Old Paulie simply wasn't as fun as he used to be. Needless to say, most of my employees who were my old drinking buddies disappeared. It was my choice, and I embraced the fact that for the first time in my life I had control over making that decision. One year after getting sober, I finally told all the guys that there was no more drinking in the shop, no more drinking in the truck, and no more drinking on the job site. When I got sober in 1985, John tried to get sober, too. That's because it took all of our energy to just get out of bed in the morning, get to the job site, and then get to the bar. ![]() After we'd bang out a job, we'd spend the afternoon on a bar stool somewhere, talking about all the great things we were going to do with the business. That's because John Grosso had not only been my business partner, but he had also been my drinking buddy. And that meant the end of another partnership. The life of drinking and drugs that had ruled my life and held me back professionally. It was also the end of the life I had been living. It sounds so simple - “Just don't drink for today” - but it saved my life.Ī new life When I stopped drinking, it opened up a whole new life for me - a life full of choices - and, for the first time ever, I was in charge. And if you simply don't drink for today, then you're winning the battle. I understood that I couldn't worry about being sober a month or a year or five years from now. So just worry about getting through today.” That was it for me. He said, “If you don't drink just for today, you may be dead tomorrow. Then a guy in AA told me something that saved my life. I didn't know how long I could keep saying “no.” It was one of the hardest things I'd ever done not to grab hold of that bottle that was being passed around the truck and take a swig. It was a challenge every day.Ībout a year into AA, I was not drinking, but it was still a daily struggle. I would be on the job site with these guys, or in the truck, trying not to drink, and they'd be passing a bottle of whiskey or downing a case of beer. I was the only guy who had decided to sober up, so there was constant pressure on me to drink. My partner, John Grosso, and all the guys who worked for us were all boozers. That's because I was surrounded by drinkers. ![]() Once I went to that first AA meeting on January 7, 1985, I never took another drink. And one of those choices was not to drink, although it took me a while to figure that out. A life that - I finally realized - was full of choices. That was the beginning of a whole new life for me. Thankfully, in January 2009, I had been sober for 24 years. For the next nine years, I never missed a meeting. So instead of checking myself into rehab, I went to an Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting - something I'd said I would never do. And my word is my ironclad bond, and my vow to my wife had been to get sober, and that was what I was going to do. There was an uncertainty there that I simply couldn't handle.īut I'm a man of my word. ![]() I couldn't lose everything that I had gained over the past 11 years. ![]() So in my mind, I couldn't take 30 days off from work, even if it was the only way to save my life. Even toward the end, when I was spitting up blood, I showed up to work every day. You also have to remember that throughout all my years of drinking and doing drugs, I went to work no matter what: broken arms, smashed fingers, the flu. In my mind, if I went away for 30 days, I thought it would all go away and I'd have to start all over again. I thought that if I went into rehab that I'd lose everything I'd accomplished up to that point: my business, my customers, my reputation. And you want to know why I couldn't do it? Because I couldn't leave my business. I had promised my wife that I would go, but I just couldn't. I woke up the next morning completely hung over. I drank a half-gallon of wine, a pint of brandy, and I took six Valiums. So the day before I was set to go into rehab, I got totally plastered. But I wanted to have one last good drunk. Somehow, she talked me into going into rehab, something I thought I'd never do. I told my wife, Paula, who had been through so much with me and should be nominated for sainthood, that as much as I would like to get sober, I couldn't. So on January 7, 1985, I decided that I'd either have to sober up, or die.
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