Swayze and his wife, Lisa Niemi, arrive at the 1989 Academy Awards ceremony
Swayze was married to Lisa Niemi for 34 years beginning on June 12, 1975. The couple first met in 1970, when Swayze was 18 years old. Niemi, 14 years old at the time, was taking dance lessons from Swayze's mother. Swayze and Niemi had no children.[22] In a 2008 interview, Swayze stated that Niemi was the inspiration for his hit song, "She's Like the Wind" (1987).
As a reaction to his father's death in 1982, at age 57 from a heart attack, Swayze began to drink heavily.[23] In 1989, Swayze said, "I've always felt there was something different in there (my personality), but I was scared to look for fear I wouldn't find anything. That's the reason I got into Buddhism, took EST training, was into therapy, into Scientology, into Transcendental Meditation. I was trying to support that side of myself. But, you know, in Texas there isn't much support for that part of you."[24] He also had said how he is interested in and loves looking into different [religious] belief systems and faith, how it matters to other people, and how these various religious teachings are important to him in his world.[25] His sister Vicky committed suicide by drug overdose in 1994,[23] leading him to seek treatment for alcoholism by going into rehab. After an initial recovery, he temporarily withdrew from show business, retreating to his ranches in California and Las Vegas, New Mexico, to breed Arabian horses. His best-known horse was Tammen, a chestnut Arabian stallion.[26]
Swayze, who was a certified pilot with an instrument rating, made the news on June 1, 2000, while flying with his dogs in his twin-engine Cessna from Van Nuys, California to Las Vegas, New Mexico. His plane developed a pressurization problem, causing Swayze to make a precautionary landing on a dirt road in a housing complex in Prescott Valley, Arizona. The plane's right wing struck a light pole, but Swayze was unharmed. He locked the cockpit, left the aircraft in the subdivision, and obtained a ride—with his dogs—from a passing vehicle, allegedly in order to telephone the authorities. According to the police report, witnesses said that Swayze appeared to be extremely intoxicated and asked for help to remove evidence—an open bottle of wine and a 30-pack of beer—from the crash site.[27] He made himself unavailable to police for several hours. It was later determined that the alcohol in question was not in the cabin, but stored in external storage compartments inaccessible in flight and that the probable cause of the accident was Swayze's physical impairment due to the cumulative effects of carbon monoxide from engine exhaust by-products, carbon monoxide from heavy tobacco use, and the loss of an undetermined amount of cabin pressurization, resulting in hypoxia.[28]
