Grant P. from St. Paul, MN sharing his story at the St. Paul open speakers meeting in St. Paul, MN

Yeah. You gotta stand up here. I always did have trouble following directions. Good evening. My name's Grant and I'm an alcoholic.

I'd like to get the truth out first. And the truth is, is if you don't drink, you cannot get drunk. And if you don't get drunk, you have a chance of not doing something to make your life unmanageable. Now that's the truth. The rest of this could be bullshit, but it's mine, and you're welcome to it.

I'd like actually, I'd I'd like to I am grateful, that Laurie, helped in getting me over here to speak. I always feel honored to speak and I always love it when I see another alcoholic. I was sober 4 years when I had an opportunity to go to Jerusalem to study in a seminary over there, and this was part of my Jesus phase. And, in my haste to go, I didn't pack a big book or 12 and 12 or any literature. I thought I'm gonna be in the holy land.

I'm gonna be with 40 other priests. You know, what can go wrong? Well, at about the 5th week, I thought, jeez. You know, I had been taking a different priest aside each day and I'd tell them my story and, you know, and they were interested because they said this is a problem they see a lot in their churches and so forth. And I thought, okay.

But after 5 weeks, I was a little antsy and I thought, well, maybe I need to go to a meeting. So I said something to the dean, and, he says, well, I'll tell you what, I'll get the secretary to find out where, you know, there's a meeting for you. I said, great. He came back 2 days later. He said, the meeting in Israel.

And I said, the meeting as in 1? He said, yeah. He says it's on a Wednesday night in Tel Aviv, and Wednesday night was the one night I couldn't go. And now I was really getting antsy, and I thought, oh, man. Well, I'll just gut it out.

2 weeks later, I was in a cathedral in the old city of Jerusalem with tears running down my face, begging God to not let me take a drink. What I needed at that moment was not to be in the holy land. Another drunk in recovery. That's what I needed. And I discovered that I didn't need to be in the holy land because all of you to me are holy.

Because what makes anybody holy is what's in their hearts, And I have found nothing but unconditional love in the hearts of alcoholics in recovery. So I thank you very much for being here tonight. You give me hope. I was born into a military family. My father was a fighter pilot.

He fought in World War 2. He fought in Korea, and he fought in Vietnam. And he ran the family like a military, like he ran his squadrons. You always stood at attention, you said yes, sir, you said no, sir. You didn't discuss things.

When you were at dinner, you ate, didn't say anything, and then you went upstairs to your room. And in my case, I was always in trouble. And so I'd stand the attention in front of him, and we would address the charges. And he say, okay. What's your excuse for this?

And I say, well it was dip a dip a dip. He goes, there's no such thing as an excuse. He says you're grounded or had a reduction in my pay. You know? My allowance.

And this was a a game that went on and on with my father, to the point where, at one point I was in my room for 6 months at a time. And when I say in my room, I mean in my room. I had no telephone calls going out, no telephone calls coming in, I could not go out, I couldn't have people in. I was allowed to come down for dinner and go back up to my room. I was taught how to be alone.

I was a sitting duck for alcohol, because alcohol taught me how to be alone. I hated my father with every ounce of my soul. Every ounce of my soul. Adored my mother. More about that later.

Oh, you know, when I got into high school in my juniors and senior years, I discovered I could do something better than anybody else could do. I could run faster than they could, and I could jump farther than they could. Not much of a talent, but it was got me in a scholarship to Ohio State University, a full ride, and an invitation to the 1964 Olympics. And I thought, finally, I am gonna get out of this hell hole of my life and I'm gonna be famous. I'm gonna be a star.

I'm gonna win medals, and I'm gonna be a minister, and I'm gonna marry a nymphomaniac, and life is gonna be great. 2 out of 3 bad. Well, a couple of days before I was supposed to sign letters of intent and all that, I got sick and I couldn't walk and I couldn't figure out what was going on. They took me to the hospital and I was there for 6 weeks. And at the end of the 6 weeks, they told me I had a brain tumor.

Oh, scholarship was gone. Trip to the Olympics was gone. And my life went back into the hell hole. When I got home, I was home a couple of days and my parents were getting ready to go to the movies. And I thought, you know, I'm gonna find out what this drinking stuff that my buddies were into.

And I thought, they're going to the movies. I knew nothing about drinking, but they're going to the movies and I figured, well, I got time to get drunk and sober up before they get home from the movies. They hit the car and I hit the liquor cabinet. And I didn't know anything about drinking, but I knew that alcohol that that vodka and orange juice was a screwdriver. So I got a big glass and I poured this much orange juice in it, and then I filled it with vodka, and I mixed it up.

And I made my first alcoholic Why sip it? And I chugga lugged that thing down. 5 minutes later, I wasn't drunk, so I made my second alcoholic decision. Why use a glass? And I started drinking out of the bottle.

In 25 minutes, I had a whole fit of vodka. My first time out. I wanted to find out what drunk was being like and by God, I fulfilled my dream because I got drunk. That was a very significant drunk for me. I was drinking alone.

I was sneaking it. I had a blackout. I did something to make my life unmanageable and those hallmarks were to follow me. I could have stopped that night at the age of 17 and collected chips until my head fell off, but I still had some more time to try and do it my way. And so, one of the things I I had a year to figure out what the hell I was gonna do with my life.

Obviously, I wasn't gonna go in to be a a coach. So I decided, I like science, so I went to a university and I majored in chemistry and biology. And I, I didn't drink after that first night for 4 years, but on my 21st birthday, all the guys in the dorm said they were gonna take me out to celebrate my 21st birthday, and they said, don't worry about a thing. We're paying for everything. And my first thought was, woah.

I've hit the mother load. Free booze. We got to to the bar and I remembered that vodka messed you up, so I wasn't going to go with the vodka. And to this day, I've never had vodka. Because vodka messes you up.

I learned that lesson. So I was going to have whiskey sours, and I had 21 whiskey sours. Same thing, don't know how I got back to the dorm, blacked out. Just a mess. And you know what I learned from that?

Stay away from drinks with fruit in them. It's the fruit that messes you up. Well, I managed to graduate and, I went down to the Washington DC area and, I was asked to set up a toxicology lab, which I said, of course, I'll set up a toxicology lab. Didn't know how I was gonna do it, but I did do it. And I got married.

And alcohol, it was funny. I didn't drink every day. Every day that I did drink, I didn't particularly hard time with is my worst day sober is better than my best day drinking. And that wasn't true for me. I had many days drinking where it did exactly what I wanted it to.

I'd have a couple of drinks. I could go on cruise control and that was everything was fine. And so everything, you know, kind of cruised along. Had a couple of children, bought a house, had a couple of cars. Life was good, but something happened.

Somewhere along the road, something happened. You know, my wife would say I'd say to my wife, do you wanna have a salad for dinner? She goes, sure. I said, well, let me run down the store and get some stuff for a salad. I'm going down to get a head of lettuce, a tomato, and a cucumber.

I come back with 2 bags because I had beer. And I take one bag and I take it around to the back door, and then I come in the front door with the other bag that had 1 6 pack and the lettuce and the tomato and the cucumber. And then when nobody was looking, I go downstairs, go out the back door, pull in that, go out to the garage where I had spare tires and a 6 pack will fit inside a spare tire. And I had 4 tires, so I always had a case. I could rotate my stock.

And, you know, it got to the point where I had crossed the line, and I don't know where that was. You know, it's the thing I'm sure you've all heard it, but when does a cucumber turn into a pickle? You know, I don't know. But once it has, it ain't no going back. And I had turned into a pickle.

I did so many insane things. I didn't think I did it. I thought that that insanity thing in the second step drove me crazy when I forgot. No pun intended. When I first came in.

But I was doing a lot of stuff that normal people didn't do. You know? And at the most inappropriate times, you know, shortly before I got sober, I had the opportunity to have 14 guests over for Thanksgiving, And I thought this is gonna be cool. You know, I'm gonna baste the turkey and I'm gonna be the galloping gourmet and have my wine and baste the turkey and have some wine. Well, by the time everybody was there and the turkey was done, I was just about as basted as turkey.

And somebody said, well, why don't you say grace? I thought, of course I'll say grace. And I thank God for that turkey. And I thank God for the platter that that turkey sat on, and I thank God for the table cloth that's that platter sat on, and I thank God for the washer and the dryer to wash that table cloth. And somebody said, I think God's been thanked enough tonight.

And I thought, man, they've interrupted me, man. I'm on a roll. And so, I thought, okay. So I took that carving fork and the knife and I was going to dramatically stab that turkey. And I hit that turkey and it went off the plate and onto the floor.

And without missing a beat, I looked at that thing and I said, why don't you fly your ass back up here where it belongs? I thought it was incredibly witty, but nobody was laughing. I don't remember anything from that moment on for the rest of that Thanksgiving night. Sometime later that night, when nobody was there, my wife was in the living room and she's in tears. And I thought, wow, well, she's really into this gratitude stuff.

You know? And I said, are you okay? You know, you're just like overwhelmed with thanksgiving? Well, yeah. In a matter she was.

She said you were drunk. When her clothes are I went what? She says, you were drunk, and you insulted all our guests. And it was like the first time she'd ever said anything to me about my drinking. I wasn't ready yet and I continued.

Finally, I was at Nags Head. We were going to the beach for a vacation. Our first vacation, together with our 2 kids and I thought this is gonna be great. We're going down to Nags Head and we're gonna be at the beach and there's gonna be beer, and there's gonna be sun, and there's gonna be beer, and there's gonna sand, and there's gonna be beer, and crabbing, and beer, and beer. Well, I was there about 2 days and I was so anxious I couldn't stand it.

And I couldn't understand why. I do now. I couldn't drink the way I normally drink. You see, the way I drank at home was I waited until my wife went to bed, which is always about 7:30 or 8 o'clock at night. Then I did my drinking, unbeknownst to anybody down in my shop.

Now I'd spend hours in my shop. Nobody ever asked me what I made in my shop. And it's a good thing because I didn't make it I didn't make anything. I made oh, well, I made a barstool. That's the only thing I ever made.

And we were in this one room cabin at the beach, and I couldn't drink the way I needed to to drink. And I got into a silly argument with my wife and she she said, well, why don't you go and open a can of beer? I said, well, why would I do that? She says, because every time we have an argument, you get drunk. And it was one of those things that got in before I had a chance to deflect it, and she was right.

But I'm an alcoholic, so I came up with an alcoholic answer, and I said, well, I'm never going to drink again, because you just took all the enjoyment out of it for me. And so, I didn't. And we were there for another 12 days. I don't think I said 10 words, those whole 12 days. And every word was 1 syllable and it was said with so much hatred.

It was unbelievable. Because at that time, I hated my wife. I hated my children. I hated the beach. I hated God.

And most of all, I hated myself. Because something that could not talk to me, something that could not, love me, had control of my life. An ounce of booze. Well, I didn't go to AA. I didn't really know about AA.

I just white knuckled it. And I did that for 30 days and then my wife's birthday was coming up, so I was going to go out and get her a birthday present. And a friend of mine said, well, why don't you come on down to Johnny's? He says, we're gonna celebrate my birthday, have a beer. And I said, no.

I said, I'm really kinda knocking that stuff off. He said, oh, come on down. He says, yeah. It's my birthday. I said, no.

I promised my wife it'd be good. I'm I'm, you know, not gonna do it. And see, this is this is where AA is so malleable. AA gives me tools to fight this disease, But I hadn't been to AA, so I had no tools. And so I was a sitting duck for the next statement, which was, well, come on down.

Anybody can have just one. I thought, oh, yeah. I have one. That's exactly what I'll do, and I meant it. I was gonna go down there, have one beer like everybody else, and go.

I walked in about 8 o'clock. I don't know how many I had, but it was more than 1. And I got kicked out at 1:30 after I propositioned the bar owner's wife. And I remember sitting out in my car, and I'm thinking, what happened? I wanted to have one beer.

I couldn't do it. I'd had that feeling of remorse many times, but this was profound. And I remember thinking, I was as lost as I could be. And I went, you know, I was a mile and a half from home. And by this stage of my alcoholism, I'd had 4 automobile accidents due to alcohol.

As a matter of fact, I had this tremendous pension for hitting parked cars. You could put 1 parked car on the streets of Saint Paul, put a few drinks in me, and I guarantee you before the night's over I'll find it and hit it. I just had this great neck. It's one of the reasons why I didn't go out to bars and drink. So I'd had all these accidents.

I'd had a heart attack brought on by drinking. I'd had congestive heart failure because of drinking. I had a bleeding ulcer because of drinking. I had a marriage that was in shambles because of drinking. My children ran from me when I came in the house because of drinking.

They didn't know who was coming in, the happy go lucky dad or the pissed off dad. I had a job that was getting shaky because of drinking. And I'm driving down the road at 1:30 in the morning, and I said, God, you gotta give me some sort of sign. I have trouble with alcohol. That was the level of my denial.

God answered that prayer, because 30 seconds later, I had an accident. My 5th accident. And when I came home, I had knocked the fender off, I had knocked both tires been blown off the car. But I drove it home. I wasn't about to call the police.

I wasn't that stupid. So I drove the car home and I parked it in front of the house and I knew something was different because my wife was standing in the window and she never, ever did that. And I went in and we had, well actually, she had a few words to say. And the next morning, she drove me to work, and I said, I'm gonna go see the professionals because I got a problem. And I don't know who was more in shock, me or my wife, because I couldn't believe I said it.

I happen to know the guy who had set up a treatment program at the hospital I was at. And so I went and saw Tom, and he sat me down with a cup of coffee. He says, Grant, do you drink to get drunk? And I remember looking at him, and looking at him, and thinking, this is a trick question. That no matter how you answer it, you're screwed.

He said, I should go to Alcoholics Anonymous. I said, okay. I'll go whatever. I'll do it. Had a great please others driver in me.

So, that night I went to a meeting, just down the street and it was a step meeting and it was on the first step, funny enough. And I don't really remember a whole lot about that meeting, but I remember people feeling and looking like they were comfortable with themselves, and I wasn't comfortable that new guy, you know, but she spotted me. And I was glad she said that, because the next week I did go. And I'd like to tell you that it's been wonderful since then, but it has not. Because I had to do it Grant's way.

I thought this program was wonderful for all of you who were just so sick and really bad alcoholics. But I thought that, you know, if I went to meetings, you know, for a couple of weeks and that compulsion hit, you know, I'd hit the 711 on the way home from a meeting, and I get 2 beers. Two beers. Drink them on the way home. Never stringing more than 14 days, most of the time about 10.

Going to meetings, going to 5, 6 meetings a week, going back in saying, I've been drinking again. And at the end of 11 months of doing this, I was in a deeper, darker, blacker hole than I could have ever imagined. Laboratory in a state of complete confusion, and I had made 89 proof alcohol in my laboratory. Go figure. And then I got a Coke from the Coke machine and made a couple of stiff drinks, and I thought my life is over.

Alcoholics anonymous doesn't work. I'm one of those people that they talk about in the big book. I'm constitutionally incapable of being honest with my self. I'm just one of God's sad sacks. And I went into my lab I went vault, and I got 2 1 pound bottles of barbiturate powder and a quarter pound bottle of morphine.

And I was gonna take it all. That's what half measures did for me. It brought me to that point. At that point, I was on page 30 of the big book. That state of pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization.

P a I d. I had paid. Fortunately, one of the things I did do was I got phone numbers from people and they came in. Finally, somebody came and got me and they took me to a meeting and I said, I've been drinking again and I don't know what to do. And they said, well, we're not giving you any more 24 hour chips.

As a matter of fact, we want you to get we want you to give all the ones we've given you back. They said, save one of them and put it in your mouth, and when it melts, you can drink. That night, I heard 2 things. First thing is a guy said, well, the definition of slip is slipping on your clothes, slipping down the stairs, slipping on your coat where you slip out the door, slipping behind the wheel of your car where you slipped down to the liquor store, slipped the man a 5 and he slips you a 5th. And I understood it for the first time.

There was a whole series of events that I put myself through before I got to the drink. The drink was just the end product of a whole set of thinking and actions on my part. Second thing I heard, because I said, you know, I I don't know if I can get sober. I just I I just don't know if I can do this. And a woman said, yes, you can.

And she said, and I'll tell you why. She says, because God would not allow you to come into a room where the answer to your problems are to simply say you can't have it. And the light of hope went on for me. And I went home that night, and for the first time, I said, I don't care what I have to do. I don't care if it's standing on my head in the middle of rush hour traffic.

I don't care. I will do what ever I have to do to stay sober. Because the one thing I had the one thing that had gone through my mind is I don't want to go in front of God with alcohol on my breath. That's kind of silly, but it worked. That was June 20, 1976, and I've been sober since.

This program has given me all the tools, all the things I ever wanted in life. Things that money can't buy, like respect and dignity, Love if you fellow man. Love if my AA peers. The steps work. They just flat out work, and it took me a while to get them going.

The biggest one I had to make, I trusted in, you know, in its own way, I trusted Alcoholics Anonymous as a whole when I came through the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous. Then when I went to my one home group, that group became even more close to me, and I had even more hope. And then out of that, I found one man who could help me, and that was my sponsor. And then he loved me to the point where I could make the quantum leap from Grant to God. And it was a wonderful day.

I did the 4th. I did the 5th. And at the end of my 5th step in which I was petrified, was probably the best thing he could have said. He says, Grant, welcome to the human race. He says, you're no better than anybody else, and you're no worse.

That was wonderful. I felt like it was part of something now. In my 9th step, I have this one quick story. I told you I hated my father, and I hated him with a passion, and it was true. I prayed.

I used to pray for him to die on a nightly basis. I was doing this in sobriety people. In sobriety. Fortunately, God kept saying no. But I finally got irritated enough that I wrote him a letter, and I told him how much I hated him and what a lousy father he was, and that he taught me nothing but how to be alone, and that he was a miserable failure as a human being.

And if he wanted a relationship with me, he was gonna have to damn well change. And I sent it. I didn't hear from him for about 6 months. And I got a call from my sister and she said, something's wrong with dad. And I said, what do you mean?

She says, well, he's depressed. I said, what do you mean he's depressed? She said, he's depressed. I said, dad's never depressed. She says, I'm telling you, something is wrong, and I'm scared.

I don't know what it is. I did. It was that letter. And I called my sponsor, and I talked to my and he said, why are you so angry? And I said, because he never told me he loved He never hugged me, never gave me any positive encourage encouragement.

And in one of those incredibly beautiful God moments, the thought came to me. You've never told him you loved him. You've never hugged him. You never told him he's done a good job. And so I knew what I had to do, and I went home and I called him.

And he was rather surprised to hear my voice. I was in Washington DC, he was in San Diego. And normally our conversations were how are the Padres, how are the red skins, you know, what's the weather like, and and that was it. And after the pleasantries, there was just absolute this one just dead silence. It was electric.

And I said, I love you dad. And I remember holding on to the phone with both hands because I was shaking so hard. And I remember praying so earnestly, I said, god please don't let him hang up. Not now. Don't let him hang up.

And then I could hear my dad crying on the other end of the line. And he said that I love you too, son. That moment changed my life forever. It was a seminal moment of my sobriety. It was a seminal moment of my life.

What happened as a result of that, I learned that I could forgive and be forgiven. I learned that I could love and be loved. Same with my father. It took the 2 of us. What happened as a result of all that, is we got to talking.

And as it turns out, I had everything completely backwards. Just 180 degrees wrong. It turned out my mother was an alcoholic. And she was a sneak drinker. And she used to tie me up in a chair when I was 3, 4, 5, and 6 years old at 7 in the morning, and leave me there for 12 hours with no food, no water, crapped my pants.

And at that age, what do you do? You can't say, you know, stay here, take care of things, or get the hell out. I was 3 years old, 4 years old. So I accepted unacceptable behavior in order to survive. And I asked my father, I said why didn't you divorce her?

And she said, he said, because back then they didn't give custody to the father under any reasons. And I figured a little bit of Sandy was better than nothing at all. And I felt a great deal of humility that my father was exhibiting. Alcoholics Anonymous has taught me to be a better father, a better human being. And one time, just a little while ago, I woke up one morning, and I was doing my prayer meditation, and I thought, you know, I came so close to throwing this whole thing away.

This whole wonderful thing called life, I almost threw it away. But Alcoholics Anonymous was there, and they took me, and they held me when I needed to be held, and they kicked my butt when I needed to get my butt kicked. And at the end of all the work, I realized that I had awoken and I had become a credit to my family. I've become a credit to my kids. I've become a credit to my AA peers.

I've become a credit to my professional peers. I've become a credit to myself. And most of all, I've become a credit to God. That wouldn't have happened without Alcoholics Anonymous. I've had a lot of things happen in my sobriety.

I've had 3 other heart attacks. I've been told 3 times by the doctors to go home, put your papers in order, there's nothing more we can do for you. I'm still here. Still racking up time. It's wonderful.

It's a great place to do time. It really is. So, I think I'm out of my time now. So, thank you very much for having me.