Don’t Let Me Meet God With Alcohol on My Breath – AA Speaker – Grant P.
Grant P. shares his AA speaker story: from hiding alcohol to a suicide attempt, hitting bottom in sobriety, and finding hope through the steps and sponsorship.
Grant P. spent years carefully hiding his drinking from his family—sneaking beers, stashing them in spare tires, making excuses—until the day he realized he couldn’t stop. In this AA speaker tape, he walks through his bottom, his first 11 months of half measures and relapse, the moment he nearly ended his life, and how the fellowship and his sponsor brought him back to solid recovery.
Grant P. describes his spiral from functional alcoholic to hitting a profound bottom while attending AA meetings but refusing to fully commit to the program, leading to a suicide attempt in his laboratory. He shares how a woman’s simple statement—”God would not allow you to come into a room where the answer to your problems is to simply say you can’t have it”—became the turning point that changed everything. Grant’s recovery story emphasizes the importance of trust, sponsorship, and working the steps, including his powerful Ninth Step reconciliation with his father and the spiritual awakening that followed.
Episode Summary
Grant P. comes from a military family—his father a decorated fighter pilot who ran the household like a squadron. Discipline meant standing at attention, no excuses, no emotion. When Grant was grounded for months on end, he learned how to be alone. That isolation became the perfect breeding ground for alcohol, which taught him to be even more alone.
In high school, Grant discovered he had a gift: he could run faster and jump farther than anyone else. A full scholarship to Ohio State, an invitation to the 1964 Olympics—finally, he was getting out. Days before signing his letters of intent, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The dream was gone. Life went back to the hell it had been.
Home from the hospital, his parents went to the movies. Grant decided to find out what this drinking thing was all about. He grabbed vodka and orange juice, mixed a screwdriver, and instead of sipping it, he chugged it. Five minutes later he wasn’t drunk, so he grabbed the bottle itself. Twenty-five minutes later, he’d drained a whole fifth. Alone. Sneaking. Blacked out. All the hallmarks of his disease appeared that first night and never left.
For years, Grant managed. He graduated, got a job setting up toxicology labs, married, had kids, bought a house. The drinking seemed controlled—a couple of drinks and he’d cruise. But somewhere along the way, he crossed a line he couldn’t identify. He’d go to the store for salad ingredients and come home with beer hidden in spare tires, rotating his stock like inventory. He was doing insane things and didn’t think they were insane. He’d get drunk and behave in ways that should have shattered his denial, but they didn’t—not yet.
The breaking point came at Thanksgiving when he was so drunk he tried to stab a turkey and missed. He doesn’t remember the rest of the night. His wife was in tears. That was the first time she’d said anything about his drinking. He wasn’t ready to listen.
Later, at Nags Head with his family, trapped in a one-room cabin where he couldn’t drink the way he needed to, he got into an argument with his wife. She said, “Every time we have an argument, you get drunk.” It landed before he could deflect it. He responded like an alcoholic: “I’ll never drink again because you just took all the enjoyment out of it.” For 12 days at the beach, he didn’t speak. Every word was one syllable, soaked in hatred—for his wife, his children, the beach, God, and most of all, himself. Something that couldn’t talk to him, couldn’t love him, had control of his life.
He white-knuckled it for 30 days. Then a friend invited him down to a bar for a birthday drink. Grant had no tools to fight this disease—no AA yet, no program, just willpower. When his friend said, “Anybody can have just one,” Grant believed it. He walked in at eight o’clock and got kicked out at 1:30 after propositioning the bar owner’s wife. Remorse hit him like nothing before.
By that point, Grant had four car accidents from drinking, a heart attack, congestive heart failure, a bleeding ulcer, a collapsing marriage, and children who ran from him. Driving home from the bar at 1:30 in the morning, he prayed: “God, you got to give me some sort of sign I have trouble with alcohol.” His denial was that thick. God answered 30 seconds later with his fifth accident.
The next morning, Grant told his wife he was going to see a professional. He met with a counselor named Tom who asked, “Do you drink to get drunk?” Grant knew it was a loaded question, but Tom said he should go to Alcoholics Anonymous. That night, Grant walked into a step meeting on the First Step. A woman approached him afterward: “Just promise me you will come back.”
But Grant thought the program was for the really sick alcoholics. Not him. He decided to do it Grant’s way. He’d go to meetings, and when the compulsion hit, he’d stop at the 7-Eleven on the way home and grab two beers. Ten to 14 days sober, then drinking again. Back to meetings. “I’ve been drinking again.” This went on for 11 months. Going to five, six meetings a week while secretly drinking, lying to the fellowship, lying to himself.
At the end of 11 months, Grant was in a darker hole than ever. Sitting in his laboratory, he decided his life was over. Alcoholics Anonymous didn’t work. He was one of those people—constitutionally incapable of being honest. He went to his vault and pulled out two one-pound bottles of barbiturate powder and a quarter pound of morphine. He was going to take it all.
But he’d gotten phone numbers from people. Someone came and got him. At the meeting, he told them he’d been drinking and didn’t know what to do. They told him to give back all his chips. “Save one. When it melts, you can drink.” That night, he heard two things that saved his life.
First, a man talked about the definition of a slip—all the choices that led to the drink. The drink itself was just the end product of a whole series of thinking and actions. Grant understood for the first time: he wasn’t powerless over the drink. He was powerless over his own mind.
Second, a woman said, “Yes, you can get sober. And I’ll tell you why. Because God would not allow you to come into a room where the answer to your problems is to simply say you can’t have it.” The light went on. That night, Grant went home and said, “I don’t care what I have to do. I will do whatever I have to do to stay sober. Because I don’t want to go in front of God with alcohol on my breath.” It was June 20th, 1976. He’s been sober since.
Grant talks about learning to trust—first in Alcoholics Anonymous as a whole, then in his home group, then in one man: his sponsor. His sponsor loved him enough that Grant could make the jump from trusting the program to trusting God. After his Fifth Step, when he was sure he’d be kicked out of AA for all he’d done, his sponsor said the thing that changed everything: “Grant, welcome to the human race. You’re no better than anybody else and you’re no worse.”
His Ninth Step with his father became a turning point. Grant had hated his father with every ounce of his soul—prayed nightly for him to die. But after writing a brutal letter and hearing his sister say their father was depressed, Grant realized something: he’d never told his father he loved him. He’d never hugged him. He’d never said he did a good job. In one moment of God-given clarity, Grant picked up the phone. After some awkward small talk, he said, “I love you, Dad,” holding the phone with both hands because he was shaking so hard. His father cried and said, “I love you too, son.”
That reconciliation changed everything. Grant learned his mother had been the alcoholic—a sneak drinker who’d tied him to a chair for 12 hours at a time when he was three, four, five years old. His father had stayed to protect him, even though it meant Grant grew up hating the man who saved him. The Ninth Step didn’t just heal Grant’s relationship with his father. It rewired his entire understanding of his childhood, his disease, and his capacity to forgive and be forgiven.
Today, Grant says Alcoholics Anonymous gave him everything money can’t buy: respect, dignity, love of his fellow man. He’s had three more heart attacks since getting sober. Doctors have sent him home to put his affairs in order three times. He’s still here, still racking up time. The program works. It just took him getting honest, trusting a sponsor, and doing the work.
Notable Quotes
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.
What I needed at that moment was not to be in the Holy Land. What I needed was the face of another drunk in recovery.
I don’t know where that line is when a cucumber turns into a pickle, but once it has, it ain’t no going back. And I had turned into a pickle.
God would not allow you to come into a room where the answer to your problems is to simply say you can’t have it.
Grant, welcome to the human race. You’re no better than anybody else and you’re no worse.
I love you, Dad.” And I remember holding on to the phone with both hands because I was shaking so hard. That moment changed my life forever.
Step 4 – Resentments & Inventory
Steps 8 & 9 – Making Amends
Sponsorship
Forgiveness
Topics Covered in This Transcript
- Hitting Bottom
- Step 4 – Resentments & Inventory
- Steps 8 & 9 – Making Amends
- Sponsorship
- Forgiveness
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Full AA Speaker Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated and may contain minor errors. For the best experience, listen to the audio above.
Welcome to Sober Sunrise, a podcast bringing you AA speaker meetings with stories of experience, strength, and hope from around the world. We bring you several new speakers weekly, so be sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help us remain self-supporting, please visit our website at sober-rise.com.
Whether you join us in the morning or at night, there's nothing better than a sober sunrise. We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. >> Yeah, you got to stand up here.
>> I always did have trouble following directions. >> Good evening. My name's Grant and I'm an alcoholic.
Um, I want 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 but it's mine, and you're welcome to it. I'd like actually I'd like to I am grateful uh that Lori uh helped in getting me over here to speak.
Um I always feel uh honored to speak and I always love it when I see another alcoholic. I was sober four 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 uh in my haste to go um I didn't pack a big book or 12 and 12 or any literature. I thought, I'm going to be in the Holy Land. I'm going to be with 40 other priests.
You know what can go wrong? Well, in about the fifth week, I thought, geez, 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 uh 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 two days later.
He said, "The meeting in Israel?" And I said, "The meeting as in one?" 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." Two 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. wasn't to be in a seminary. What I needed at that moment was the face of 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 II.
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.
Um 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 at detention in front of him and we would address the charges and he'd say, "What?" Okay, what's your excuse for this?
And I say, "Well, it was." He goes, "There's no such thing as an excuse." says, "You're grounded or I had a reduction in my pay, you know, my allowance." And this was a a game that went on and on with my father. Uh to the point where uh 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 cuz 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 a scholarship to Ohio State University, full ride, and an invitation to the 1964 Olympics. And I thought, finally, I am going to get out of this hell hole of my life and I'm going to be famous. I'm going to be a star.
I'm going to win medals and I'm going to be a minister and I'm going to marry a nyomaniac and life is going to be great. >> Two out of three ain't bad. Well, um, 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 six 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 going to 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 were 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 alcoh 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 decision. Why sip it? And I chug a lug 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 fifth 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 that was a very significant drunk for me.
Um I was drinking alone. I was sneaking it. Uh 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, um, one of the things I discovered, um, was I had a year to figure out what the hell I was going to do with my life. Obviously, I wasn't going to go into to be a coach. So, I decided uh I I like science, so I went to the university and I majored in chemistry and biology.
And I uh I didn't drink after that first night for four years. But on my 21st birthday, all the guys in the dorm said they were going to 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, "Whoa, I've hit the mother load. Free booze." We got 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 sour.
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 um I went down to the Washington DC area and uh 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 going to 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 necessarily get drunk. There were many times.
There's halftruths in AA. And the one that I have a 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 want to 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 two bags cuz I had beer in them. 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 one six-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 six-pack will fit inside a spare tire. And I had four tires, so I always had a case.
I could rotate my stock and you know, it got to the point where um I had crossed a line and I don't know where that was. You know, it's the thing. I'm sure you've all heard it about 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. I thought you that insanity thing in the second step drove me crazy when I no pun intended um when I first came in. But I was doing a lot of stuff that normal people didn't do, you know.
Um, and at the most inappropriate times, you know, shortly before I got sober, um, I had, uh, the opportunity to have 14 guests over for Thanksgiving. And I thought, "This is going to be cool." You know, I'm going to base the turkey and I'm going to be the galloping gourmet and have my wine and base 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 tablecloth that that platter sat on. And I thank God for the washer and the dryer to wash that tablecloth.
And somebody said, "I I think God's been thanked enough tonight." And I thought, "Man, they've interrupted me, man. I'm on a roll, you know." 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 you know, you just like overwhelmed with Thanksgiving." Well, yeah. In the 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 uh together with our two kids, and I thought, "This is going to be great.
We're going down to Nags Head and we're going to be at the beach and there's going to be beer and there's going to be sun and there's going to be beer and there's going to be sand and there's going to be beer and crabbing and beer and beer. Well, I was there about two days and I was so anxious I couldn't stand it and I couldn't understand why I do now. Um, I couldn't drink the way I normally drank.
You see, the way I drank at home, um, was I waited until my wife went to bed, which is always about 7:30 or 8:00 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 Well, I made a bar stool. 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 and I got into a silly argument with my wife and 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 a alcoholic answer.
I said, "Well, I'm never going to drink again because you just took all the enjoyment out of it for me." And so, um, 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 one syllable. And it was said with so much hatred. I 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 uh love me had control of my life. That ounce of booze. Well, I didn't go to AA.
I didn't really know about AA. Um 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 going to celebrate my birthday, have a beer." And I said, "No." I said, "I'm I'm really kind of knocking that stuff off." He says, "Oh, come on down." He says, "Yeah, it's my birthday." I said, "No, I promised my wife I'd be good. I'm I'm, you know, not going to do it." And see this is this is where AA is so valuable.
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'll 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 eight o'clock. I don't know how many I had, but it was more than one.
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 four automobile accidents due to alcohol.
As a matter of fact, I had this tremendous pension for hitting parked cars. You could put one parked car on the streets of St. 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 golucky 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 got to 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 fifth accident.
And when I came home, I had knocked the fender off. I knocked uh 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 going to go see the professionals cuz I got a problem." And I don't know who was more in shock, me or my wife. Cuz I couldn't believe I said it. I happened 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, "Um, Grant, do you drink to get drunk?" And I remember looking at him and looking at him and thinking, "This is a trick question. It's one of those cleverly disguised psychological questions that no matter how you answer it, you're screwed.
He said, "I I should go to Alcoholics Anonymous." I said, "Okay, I I'll whatever. I'll do it." Had a great please others driver in me. So, uh, that night I went to a meeting, uh, just down the street and it was a step meeting and it was, uh, 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 with myself. And this woman came up to me afterwards and she says, "I just just promise me you will come back." And I don't know how she knew I was the 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 7-Eleven on the way home from a meeting and I get two 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 five, six 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. And I sat in my 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 myself.
I'm just one of God's sad sacks. And I went into my lab. I went into my vault and I got two one-pound bottles of barbbiterate powder and a quarter pound bottle of morphine.
And I was going to 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 is I got phone numbers from people and they came in and 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 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 two things.
First thing is a guy said, "Well, the definition of a 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 slip down to the liquor store, slip the man a five and he slips you a fifth." And I understood it for the first time. There was a whole series of events that I had 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 cuz 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 says, "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 whatever 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. Now, it's kind of silly, but it worked.
That was June 20th, 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 of your fellow man, love of 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 fourth, I did the fifth.
And at the end of my fifth step in which I was petrified, my sponsor said, cuz I was sure they were going to kick me out of AA, he said the one thing that 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 I was part of something now.
In my ninth 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 going to 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 sponsor and he said, "Why are you so angry?" And I said, "Because he never told me he loved me. 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's, how are the Redskins, 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 cuz I was shaking so hard. And I remember praying so earnestly and 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, "I I love you too, son." That moment changed my life forever.
It was a seinal moment of my sobriety. It was a seinal 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 two 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 three, four, five, and six years old at 7 in the morning and leave me there for 12 hours with no food, no water, crap 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 three years old, four 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 sanity was better than nothing at all.
And I felt a great deal 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 and 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 become a credit to my kids.
I become a credit to my AA peers. I become a credit to my professional peers. I become a credit to myself.
And most of all, I 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 three other heart attacks. I been told three 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. This is a great place to do time. It really is.
So, um I think I'm out of my time now. So, uh, thank you very much for having me. >> Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise.
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