Greg Horvath

Diary of a Sober Companion Greg Horvath

Diary of a Sober Companion started as just that. Greg was offered the opportunity to work as a sober companion to the rich, and sometimes famous, and was thrust into a world that was so alien to him, he started taking notes. These notes and observations turned into this memoir. If you've ever watched Elementary on CBS where Lucy Liu plays Watson, the sober companion to Jonny Lee Miller's Sherlock Holmes, you will have some idea of what a sober companion does. The Sherlock character is irascible, virtually uncontrollable, and always threatening to fall off the wagon. His father is also rich enough to afford to have someone live with Sherlock around the clock. Sherlock and the clients Greg worked with had all those things in common. The difference was that most of Greg's clients made CBS's drug addicted Sherlock look like a spirited puppy. For five years, Greg rode herd on a revolving series of rich addicts, athletes, and celebrities. He has stared down the barrel of a client's gun in New Orleans and survived brawls in a Malibu treatment center. The adrenaline rush that came with handling one crisis after another became its own kind of drug for Greg, and he knew it would eventually have to end. Greg began the journey because he thought he could help people and perhaps he did help. The journey ended when the structure behind this "care-giving" system showed its bones and revealed how heavily this high-end recovery business relied on stratospheric fees, inflated reports of success rates, and kick-back arrangements that made sure everyone got paid along the way. Diary of a Sober Companion is, among other things, a voyeuristic look into the world of the rich, famous...and addicted. It is also Greg's journey from farm boy in Saskatchewan to sober companion in Malibu, New Orleans, San Francisco, New York, and around the world. But Greg never once thought that his journey as a sober companion would have him waking up to the smell of urine as a drunk client relieves himself near his bed in a five star hotel room in Los Angeles, staring down the barrel of a client's 10mm Glock in New Orleans, or flushing a client's stuff down the toilet at his lawyer's request as NYPD are rushing through their hotel room door.