostly unreported.

Each year, according to estimates from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Maine's medical examiner records, more than 400 people in Maine die from alcohol-related illnesses, accidents and homicides. At least half of them die due to carelessness induced by booze.

They wrap their cars around trees or lose control on winding country roads. They fall out of their boats and drown, or they jump in a lake when they are too drunk to swim. They start fires by passing out on the living room couch or in bed, intoxicated with a lit cigarette. They stumble outside in the winter and freeze to death - sometimes in their back yards or driveways.

They fall down stairs in their homes, or they drink so much they literally poison themselves.

''This is a major public health crisis for this state,'' warned Dr. David Stuchiner, director of emergency medicine at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston. ''It's an absolute scourge, a crisis.''

Annually, about half of the people who die accidentally or who commit suicide in Maine have their blood or eye fluid tested for alcohol.

From 1994 through 1996, 47 percent of the victims tested had consumed alcohol before their deaths. Thirty-six percent of them were either at the legal limit of 0.08 percent or higher - often double and triple that amount.

Nationally, alcohol is associated with 40 to 50 percent of traffic fatalities, fatal accidents and fires.

Many of the blood-alcohol levels found in the victims of accidental deaths in Maine are astounding.

The average drinker loses judgment and hand-eye coordination just after a few drinks. A chronic drinker or alcoholic can tolerate much higher amounts of alcohol.

''We see a broad spectrum come into the emergency room,'' said Dr. Higgins of Maine Medical Center. ''For some people, drinking three or four beers and using a saw can be deadly. But for chronic drinkers, they can carry on conversations and appear fine at 0.40.''

In September 1995, a Portland man drank enough alcohol to kill two people. The 44-year-old man's blood-alcohol level: 0.73 percent.

Six months earlier, on a January evening in 1994, a 64-year-old Bangor man collapsed in his driveway and died of hypothermia. His blood-alcohol level: 0.21.

A 26-year-old Kennebec County man consumed enough alcohol to put a moderate drinker in a coma. His blood-alcohol level was 0.35 percent when he rolled his dirt bike over and drowned in a large puddle.

In June 1995, a 46-year-old woman had a 0.37 blood-alcohol level when she set her Howland house on fire with a lit cigarette.

Taking the clip out of his gun proved fatal for a 29-year-old man in New Gloucester. He shot himself in the temple by mistake. His blood-alcohol level: 0.29 percent.

Last year a snowmobiler hit a fish shack in Aroostook County. The 41-year-old man's blood-alcohol level: 0.31 percent.

''A guy who would go 80 miles an hour at night on a lake in a snowmobile, and hit an ice shack - it has alcohol written all over it,'' said Dr. Steele at Eastern Maine Medical Center.

Plenty of the people who take their lives have drunk booze before they shoot, drown or hang themselves.

A 45-year-old woman in Houlton was at 0.35 percent when she fired a gun at her chest in May this year. A month earlier, a 55-year-old woman aimed a gun at the roof of her mouth and squeezed the trigger. She was 0.31 percent.

A 27-year-old man who drowned himself in Casco Bay in July 1994 registered a 0.29 percent blood-alcohol level. A month later, a Pleasant Point Passamaquoddy Indian man put a gun to the roof of his mouth and pulled the trigger. He was 22 and his blood-alcohol level was 0.24.

A Hallowell woman killed herself by breathing into a plastic bag on a frigid day in January 1994. She was 71 and her blood-alcohol level was 0.11.

''Alcohol-related deaths in this state continue to be a mind-numbing problem,'' says Dr. Stuchiner of Lewiston's Central Maine Medical Center.

One of the most common remarks Maine's homicide prosecutors make when they're handed a new murder case is: ''Don't tell me. Alcohol was involved.''

In 50 percent to 70 percent of their cases, the suspect or the victim - or both - were drinking.

''It's the first question you ask: 'Anybody been drinking?' '' says William Stokes, homicide prosecutor with the Maine Attorney General's Office. ''The likelihood alcohol is going to be involved is the general rule.''

Though Stokes will quickly tell you alcohol doesn't cause crime, it does impair judgment, reduce inhibitions and increase aggression.

Nationally, alcohol is a key factor in 68 percent of manslaughters, 62 percent of assaults, 54 percent of murders or attempted murders, 48 percent of robberies and 44 percent of burglaries.

''Alcohol is the thing that breaks down the last barrier,'' Stokes says. ''The drunk knows he's about to shoot a person, not a pumpkin, but what they lack is a sense of judgment, reason. They lack the ability to say to themselves, 'You're about to do something really stupid and life-changing.' ''

In most of our murders, the victim and the killer know each other. Often they've been drinking together prior to the homicide, in bars, at their homes or at parties.

They shoot each other for reasons that don't make sense when they're sober.

They get into fatal arguments after arm-wrestling. They dare one another with shotguns or play Russian roulette.

Such was the case in Houlton during a welcome-home party in June 1996.

Donald Boyce had spent the day drinking with several of his buddies at a party in honor of a man who'd just been released from jail.

At some point during the celebration, Boyce, 38, picked up a .22-caliber handgun and started shooting.

He fired 30 shots. He pointed the gun at a couple of people, shot the piano, the refrigerator, out the window and into the air. Finally, he put the gun to the head of Shawn Bither and decided to play Russian roulette. Bither died from a bullet to the brain.

Boyce's blood-alcohol level that night was 0.30 percent. So was Bither's.

''Chronic drinking was nothing new to Boyce,'' said Stokes, who prosecuted the case. ''That's what he did, drink for days on end. This night was nothing unusual for him. And the victim happened to be equally intoxicated.''

During Boyce's sentencing last month, his attorney argued that his client's alcoholism should be a mitigating factor in his punishment.

''Chronic substance abuse is tragic, but it isn't an excuse,'' Superior Court Justice Paul Pierson said before sentencing Boyce to 40 years in prison.

As in homicides, alcohol accompanies many other crimes in Maine. Booze, police, prosecutors, and judges will tell you, fuels 70 to 80 percent of domestic violence cases, and at least 50 to 60 percent of cases involving child neglect, sexual abuse, theft and vandalism.

''Alcohol is clearly the number one drug affecting people in this state and certainly in York County,'' says Michael Cantara, York County district attorney. ''I'd estimate that 75 to 85 percent of all our cases have an overlay of alcohol abuse. It may not be the reason why the crime or offense occurs but an element that the accused brings to the case, and all too often alcohol is a major component in the offender's life.''

Fondness for liquor can also overwhelm a parent's judgment, ease their guilt and put their children in danger.

Police in Sanford were called to the Wolves Club at 12:25 on a December morning in 1995. A bar patron had reported a small child in a parked car, screaming.

Officer Troy Braley arrived to find a stocky 3-year-old boy shivering in the locked car. The temperature hovered just above 10 degrees that night.

Braley later found out that the child had been left in the car for two hours while his mother, Jewels James, drank and danced inside the bar.

''The little kid was in shock,'' Braley remembers. ''He was cold and his diaper was soiled.''

Braley found the boy's mother dancing with a man inside.

''She slurred her words and was unsteady on her feet,'' Braley says.

When Braley told her he was taking her son, the mother continued dancing, Braley said.

''I'll never forget that,'' Braley says. ''It was no big deal to her.''

Jewels James was later convicted on one count of child endangerment and sentenced to 72 hours in jail.

Staff art. Source: Maine Office of Substance Abuse.

Kids are often in the middle of family fights that break out after booze has been consumed. When police respond to a domestic violence call, they know it's more likely than not that they're going to arrest some drunken men and women who have punched, kicked, stabbed and threatened each other with guns.

''Often the victims say, 'If he hadn't been drinking, he wouldn't have done this,' '' says Portland Police Detective Lisa Beecher, who investigates nearly 1,000 domestic assault cases each year. ''In many of the homes we go to, there's an awful lot of alcoholism out there. Alcohol isn't the cause of domestic violence, but I don't think anyone can dispute the fact it exacerbates the problems that already exist.''

Nationally, alcohol is found in 50 to 60 percent of domestic violence cases.

Studies show that one-third to one-half of all batterers are reported to be problem drinkers.

Like many assaults and violent crimes, alcohol accompanies property damage crimes like smashed mailboxes, broken car windshields and arson. Sometimes these crimes come with a high price both in tax dollars and intangible values.

Sanford residents wept and mourned the loss of Goodall Park this spring.

The historic baseball park - where Babe Ruth cracked a home run in 1919 and generations of local teen-agers played ball - fell victim to a teen-agers' party where whiskey was drunk and matches were lit.

A15-year-old Waterboro boy stands accused of torching the stadium, leaving it a mass of ashes, charred timbers and twisted steel.

''It was the only park of its kind,'' said a mournful Gene Tarbox, 65, who watched Ruth smack a home run beyond Goodall's right-field fence. Sanford officials estimate it will cost $600,000 to rebuild the ballpark.

The boy accused of torching the town's historic treasure has been in and out of alcohol rehab since he was 10, his mother says. The boy is now attending Alcoholics Anonymous while he awaits trial.

''Nothing seems to have worked for him,'' his mother says.

While other states wrestle with drug dealers on corners selling crack and heroin, Maine's drug of choice - alcohol - is as close as the corner store.

And the people who are using it might surprise you.

There are the poor young mothers who are afraid to ask for help because their kids might be taken away by the state or an angry ex-husband.

There is the housewife from Cumberland Foreside who comes to her doctor with an enlarged liver, red face, and body marked by bruises from bumping into things all the time.

There are teen-agers who started drinking when they were 10, bringing hard liquor to school in mouthwash bottles, so they can drink it between classes.

''The trend that concerns us particularly is that the age of the kids who get brought to our attention is getting younger,'' said Lynn Duby, director of the Maine Office of Substance Abuse.

Rachel Simard, a 12-year-old middle school student from Kittery, doesn't drink herself, but says she could get her hands on alcohol if she wanted to.

''You have to know where to get it, but it's easy to find out where to get it,'' she said. ''There are a lot of stupid adults around here that will easily just go out and buy it for you.''

Staff art. Source: Maine Office of Substance Abuse.

Simard volunteers at a Kittery youth center that opened this year, its aim to keep local kids out of trouble and away from drugs and alcohol. The center, in an abandoned grocery store next to the post office, is a place where kids can come to paint, dance, play computer games and work out. It also hosts youth AA and Al Ateen meetings.

Nearby is a shortcut to Kittery village known simply as ''Dan's path,'' where kids go to smoke their cigarettes and stash their booze. Simard is not allowed to take the shortcut alone at night, but she's seen what the kids who hang out there do.

''Just watching some of these people do this stuff - it's like, you're stupid,'' Simard said. ''You can't even stand up, you can't walk. Why are you doing this?''

Simard's anti-alcohol attitude is the just the kind of response prevention experts are aiming for when they go into schools and communities. Exposing kids consistently to prevention programs is like immunizing them against future alcohol abuse, they say. Some national studies have estimated that every dollar spent on prevention saves $7 on treatment down the road.

At the other end of life is the elderly alcoholic, lonely and depressed. Too ashamed of their secret drinking to seek help, they often get into treatment only when they take a spill, get into a fight with their kids or have some other crisis.

Staff art. Source: Maine Office of Substance Abuse.

''Unfortunately, a lot of times we have children just kind of drop them off at the door, saying 'Well, you know she can't continue living by herself and drinking the way she is,' '' says Glenda MacLachlan, volunteer coordinator at Mercy Hospital's Recovery Center. ''It's like they don't want the responsibility anymore, and yet they're not ready for a nursing home either. So they have a tendency to say, 'Well, here's Mom - fix her.' ''

In 1994, Maine had more people per capita in treatment for alcohol abuse than any other state in the Northeast except New York, according to data from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

And in 1996, 78 percent of Mainers entering the state's addiction treatment system pointed to alcohol as their primary substance-abuse problem.

Yet, like the enabler in the family who winces and looks the other away, Maine is not facing its citizens' addiction to alcohol or its consequences.

Two years ago, the Legislature clipped $1.9 million from the budget of the state Office of Substance Abuse. Even before the reduction, there were waiting lists to get into treatment. Now, as a result of the cuts, some programs have had to cut services to the bone.

Duby, the head of the Office of Substance Abuse, estimates there are 1,600 to 1,800 Mainers who need treatment but are not getting it now because of the budget cuts.

''There's no question that that loss (of funding) has really had a tremendous impact on the system of care,'' Duby said. ''We were never a system that was very fat, and I think we got sort of swept up in a view that there was too much out there and it wasn't being used properly. We really have a skeletal system now.''

Serenity House, a 31-bed halfway house for men, has been a Portland institution for three decades. But it almost had to close its doors this summer when it couldn't pay its utility bills and other expenses.

A fund-raiser in September helped to keep it open, at least temporarily.

''It's a real special place for me,'' says Wayne Russell, who got help at the rambling house on Mellen Street after working his way up to a gallon of scotch a day. He now works there as an employment counselor.

''I like to pass on what people gave me,'' he said. ''The people here really, really cared about me before I was ready to care about myself.''

Maine budgeted about $7.6 million for treatment programs in fiscal year 1997. More than half of it, $4.5 million, went to outpatient treatment. Those figures reflect a general shift in substance-abuse treatment away from expensive residential programs, a trend that has been driven partly by managed care.

Research shows that, for most people, it's not so important what kind of care they get - inpatient or outpatient - as long as they get enough.

When someone enters recovery it's not unusual for them to relapse, especially in the first few months. But newly sober people left totally on their own too soon can fall into a kind of yo-yo pattern. They're fine when they first go out into the world, but eventually they have a crisis and relapse, and have to go back into treatment. Then the pattern keeps repeating itself.

''They can't maintain (sobriety) because they can never get enough,'' says Kim Johnson, president of the Maine Association of Substance Abuse Providers , whose members take in about 80 percent of the state dollars spent on treatment programs.

Johnson says studies have shown that even if treatment fails, it's still cost-effective.

''Even if it's not successful,'' she said, ''while the person is in treatment it's cheaper than jail, than emergency rooms.''

Aside from spending scant dollars on alcohol prevention and treatment, Maine also does a poor job of collecting information on alcohol abuse. In a state where records are still sometimes kept on index cards in shoe boxes, data is at best difficult to get and at worst impossible.

Few in the criminal justice system, the Department of Human Resources or the medical field keep records of how frequently alcohol is a factor in crimes, broken families, hospital visits, and deaths.

''We tend to only look at small pieces of the alcohol problem at a time,'' says Dennis Geary, an alcohol counselor for Catholic Charities Maine.

''It's like we see only the tip of the iceberg but underneath the water there is this huge monster. But no one wants to see how big that monster really is.''

Dr. Steele of Eastern Maine Medical Center believes one of the reasons we're uncomfortable with scrutinizing alcohol abuse is because so many people drink and readily accept alcohol.

We buy booze to celebrate, to relax, and to socialize. We can buy it in 4,000 bars, stores and restaurants in Maine.

''I think it's hard for us to grasp the fact that something we all do on a regular basis can kill people and cause so much destruction,'' Steele says.

''It's easy for us to get our hands around the villain who plows along the turnpike drunk and kills people. But it's harder for us to take a look at our beliefs, get our hands around what role we all play in the abuse of alcohol.''

Regardless of how uncomfortable we feel, Maine is long overdue in facing our alcohol addiction, says Steele.

''We've tackled fire, auto, boat safety but we've not tackled booze, which is the cause of all these things,'' Steele says. ''We have a fire marshal. Why don't we have an alcohol marshal? Why don't we keep count of something that is killing hundreds of people each year and costing us millions?''

Abby Zimet, staff writer, and Julia McCue, library assistant, contributed to this report.