Grant Amato Letter | Inside the Mind Of An Addict

We're really going to hone in on one particular aspect of the Grant Amato case, and that is taking a look at a letter that he wrote to some friends while he was in treatment. And the reason we're going to dissect, we're going to analyze this letter is because it is a fantastic viewpoint inside the mind of an addict. We're going to look at the thinking here. He talks about how he thinks about his friends, how he thinks about the addiction, what he thinks about his family, and all of these things are so, so stereotypical of addictive thinking. It's the perfect example for you to see exactly how all that works. Now, I'm going to be using a slightly different format than I usually use, because we're going to be dissecting this letter. I'm going to show you the letter, and we're going to go through it together, and then we're going to stop and sort of look at the different pieces, analyze them, talk about what they mean and how that applies, so that if you ever see this kind of thinking or behavior in your life or someone else's life, you're going to be able to spot it. You're going to be like, oh, that's it. I know what that is. Let me show you the letter. Now, if you don't know anything about this case, basically this guy, Grant Amato, he got addicted to a relationship that he was having with a chat girl. You know, the kind that you pay money to, that kind. He got addicted to. This person ultimately stole over $200,000 from his family, got put into treatment, and. And then killed his family, his mom, his dad, and one of his brothers. It is a horrific, terrible crime. And I want you to understand the thinking process that goes into. How does someone get to that point of delusional thinking in their head? And this letter that I'm about to show you is the perfect example. Okay, this is a letter that Grant wrote while he was in addiction treatment. He wrote this letter to his friends. And when I say friends, they. These are the friends. These are the other guys who are also regulars in the chat room with him, with this girl. Her name is Sylvie, the girl that he developed this relationship with. I was going to say love, but it's really not love. It's like an addicted relationship with this girl. And I think you're going to see why I'm using that word as we go through this letter. So I just want you to have that context of understanding what we're about to look at here. This is the letter that he wrote. Now, I did take a couple of sections out of this letter because it's really long, and the pieces I took out were really aren't so relevant to what we're talking about. And it was just at one point in the letter, he sort of addresses each one of these guys individually. And he was like, you know, hey, Mike, you were like a dad to me. Hey, whatever, you know, you were like stepdad to me. And it's just not as important to this. And since it's a long letter, we just cut that part out. Other than that, pretty much the rest of it is in here. Here we go. So Grant says, hey, guys, I was thinking of writing you individually, but I felt it might be easier to reach everyone if I did one message to the main group of guys and I got that. I got to know over the months. The purpose of letter is to apologize to you guys. Jim, Josh, Ian, Spin, Frank, and Wolf, each of you. I forged a different form of friendship, or at least, at very least, I felt as if we were good acquaintances. All right, let's take a look at this one section right here. Now he's saying that he's writing this letter specifically to apologize to these guys, his buddies. It's so interesting because when I was reading this, I was like, oh, these are using friends. Because that's what's happening here. We're all addicted to something. We all come together and we have this bond between us over this addiction that we all share. So these friends of his are really what I would call like using buddies. And he's saying in this letter that he's just sort of writing it for an apology. But what I think you're going to see is he's actually doing this for a fairly manipulative purpose because you're going to see that he has a fallen out with Sylvie. That's the girl that they're all addicted to, and she's upset with him. And I feel pretty sure that he's writing this letter because he thinks these guys, guys, they're all sort of in this group together, can maybe help him get his way back in with Sylvie. You guys tell me what you think after we take a look at this letter. I think it's safe to say by now that everyone here knows that I made a drastic mistake with Sylvie. I upset her, made her very sad, and ruined the end of December and the beginning of January for her. I won't go into great detail because that's not the purpose of this message, but I Lied to her and you guys from the beginning about myself, I'm not a professional gamer. I did not own my own house and I did not drive a BMW. The major one here was the gamer. I know that I at least told you guys that I was that. And while I did attempt to get into the Twitch gaming, it never took off. Like I had said, I have no excuses as to why I felt the need to do this from the beginning. Okay, so this is the thing that Sylvie's mad because when he sort of introducing himself to the group, to the cat girl, Sylvie and the rest of the guys in the group, he is telling sort of false statements. At the time when he was engaging in this addiction, I believe he wasn't working at all. There had been an incident, I think he was a nurse assort and there was an incidence where he had become suicidal and he had threatened to take action on that and he had stole some kind of medication in order to do that. And because of that he, his license and all that got interviewed. So he was not working at all at the time of this addiction. But he's trying to set himself up as sort of like the big guy and he really is sort of showing out, trying to win the affection of this girl, trying to be better than the other guys. And I think that you're going to see that sort of clearly as we go through the rest of this letter. I can only plead stupidity. And I felt intimidated from the onset of the room environment and felt like I had to be something far more unique than I was. While the money I have, the tips I gave and the way that I was and am are my true personality and way of being. I could never escape the lies that I told you from the very beginning because they became the topic of discussion either between Sylvia and I, which would spill over into the room like she always does, or it would be brought up by someone in the room like Tiger Blue, etc. My whole plan for this was to start new in January. I would drop off the whole gamer Persona and simply pursue my actual CRNA job as I had been more and more near the end of the year. So now he is justifying this lie. He told this lie. I just only lied about like my job and my car and that I have my own house. But I was totally telling the truth about who I am as a person and the money I gave and the tips and how I feel about all you guys. Well, first of all, you only think he was telling the truth about the money that he gave because the money that he gave wasn't his money. He actually, remember I said he stole more than $200,000 from his family. And when they arrested him, they also found on his computer all, like, pictures of credit cards, like, from his grandparents and all these people where he was taking money basically anywhere that he could to keep this relationship with this chatgirl going. All right, back to our letter here. The profession that I was going through had a legal issue at the time that was 3 WB. I don't really know what that is, but he wrote that in the letter. It's why I began to pursue the whole gaming thing, during which the time I was not allowed to practice as a CRNA without observation. Lastly, I will mention that While I am 29, I have never lived alone. I have either lived with my parents or primarily with my brother in the big house that we grew up in. At the end of November, everyone remembers Sylvie got all worried because I was absent a lot during that important night. The reason why this happened was because my family found out about her, the website, all the money I had been spending on everything. So now we're about to get to the critical part because this is where the family finds out what's going on. I'm assuming that they found out that he stole all of that money and they were sort of panicked. They could have pressed charges, but they chose not to. Instead, they put him in a addiction treatment center. And I believe he said the name of the treatment center was called Cornerstone. And as you're going to see in the next little part, he's able to talk his way out of that treatment center early. I won't go into detail regarding my family, but it's a dysfunctional one at the least. My father is controlling and abusive. My mother is simply around for security, and my brother's also controlling and does not understand why I would care for someone so much as I care for Sylvie because of this dysfunction. After I came back from Japan, I split from my family to be on my own. They would never have this. And subsequently ambushed me where I was staying and forcefully signed me into a clinic at Fort Lauderdale here in Florida. This was an addiction clinic. They felt I had an unhealthy addiction because of the type of profession Sylvie has and the quantity of money I spent in the span of six months that I knew her. Okay, let's talk about this for just a minute. First of all, he's doing the classic addiction thing, which is villainizing the family. But what I can tell you is that almost always, like, 99% of the time. When I see people struggling with addictions, they view their family as controlling and not understanding, and they have all these negative views, partly because the family is trying to control the situation, but the family is trying to control the situation because the person is out of control. And then he goes into this whole thing where he's like, you know, they think I have this unhealthy addiction just because of what, you know, my girlfriend does for a living. Really? Come on. There's some things he's going to say later in this letter. And I'm like, wow, if you could write out exactly what addiction is, like, you have just written it down, Mr. Amato. So the thinking just doesn't line up. And I see this so often when people are in active addiction. This is this sort of, like, delusional thinking thing that you hear me talk about. They're really sort of out of touch with reality. The way they're seeing things and the way everyone else sees things does not line up whatsoever. Let's see what else Mr. Amato has to say. I was not allowed to leave the clinic while I was there. I was not allowed to access the Internet. I did not have access to my phone, and I did not have access to my computer. I was admitted in there until I was able to convince my family that I was fine and and able to be released on January 9th. By this time, the damage was done. My family had hacked my computer at home, gained access to my phone records and all of my personal things related to Sylvie. They took it upon themselves to lie to her about so many things related to me, which in turn led her to believe me even less after I finally cleaned. To her about the lies I told you about above, I should mention the stipulation for me to be released from the clinic was to go along with the lies my family had told her to poison my damage that much more. While Sylvie says that the reason why she can't forgive me is solely because of what I did, I can't help but feel that this is all part of it. All right, let's talk about this for just a second here. So he's mad because he says the family lied to Sylvie, which is now making it harder for him to get back in with Sylvie. My guess is here is the family told the whole truth about what was going on and the history with this guy, and then they tried to sort of cut off all the accounts and money and everything he could do to access getting back into this relationship with this girl, which is not really a Romantic relationship. It's a business relationship. But in his mind, he really felt like this was a real, true relationship. And you can just hear. You're going to hear even more about this delusional thinking that's going on. This is what happened and led to all the strange things over the past few months. I apologize for the length here, guys, but I have to get this all out and make whatever amends I can tell you to her. It pains me that you guys thought that I was trying to trick you into tipping at the end of October, November. Tipping is sort of the way that they. These guys would be in the room, and they would sort of add more money, and Sylvie would do more things, depending on how much tips and money was added. Sylvie had mentioned something like this to me, and I tried to tell her that this was never my intention. I had taken the words Jim had said to her, and I didn't want to be the high tipper each time we did this. You see, when I read this, what this tells me is that even before Mr. Amato's lies came out, I get the impression just from reading this that everyone in the group, Sylvie included, and the rest of these guys were sort of put off by this guy. And my guess is Sylvie felt that whatever was happening there was getting kind of out of hand with him. And that's why she said, I mean, I'm so mad at you for lying about who you were. I mean, this one was just a business relationship. Does she really care that he lied about this stuff? No, but it kind of gives her a reason to sort of back up, because she probably felt a little nervous about how intensely this guy was focusing on her. And you can tell, the other guys could tell that he was sort of showing out, trying to play the big dog, because he's mentioning in the letter that the friend, you know, had sort of talked to him about it and that he was trying to do better with that. I wanted the gesture to be what it was, a group effort of showing her how we all thought of her. I didn't want to steal the limelight every time. Everyone, I ask you for your forgiveness regarding my stupidity. I will never be able to forgive myself for making Sylvie sad and for betraying her trust in me. Despite the many things that I have tried to currently emphasize to her, I care for her deeply and wish for an actual second chance for her and the room. So apparently, you know, he's been sort of kicked out of the room. Not only has he been sort of cut off by the family but he's been kicked out of the room. The. The friends and Sylvie, obviously, they don't want him in there anymore. Now, what's interesting about this, to me, the fact that he's. He's all about, I can't believe I lied to her. I'm so mad at myself, I'll never forgive myself. I can't believe I lied to you guys. What about everything he's done to his family? What about stealing all the money? What about all the bad things he's done? He's like, no remorse for that, right? Because he's in this addicted state of mind. And his mind's almost like. It's really interesting because when you're in this addictive state, you can just justify pretty much almost anything. And that's where you get all this sort of delusion. He's so focused. He's like, oh, I told Sylvia a lie about what I did for a living. Sorry about that. But I'm not sorry about everything I did for my family. You know, they're just mean and controlling and unfair, and they tell lies on me. You see this thinking. This is very, very typical of the family dynamic that goes on with the person while they're in active addiction. I know the hatchet cannot be buried easily, and I know everyone's entitled to their own feelings of hatred and discomfort. But I'm willing to do whatever it takes to show the real me to everyone and build a relationship that doesn't involve lies. As much mistrust and anger as I have with everyone, I want to let you know. I want to let you all know that besides the three things I spoke of earlier and the many branches of lies that spread from them, the tournaments, the cars, the family struggles, everything regarding my personality, the way that I was, the reasons why I tipped, the feelings I have for Sylvie and for you are all the real me. Okay? So I do believe that the feelings he expressed for Sylvie probably were real to him at the time. And he probably did feel fairly bonded to these guys, these using buddies that were his friends, which is also very common in any kind of addiction. You know, it's like they're doing the same thing you're doing. So they're validating your actions, your behaviors, your thoughts, feelings. They're making you feel great about yourself. And then you go home and your family, you know, they're all mad at you about what you're doing, so they're just not being very validating at all. So you get this divide that. That really goes even further and further between, like, these people, these using friends over here, they understand me. My family, they just don't get me at all. They're just. They're just controlling. They're just nagging. I'm telling you, in almost every single addiction situation, this is the thinking dynamic. That's why I really like this letter so much, because it is, like, the perfect window into what this actually looks like. These are the things that I would hear in my work with people that struggle with addiction. All right, so let's look at the next little section here. After I initially lied, everything between me and Sylvie grew so fast. We became so close, and I was in the stereotypical rock and hard place. I found myself avoiding the topics that I had lied about more and more with her and trying to emphasize her day more than mine. I was desperately trying to get to January so that I could begin to erase all the lies. I hate myself for what I did, and I hate the thought of never getting to be with her again after everything that I gave and everything that I had tried to do with her. I just can't comprehend being without her. I simply plead that I was human and made a terrible error and hurt the ones I grew to care for. I think it's pretty interesting here that, you know, after I told all these lies, Sylvia and I began to get really connected. So can you imagine the chat girl who's a businesswoman? She starts to pay, like, more attention to this guy who's claiming to have all this money and this free time and this lifestyle. And, you know, and he thinks that that affection is coming towards him because of him. But, I mean, clearly it's coming down because he's trying to be the big shot, and he's trying to win her attention through the money. And she's a business person. So you've got this whole sort of dynamic that just keeps going on. And this whole thing about January, I've been thinking about that. You know, it's like he keeps saying, I was in January. I was going to tell you the truth that could possibly be true. Because that wouldn't be an uncommon thing for someone with an addiction to do, to be a really sort of, like, they tell these lies, and then they think, okay, I'm gonna fix it at this point. So it could be something like, okay, I stole money out of my mom's wallet, but I'm gonna put it back on Wednesday, and she's never gonna notice. It's this delusional thinking about how they're gonna get by with this. And it Pretty much like never works. I felt that I had to come clean on my own. The same result would have occurred in this day and age. Maybe it's my childish way of thinking, but that is the truth. I just wanted to make her smile and give her new experiences to her room. I wanted to add her feelings of accom accomplishments and give in to her greedy, stubborn, childish side of wanting it all. I wanted to always be someone who could be a shoulder for her to cry on and someone that she hated for making her not be alone when she was sad. I wanted to be the one that she would curse for making her talk about her feelings and making her thoughts get out into the open instead of keeping them to herself. What pains me most is that I was all of those things things to her. You can really begin to see the addiction at this point. I mean, you're listening to how he's talking about her and he wanted to be all these things. I feel like it's funny that he describes, you know, he says that she's greedy, stubborn and childish. So there's some realization on his part that he traits. But he was just so infatuated with her in limerence with her. For those of you who've seen my videos on limerence, he basically didn't care. He minimized these traits or he may have even thought they were cute. I'm unable to function normally without her not hearing her good morning or good night, not talking to her for hours a day, not being part of her room and life outside of it. It's the most painful experience I have ever been through, and I will never get out of it. I will never get over her, and I will never plan to simply replace her with the next one. I truly love this woman at first sight. And I fell in love with her over the months that I got to know everything about her. She never believed that you could love someone so fast. But I did. I was part of everything to do with her. Her. Now, if this does not scream addiction to you, I honestly don't know what would. Right. He's like, I can't live without her. He's basically in withdrawal from this relationship. When he's sort of outcasted from the group and his parents try to come off, he's desperate. And that's another reason why I like this letter. Because in anyone's been through a breakup, you've probably been in this little desperate state before where you just sort of lose all of your pride and you just lay it all out there and you regret it. Later, he was in that state. This letter is a little cringy, but it's because I think he was so vulnerable that he's just really, like, poor, pouring it out here. And it's giving us sort of this window to look inside and see, you know, what's really going on in this situation. Now I'm reduced down to only being able to send her DMS on public Twitter. No private Twitter, no phone number, nothing. I send her messages every day, and I rarely get a response from her. Seeing her able to be so happy without me in her life is something I hope you guys will never have to live through. It's a feeling that makes you wish you did not exist in this world. It's a feeling that rips your heart out and makes you realize how pointless everything is without her. I mean, you can see the desperation here, right? You really kind of almost feel bad for him at this point. It makes you give up on life as I have without her. I don't think you guys would ever be as stupid as I was. But don't ever lose her. Don't ever do anything against her. She is as stubborn as I am. And trust me, we all know how stubborn she is when she's happy. If. If you have hidden anything from her, I urge you to find the time to come clean to her, no matter how small. Karma, like Father Time, is unbeatable, and I'm living proof of that. Gentlemen, I am so sorry for the length of this message. I hope it reached all of you, but if it did not, please DM me on Twitter. If you guys could do me one final favor, it would be to be forgiven by you and at least to be a part of the room to start fresh. I wish I could simply say that everyone deserves a chance to right their wrongs, but unfortunately, it's not up to me. All I can say is that I will be who I have always been, because that is already the real me. For once, though, there wouldn't be any more missed nights or lies that I couldn't escape from. I would be my usual stupid tipping and perverted self who expresses how he really feels about Sylvie far too much on Twitter. I wanted to be part of making her dreams come true with you guys. And I know I can be a happy part of her life again. I mean, when you think about this Sylvie girl, you can see that she's probably getting really scared of this guy because he's. It's just too much and she's getting that nervous vibe, and so she's using this thing where he's saying, you know, that he lied about that as a reason to sort of get out of the relationship and break up. And, like, with anyone who can get in contact with her, which I personally feel is the reason for the letter to the friends. I don't know how else I can convince her, but I can't give up on her, and I never will go to someone else. She is my everything, and I would give her my life to simply be able to make her smile again. Again. Don't ever lose her, guys. She's someone that you will never forget and never want to forget, no matter how painful. I hope I can be with her again, and I hope I can be part of the community again. I'm sorry for what I did to her and to you. I truly am. Now, that's the end of the letter. But I want you to think about this. He's so desperate. He's so sorry. This is when he's in or, just out of the OR is in the treatment center. So he's writing the letter, and when he gets out, it's not long after he gets out that he commits the crimes. Now, he did go to court. He pled not guilty. There was an entire trial around it. He was found guilty because look at all the evidence, right? He gets out of treatment. You've got these. His whole family. And then, like, right after the family was killed, you could. There was some, like, testimony about how he had the brother's phone, and he was hooking it up to the WI fi at the Publix, which is a grocery store. He was trying to get money. So immediately after that, he was immediately back trying to connect in with this addiction. It's sad. It's horrible. It's desperate. And I hope that none of you ever find yourself in that kind of position, whether it's an addiction to a chatgirl like this or anything else. That's why I say so much. You know, addiction isn't about chemical dependency. Addiction is an obsession. And that's why you can get addicted to things outside of substance. I really don't think you have to be an addiction specialist to see just how addicted Mr. Amato got to this Sylvie person. Desire for her really is almost scary and creepy when you read it in these, in the letter. All right, if you want more true crime related to mental health and addiction, I want you to watch these videos up next. I'm gonna put them right up here for you, so you can just click them. And I will see you next week.