Man stays sober, gives to others in long term care home
Riverview Manor helps Jim Grezaud save himself, make a contribution
Tuesday, September 13, 2005 -- Craig Anderson
Jim Grezaud remembers a visit to a friend and fellow construction worker that marked a turning point in his battles with alcohol, a worsening of a habit begun in earnest as a teenager.

His friend poured two glasses of rubbing alcohol, added some grape soda, and implored Jim to swallow all of it at once. Sipping the alcohol would cause a particularly egregious form of acid reflux. It might also cause temporary blindness, his friend noted, casually.

“I thought – ‘you’re crazy’ – but I did it anyway,” says Jim.

This is but one of a hundred vignettes in a life riddled with crazy drinking stories. But Jim’s stories are not of the elbow-nudging, college boy, giddy morning after, ‘no one got hurt’ variety.

Jim has been appreciably hurt by alcoholism – charged with numerous drunk driving offences, being resuscitated from a near death state twice, living homeless for over a year, receiving over 200 tickets for public drunkenness, and being alienated from family and friends.

He has been both functional and dysfunctional alcoholic. He has held down construction jobs for years, was once married and has fathered three children. But he has also lived on the streets scraping together enough change from recycled bottles to buy mouthwash (“it tastes like crap,” he says, but adds that you soon don’t notice it) and going on ‘the hunt’ upon waking everyday to find anything and anyway to get good and gone.

It was in 1999 that Jim decided he had suffered enough, and he made his first attempt at rehab at the Wayside House in British Columbia. Three failed rehab attempts and four years later he decided to move back to Peterborough with his sister, Tina Lunn, a health care aide at Riverview Manor.

The move was ill-fated, he says, and a week later he had found his old drinking crew. Months later he was splitting time at Tina’s and time panhandling on the street for mouthwash. By Christmas of 2004 a doctor warned him of his impending death. He decided a radical change involving a more structured life was the only alternative. Otherwise, he adds, he would have drunk himself to death.

Tina, who has been with Riverview for 12 years, suggested a move into the nursing home, where a structured routine could be had. Jim's earlier attempts at rehabilitation had always been thwarted by a break in his routine – usually a move into a more idle environment. Riverview – far removed from street life temptations and undergirded by steady routines – might be the most appropriate situation with which to ensure a prolonged period of sobriety.

Tina met with Kelly Burns, Riverview’s administrator, and raised the idea. Jim was on ODSP, so the funding was in place. He has two family members in the home – along with Tina is a niece, Anita Hickson, also an HCA. Kelly expressed reservation, however. Jim, 49, would be living with people – some with dementia – thirty years his senior.

“I didn’t know what to expect. The safety factor was my first question, but then with his age, I wondered, would he be satisfied, or bored?” asks Kelly.

Six months later Jim is not only satisfied but sober. He is a key member of the community at Riverview, says Tina, and currently rooms with two other male residents. He takes part in daily chores, calls bingo, porters residents to meals, and has re-decorated the smaller dining room, now named in his honour. He attends AA meetings six days a week.

“He’s so amazing with the residents,” says Kelly. “He brightens the lives of some of them. We’re giving to him but he’s giving back to us. He brings a sense of hope, purpose, and belonging, not only to himself, but also to the residents.”

While it is becoming less rare for an able-bodied 49 year old man to live in a nursing home, increasingly long term care residences have come to include people who cannot find suitable living arrangements or care support elsewhere. People with intellectual disabilities, recovering alcoholics, or people with exceptional injuries have been able to re-habilitate and re-invigorate themselves in these environments.

“Without the help of Riverview and Alcoholics Anonymous I wouldn’t be here,” says Jim.

Jim plans to return to the workforce only when he feels that he has turned the corner on his struggles with alcohol, when he is able to negotiate the daily stresses of life without resorting to the panacea of a quick trip to the nearest liquor store. It would be easy to return to construction work, he adds, although the lifestyle he would encounter there could result in another downfall.

“I like it here,” says Jim, “and I need it to keep me sober.”

Prolonged sobriety, for both his mental and physical health, is therefore mandatory.

“I probably have another drinking session in me, but not another recovery,” he says.