Dave Dahl is drinking water. We are hemmed in by microbrews at the Lucky Lab on Southeast Hawthorne, but the ex-con is ignoring them. And while he has one eye on the potato chips nestled beside my sandwich, he will not reach for them.

When I refuse to show the same resolve, the founder of Dave's Killer Bread is cool. "You can't judge people," he says. "Everyone is at a different stage. I've been at a stage where I lived on tequila."

Dahl is ripped. He has lost 25 pounds since the November evening when, among other things, he emptied a bottle of water on his girlfriend; stripped off his clothes and wandered the streets wrapped in a blanket; and allegedly rammed two Washington County patrol cars with his Escalade. He eventually pleaded not guilty to 15 counts of assault, unlawful use of a Cadillac, and resisting arrest.

"I think it was the Black Sabbath concert I went to in the Gorge (when) I realized I had to figure out a way to stop. As life got easier for me, it was easier to just stay home and drink. Everything suffered. My physical appearance. My goals. My dreams. My aspirations."

In May, Dahl checked himself in at the Cirque Lodge, a rehab clinic in Utah, for 45 days. "An exclusive place where the company felt I could hide," he says. "I didn't want people to know I had a problem.

"But I didn't quit. I'd do an event for Dave's Killer Bread, and afterwards I'd take some shots of tequila right down the street. After awhile, people started noticing."

Bain, especially, was struggling.

"I was tired of it," she says. "Tired of the alcohol." He was often depressed and their life together sucked. She was particularly frustrated when an August 2013 sabbatical from the bakery backfired, giving Dahl, he says, "more time to drink and less time to feel good about the other things I was doing." He wasn't working, wasn't in treatment, wasn't living with Bain in their Milwaukie house. He wasn't in his right mind.

He punched out a Dave Dahl cardboard cutout at Dave's Killer Breadquarters one November morning, then grabbed Bain and told her they were driving to Seattle. They got as far as Tumwater, Wash., before Bain -- who had long since ordered Dahl into the passenger seat -- pulled over and bought Dahl a fifth of tequila to calm him down.

They drove back to Oregon, ending up at the southwest Portland home of Bill and Beth McShane. "Beth was scared by his behavior," Bain says. "He was talking about himself in the third person. Repeating himself. He took his clothes off, wrapped a blanket around himself, and walked around the neighborhood, talking about Jesus and spiritual enlightenment."

Beth McShane tried to get help from Washington County mental health services. When Dahl wrestled the Escalade keys away from Bain, McShane called 9-1-1. Sgt. David Thompson said Dahl rammed the Escalade into two Washington County patrol cars before he was Tased into submission.

"The next thing I knew," Michelle says, "I woke up at 5:30 in the morning and it was on the news. I got to watch it all over again."

* * *

His favorite Killer Bread, "Good Seed," is tattooed across his back, but the lean burger on his back deck Monday night is tucked inside two slices of "21 Whole Grains." Fewer calories, he says, resolutely. Not a chip in sight.

Dahl is fresh from the pool. His long-time friends, Grant Dickerson and Robert "Lenny" Lanahan, are warming up on guitar and drums in an upstairs bedroom of his Milwaukie home, a cheerfully ransacked house that features a 4-foot resin gorilla, a large-screen TV still inside the box, and Killer Bread memorabilia on the walls.

"This is completely Dave," Bain sighs. "That's one of the sticking points in our relationship: I have no say in this place."

And that's one of the reasons she is moving out.

"Every eight months or so, he comes up to me and says, 'We have to part ways,'" Bain says. "I'm too controlling. I don't agree with everything he wants to do.

"Which is true. Because he's all over the place.

"Almost anything for Dave, be it healthy or unhealthy, becomes an addiction," Bain says. "That's the way he operates. His focus becomes all-consuming. From the moment I met him, he had such energy and drive. I'm like that, too. But I have boundaries."

Dahl is wrestling with his. The last nine months have been humbling, and humility, Dahl argues, has its moments. Failure is nothing new. "You fail constantly," he says. "I created Dave's Killer Bread because I was willing to fail."

But he is restless. On leave from the company, off the speaking tour, awaiting trial, Dahl doesn't know what to do with the energy he can't invest in free weights or Facebook.

He hates, he says, maintaining the discipline of going to bed by 10 p.m. "I don't have time to do all the things I dream of," Dahl says.

What's worse, he doesn't have an audience to inspire, one loaf, one heart-to-heart, one seeding, at a time. "If I'm a guy who's going to make a difference in the world, the way I do it is to be a good example," he says. Whatever disorder clouded that vision last November, he knows he let people down.

"I was resting on my laurels a little bit," he admits. "Now, the light's on. It takes a lot of work to get through the darkness. But I've done it before."

He heads upstairs. The guitar and his old friends will help Dahl relax for the next hour, but after that? He's not sure how to play what is still to come, and that's anguishing for a good seed who works so hard to play it right.

-- Steve Duin