‘American Chopper’ star sobers up, starts over

The star of the hit TLC show “American Chopper” and founder of his own family business, Paul Teutul Sr. shares advice about running a business in his book, “The Ride of a Lifetime.” Teutul founded Orange County Choppers in 1999, and grew his hobby into a 70-plus-person operation that produces and sells 150 custom bikes a year. In this excerpt, he writes about battling alcoholism and finding the clarity of mind to develop his company.

Sobering up
I remember the day exactly. It was January 7, 1985 — 11 years after going into business together. Twenty years of hard drinking and partying since the age of 15 had finally caught up with me. My body was literally falling apart. I was coughing up blood. Over the years, I had wrecked a dozen or more cars. On the weekends, I would wake up and not know where I was or how I'd gotten there.

So on January 7, 1985, I decided that I'd either have to sober up, or die. I chose to die. 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 my only choice was to die.

Somehow, she talked me into going into rehab, something I thought I'd never do. But I wanted to have one last good drunk. So the day before I was set to go into rehab, I got totally plastered. I drank a half-gallon of wine, a pint of brandy, and I took six Valiums. I woke up the next morning completely hung over. I had promised my wife that I would go, but I just couldn't. And you want to know why I couldn't do it? Because I couldn't leave my business. 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. 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.

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. Even toward the end, when I was spitting up blood, I showed up to work every day. No matter what. So in my mind, I couldn't take 30 days off from work, even if it was the only way to save my life. I couldn't lose everything that I had gained over the past 11 years. There was an uncertainty there that I simply couldn't handle.

But I'm a man of my word. 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. So instead of checking myself into rehab, I went to an Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting — something I'd said I would never do. For the next nine years, I never missed a meeting. Thankfully, in January 2009, I had been sober for 24 years.

That was the beginning of a whole new life for me. A life that — I finally realized — was full of choices. And one of those choices was not to drink, although it took me a while to figure that out. Once I went to that first AA meeting on January 7, 1985, I never took another drink. But I was tempted every day. That's because I was surrounded by drinkers. My partner, John Grosso, and all the guys who worked for us were all boozers. I was the only guy who had decided to sober up, so there was constant pressure on me to drink. 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. It was a challenge every day.

For a while, I thought I could deal with it. I thought I could be around them and not drink. They'd send me out for a case of beer and a bottle of Black Velvet at 2 P.M. And, like a dummy, I'd go get it for them. I didn't think that just because I had stopped drinking that I couldn't hang out with my drinking buddies.

About a year into AA, I was not drinking, but it was still a daily struggle. 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. I didn't know how long I could keep saying “no.”

Then a guy in AA told me something that saved my life. He said, “If you don't drink just for today, you may be dead tomorrow. So just worry about getting through today.” That was it for me. I finally got it. I understood that I couldn't worry about being sober a month or a year or five years from now. It was a day-to-day struggle. And if you simply don't drink for today, then you're winning the battle. It sounds so simple — “Just don't drink for today” — but it saved my life.

A 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. It was also the end of the life I had been living. The life of drinking and drugs that had ruled my life and held me back professionally. And that meant the end of another partnership.

That's because John Grosso had not only been my business partner, but he had also been my drinking buddy. 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. Of course, we never did them. 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. It was a vicious cycle.

When I got sober in 1985, John tried to get sober, too. Unfortunately, he didn't make it. 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. They had to stop. It was my choice, and I embraced the fact that for the first time in my life I had control over making that decision. Needless to say, most of my employees who were my old drinking buddies disappeared. They weren't going to tolerate that. Old Paulie simply wasn't as fun as he used to be. Maybe not, but I was a hell of a lot more focused. And it started to show.

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