An alcoholic's life follows a pattern of joy (he likes alcohol and what it does for him), frequency (he drinks often, but not necessarily every day), tolerance (he can drink and function the next day without serious illness), and pain (he experiences crises).
In the early years of drinking, the alcoholic's tolerance level increases, and he needs more alcohol to feel good or to block out negative feelings. His body chemistry changes, and he becomes addicted. He cannot predict the number of drinks he will have, how they will affect him, or the results of his drinking.
The alcoholic knows something is wrong, but instead of looking at himself or at the alcohol as the source of his problems, he denies the true causes of his unhappiness and blames everyone and everything around him for his life's not working.
Placing the blame outside of himself, the alcoholic never has to look inward. In truth, alcohol is at the core of his ego-centered personality. The alcoholic sees liquor as an ally, not as the enemy. In the midst of the wreckage of his life, alcohol provides temporary good feelings and a shelter from his internal and external life's storm. To quit drinking would never cross his mind. Just the opposite—drinking becomes an obsession, even though he may continue to function on the job or at home. Alcohol enables the alcoholic to deal with life and the facets of his alcoholic personality: oversensitivity, low tolerance for frustration, anger and resentment, fear, failure to have immediate ego satisfaction, overdependence on others, inability to handle disappointments and failures, lack of confidence, and low self-esteem.
Tolerance decreases with continued drinking and with age. Less alcohol does the job. When this starts happening, predictable disaster is on the horizon. Once the alcoholic becomes an alcoholic and continues to drink, few options are left. Some crisis is on the way: personal, marital, financial, legal, social, or medical.
It's a matter of time. Often the crises are repeated, or new ones surface. In some cases, it is no one thing. Instead, it is a downward spiral of hopelessness. The alcoholic knows he has a drinking problem, but he cannot conceive of a life without alcohol.
He truly believes that he is all-powerful, all-knowing, the center of the universe—God—and it is impossible for him to imagine that he can't do something that everyone else can do—drink.
The alcoholic's life is one of anger, worry, self-pity, and depression. The alcoholic loses his ambition and finally his hope.
"Alcoholics are different in so many ways, it makes no difference." According to Dr. Dan Anderson, they model the general population. However, when the illness takes over, there is stereotyped, repetitive, and negative behavior—easily identified. Because of denial, the alcoholic can exhibit all of the progressive symptoms and still feel he is in control. Middle-stage alcoholism may include some or all of the following behaviors: drinking before a party, preoccupation with alcohol, hiding liquor, lying about drinking, guilt feelings, blackouts, loss of ambition, trying to quit drinking, failing to quit, financial, family, and job problems, drinking alone. To admit alcoholism, according to Dan Anderson, is to admit to being human.
Daniel J. Anderson, Ph.D., is the president and director of the Hazelden Foundation in Center City, Minnesota, which is recognized as one of the most successful alcoholism treatment centers in the United States.
Alcoholism is a chronic disease, and in the developed countries of the Western world we don't handle any chronic disease very well.
With an acute illness, you're impaired for a little while, but it's a temporary disability. You don't mind. With a chronic illness, you have a permanent impairment. That's one of the definitions of alcoholism. It's an involuntary chronic disability. It ain't gonna go away.
What do people characteristically do when they have a chronic illness? They don't want to believe it. No, not me. There is denial, rationalization, minimization, the search for another opinion. People say, "I'm really pseudoneurotic schizophrenic, not alcoholic." If you get a cold, you know you got it because you didn't dress right, you haven't been exercising, or you haven't been eating right. With a cold, an outside agent invaded your body and gave you that bloody cold. You ain't responsible. But what's the real cause of alcoholism? It's multiply determined: it's physical, its psychological, it's social, and it's spiritual. How responsible am I? Are my parents? Is my genealogy? It's hard to find something to blame it on. Explanations aren't easy.
We live in a prideful culture and cover up our human nature. We make believe we can handle anything. We eat too much. We drink too much. We use too many mood-altering substances. We work too hard. We work under too much stress. We smoke too much. We don't get enough exercise. We act as if we're invulnerable. Science is always going to fix it up. But nobody gets out of this world alive.
Let me give you an example. A diabetic is a person with a chronic condition. What's one of the things a diabetic wants to do? Beat the diet. "The hell with that. I can make it." Then he'll literally overdose on sugar and go into a diabetic coma. "What are you doing?" the doctor says. "You're a diabetic. Don't you know better?" "Oh, yes, Doctor. I promise I'll never do it again. I'll go back on my diet."
What is the first thing people with cancer do? They ignore the symptoms. "How long have you had that lump in your breast?" "Oh, about five thousand years." "Why didn't you come in sooner?" "I thought maybe it was a gland." That's stupid. Do you know what percentage of women actually perform breast self-examination? Less than 20 percent. We all deny chronic illness. None of us wants to face up to it.
Denial. Ambivalence. Resentment. Self-pity. Our culture doesn't handle any chronic deficiency well. With alcoholism you've got all these terrible feelings. I'm a no-good. I'm a worm. What the hell, I might as well have a drink. She's going to leave me anyway. So they fire me; I gave them my best years.
An alcoholic is a person who drinks excessively and/or inappropriately and experiences harmful consequences, but despite those harmful consequences is unable or unwilling to change. It becomes a chronic condition. At the same time, he seems to build up the illusion of personal freedom. "I can change. I will change. I know I've had three drunk-driving accidents but, by God, that won't happen again. I'm not going to quit drinking entirely. I'm going to have a couple of beers. I'll be able to drive. Don't worry." He tries but he still can't do it. Over and over again, alcoholics lose control either of the quantity they drink or the time they spend drinking, and yet they have the illusion of freedom. "I know what happened, but remember, my wife is going through menopause. If you had that kind of wife, you might drink that much yourself." There's rationalization, justification, and the illusion of freedom. The essence of the problem is the loss of control, yet alcoholics spend more time controlling their drinking than anybody. Normal social drinkers really don't control their drinking, but they occasionally do something that I call sloppy social drinking. They have one or two or three and maybe another one, and you look at them and say, "That dumb shit." But they don't make a big thing out of it. Alcoholics think, "Now, here we go. I've got to control this thing. I'm going to go to that party and I'm going to have one drink. I'm going to walk around and talk to everybody." The alcoholic does just exactly that and is so damn proud of himself that after the party is over he goes home with a jug all by himself and really gets drunk. That ain't social drinking. That's something else. In a fit of grandiosity he says, "I did it." He rewards himself by slopping over.
The greatest tragedy of it is the loss of control, in the psychological sense. The illness is in control. I want to manage my thinking and my feelings and my behavior but at any time the illness can take over. I get so damned mad. Why do I have to be restricted and controlled? I'm a limited human being. What did I do to deserve this? It is the unpredictability that is difficult, the fact that at any time the chronic disease can rear up and take over. One of the tragic characteristics of alcoholism is that the irrational urge to get drunk can come along at any time. I don't care how sober, how long you have been sober, it can come. That irrational urge. You can just have given one of your best talks on staying sober. People shake your hand. Suddenly you've got this terrible feeling you'd love to have a drink. It doesn't mean you have to act on the impulse, but the impulse is irrational. It can come anytime—that's the way chronic illnesses are.
Alcoholism, like many other illnesses, comes and goes. "My arthritis is terribly bad this week, yet I have no symptoms the next week. Maybe it's gone. I don't have to keep taking my meds anymore." In some people, it clears up spontaneously. "I haven't had a drink now for nine months and eight days and thirty-seven hours and two minutes. Maybe all the cells in my body have changed. Maybe I'm not an alcoholic any longer. I had better find out." In chronic illness, the symptoms can go away completely, but you still have the illness.
Once you've got active alcoholism, you're operating with one hand tied behind your back. You're limited in terms of freedom to function. At times you may do an outstanding job; another time you'll fall on your face. As the illness continues to progress and take over, you lose more and more freedom, even though you try to pretend to still have as much. "Sure she left me. I don't care. Don't want to be married to her anyway. Well, sure they picked me up for drunken driving..." You hear these rationalizations. The grandiosity is terrible.
After alcoholism sets in, the common denominators are grandiosity, inadequacy, exaggerated dependency, exaggerated independence, and absence of humility.
There is something about all chronic illness that creates selfishness. You have a real bad cold. It's hard to think about other people's needs. When you're an alcoholic and you have to think ahead about your next drink or how you're going to explain this or that to all of the people interfering with your life, it's very difficult to look kindly upon the mass of inept, unthinking humanity out there because of your selfishness.
Resentment and self-pity just keep on developing as part of the illness. It's not the cause of the illness, but it goes along with it. We don't know what causes it. Once you're in it and that stuff is working, it really becomes a psycho-bio-social kind of retardation. You really get pounded down in terms of functioning and terrible feelings of inadequacy are created. You do feel inadequate and a drink helps you to do something. Alcoholism becomes autonomous. It not only fixes up dancing, it fixes up everything.
To me, the essence of the illness concept is an involuntary disablement. The essential feature is loss of control. It shows up by excessive, inappropriate drinking and experiencing harmful consequences. The behavior becomes more and more stereotyped and more and more repetitive. All of this is an indication that the person is not in control. So by admitting alcoholism, we're admitting we're human.
This chronic illness, this terrible devastating thing, can also be a pathway to wholeness and health. You don't get your teeth fixed until you sober up. You don't start really developing a health maintenance program until you sober up. You know you need to adjust your life to remain sober, so you want to improve your marriage. You want to improve the quality of different things in your life. The general population isn't doing that.
Someone asked Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes how to live to a ripe old age and he said, "Get a chronic illness and take very good care of it." Paul Dudley White, President Eisenhower's cardiologist, who rode a bicycle when he was ninety-nine years old or something, used to say, "Give me a room full of cardiacs; they'll live longer." I don't believe that entirely, but I'm told he had an old Greek saying hung in his office or his home—remember, it goes back over two thousand years. It said, "The cracked vase lasts longest." That makes sense. I've got an idea that people with chronic illnesses may someday show the rest of us how to live appropriately.
***
Alcoholism is a progressive disease. Wilbur Mills says he never had any problem with it for many years, drank when he wanted to, and didn't drink if he didn't want to. But, he recalls, he always drank it down and never sipped it, right from the first drink he had from a still back home. "The first drink I took, I took straight down," he says. "I did it under orders. A man stood with a rifle in his hand and told me to sample his homemade stuff." At the end of his drinking career Wilbur was taking 500 mg of Librium a day and drinking two quarts of 100-proof vodka at night when he got home. "The doctors say you can't live and do that, but I did. I was in a total blackout during all of 1974."
Wilbur Mills is an alcoholic. He is a former nineteen-term U.S. congressman from Arkansas who was chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee from 1958 to 1975. He is now an attorney associated with the law firm of Shea and Gould in Washington, D.C.
The progression of my drinking is quite interesting, I think. Way back, I didn't drink anything but bourbon, and I always wanted sparkling water with it. Later on, a friend of mine down home decided I would be more sophisticated if I drank scotch. He sent me a case of twenty-five-year-old Haig & Haig. He told me to quit drinking bourbon and drink scotch. I still wanted sparkling water in it, though. Whatever I drank, I had to have some kind of water or something in it.
Then I decided that the darn sparkling water was doing something to my mind, so I quit using that, and for years I used tap water. Then I suddenly became aware of the fact that the tap water was taking space in my glass that could otherwise be used for alcohol, so I quit using the water. But I always wanted the alcohol cold, so I could never keep a bottle in my desk or in the car. It had to be cold, so I always had to have ice cubes in it. Toward the end of my drinking, it occurred to me one night, what would happen to me if I swallowed one of those ice cubes? Might strangle. So I quit using ice cubes. I put my bottles in the icebox to keep them cold and not run the risk of swallowing ice cubes. The way I drank, I could easily have swallowed them. My mouth was wide open. I used a peanut butter glass, and it didn't take me many swallows to take it down.
Lieutenant Commander Michael Bohan at the Bethesda Naval Hospital was the one who had the unmitigated gall to tell me I was an alcoholic. The first thing that flashed in my mind was, I don't know how the hell a man like that could ever have been admitted to medical school. How could he ever have graduated? Why would the navy ever commission him as a doctor? One thing certain, he would never get to be a captain in the navy. I would see to that myself. I knew he was no good, because across the way there was an admiral who, Dr. Bohan had said, was an alcoholic, too. The admiral didn't drink anything but beer, so in his opinion he couldn't be an alcoholic. He was mad as a wet hen at the doctor. Well, that just helped me feel more correct about my own diagnosis of Dr. Bohan.
I had been told, when I was in the hospital a short time before, that there was one way I could tell whether I was an alcoholic or not. If I could take a drink and didn't have to have another one, in all probability I wasn't an alcoholic. But if I took one drink and had to have another, then in all probability I was an alcoholic. Well, I knew I could pass that test. I wanted to pass it and show that incompetent doctor and another person who'd suggested I was an alcoholic that I could. I had to prove to those two and some others that I wasn't an alcoholic, so I subjected myself to this test that I knew I could pass.
Never in my life had I ever had to have a drink. I just took a drink because I wanted to. I loved the taste of it, and I still can't think of anything that tastes as good as Jack Daniel's or Old Fitzgerald. But I failed the test. I got drunk again. I drank two quarts of hundred-proof vodka that night, and more. They found me in New York and drove me back. I came to in the hospital and there were people at the foot of the bed, grinning, and here I was dying. I have often said that if you're around a fellow coming out from under a drunk, for God's sake don't have a smile on your face when he opens his eyes. Bohan and that other person, both now my good friends, wanted to know what I thought I was. I said, "Well, if it will do you any good, I'll say I'm an alcoholic." "It's not what does us good, it's what does you good. Now, what are you?" I admitted it then and began the process of accepting the fact that I was an alcoholic. At that time, my concept of an alcoholic was such that I felt lowered in my own estimation. I was the lowest thing that God let live. I was lower than a snake that crawled on its belly, because I was an alcoholic. I didn't want to live the rest of my life and have to say I was an alcoholic. But I didn't want to kill myself. I wanted to be sober. I just had that desire.
I think one has got to want to be sober in order to ever get sober. You have to want it in your gut. You really have to have an intense feeling of wanting to be sober. And when you want that, you can get sober, with help.
Since I've been sober I've found out I'm a human being. It's a great feeling just to be a human being, not having to be God. You don't have all that burden on you. In that respect, it's been a great deal different and a great deal better. I jokingly say that sometimes I just make a mistake on purpose to show that I don't have to be right all the time. I do make a lot of mistakes. I made them before, but I wouldn't admit it. I thought I had to be right all the time. If I made a mistake, I thought, the country would suffer or the world would suffer. That is an awful position to put yourself in, having to be right all the time.
My whole life has changed. I used to be very much interested in sports. I'm not anymore. I used to have season tickets to the baseball games and football games. I don't anymore. I just don't seem to care about things like that anymore. I read a lot. I never did do that much before. I never had time for anything except tax and Social Security law. Now I enjoy being with my wife. There were years when we never said anything to each other; now we go out to dinner and we socialize. It's hard to describe the difference, but it's the difference between heaven and hell.
***
"I was a bad drunk," says Gary Crosby. "I couldn't commit suicide, otherwise I wouldn't get into heaven; so I fought with some bad people. I wanted somebody to kill me."
Gary grew up with an unpredictable alcoholic mother and a strict disciplinarian for a father. With the exception of athletics, he had little self-confidence. Faced with the disappointment of no longer being able to play sports because of an injury, he drank to handle his resentments. Many alcoholics are angry. Years after he quit drinking, Gary finally dealt with his anger.
Gary Crosby is an alcoholic. The eldest of the four sons of the late Bing and Dixie Lee Crosby, he works in the entertainment business as an actor, singer, and writer.
Mom was an alcoholic. She was a very sensitive, gentle soul who was in show business for a while, but it terrified the hell out of her. She only wanted to get married, to get out of it. She was really happy being a wife. She needed an overabundance of overt affection. She needed coaxing to do anything. She wanted Dad to come home at night and say, "Party tonight, honey, you want to go?" And she would say, "I can't go." And he would say, "Oh, please, come on, you have to go." And she would say, "Well, my hair is not right." And he would say, "We'll fix the hair. We'll buy you a dress. We'll get good makeup." He was supposed to fight his way through all these objections until she finally went and had a good time.
But he would come home and say, "Great party tonight. Want to go?" She'd say, "No." He'd say, "I'll see you later," and go. He figured he had fulfilled his duty. He couldn't give. He couldn't show a normal amount of affection, and she needed a superabundance of affection. That was the chasm that divided the two of them. He would go to the party, and she would sit home and feel lonely and hurt because he didn't coax her. She'd get angry at herself because she needed that much coaxing and feel stupid because she didn't go in the first place. And she would drink. She'd drink six, eight, ten weeks at a time, and then the doctor would come over and she would try to stay sober for a couple of weeks. Then she would get back on it again. When she was sober, she would shake and twitch and have a real tough time.
She was real shy, a real homebody, but she was a wonderful woman. During the Second World War, she saved more soldiers than the USO. She gave unstintingly of her time and efforts. She loved everybody.
Later on she always managed to keep her finger on things. I don't know how she did it. She always knew what was going on in town, the latest sayings, the hits, slick and cool. She knew about everybody's love life, too, and she never left her bedroom.
Mom was unpredictable. When you came into the house you always had to go into her bedroom to kiss her hello. You had to make up your mind if she was drinking. If she was, how drunk was she? When you crossed the room, when you leaned down to kiss her, were you going to get slapped or were you going to get kissed? You'd be trying to make up your mind all the way up the stairs. It was a contest every day. I loved my mother one day and hated her the next. When I was a kid, I didn't know she couldn't control it. I thought, Why the hell does she have to be this way? There are days when she doesn't drink. Why can't she be like that all the time? I thought she just wanted to do that. It would make me mad because she could be really vicious when she was drinking.
I remember Dad making rules and handing out punishments if the rules weren't kept. There were so many rules I couldn't keep them all. I didn't have a chance. There wasn't any way I was going to keep them all, not for a week. I never felt I could please this man. I felt I was a disappointment to him. I never did turn out the way he wanted, and I didn't seem to be doing the things he wanted me to do. I went to military schools. Kids gave demerits to other kids. If you got demerits you had to go on Saturday. When Dad got the notice I had to go Saturday, I got a licking Friday night.
I built up a self-picture in the early years of a person with no ability in anything except sports. I knew I was good at that. I really built all my hopes on a career in sports. To make a long story short, my high school lied to me when I asked if I could have another year of eligibility when I transferred from the military school. They said yes, I could. They waited until my senior year and then took my eligibility away, which was like chopping your head off if you were any kind of a high school football player. That is the year to build your rep.
I really started to drink when I lost my senior-year eligibility. I felt, What's the use? I just went out and got bombed every chance I could. It felt good. I didn't hate myself so much. I didn't come down on myself so hard. I could stand life when I was ripped.
I got to Stanford, which means I've got a pretty good head on my shoulders. All I did there was drink when I couldn't play ball anymore. It was a physical thing. It happened to other guys, too. Every day at three o'clock, when practice time came around and we couldn't play, the walking wounded, the guys with the bad knees and shoulders, wound up at a beer garden with eighteen pitchers of beer. We'd tell lies about how great we were and swap stories when we should have been out there practicing. Instead we'd be getting ripped. Then we'd go back and try to study, or go to a movie, or go drink some more. There was a hole in our lives, and that was how we filled it up.
I finally quit college. I got into show business with my dad. I did a lot of his radio shows. I sang and acted and did some movies with him. I liked show business. It was fun and I liked singing. I liked acting. I loved comics and musicians. I loved the lifestyle. I said, "O.K., I want to do that," but I always felt as if I was on Mars. People constantly talked to me as though I was supposed to know all this wonderful stuff. Dad had never told me anything. He wanted me to be a lawyer, doctor, or some damned thing. That just wasn't me. I couldn't be that. When I came into show business, he said, "Just show up and don't run into the furniture." That's all I got from him. But people constantly looked at me as if I was a thirty-year vet. They'd say things to me and I'd run home and try to figure out what the hell they meant. I would call people and ask them. Or else I'd go back in there, not knowing. Then I'd just walk out and do it. Most of the time, I was right. That scared me, because of the low self-esteem that had been built into me during my early years. Dad was always calling me Sap or Dumb or referring to my terrible temper.
When I had seven or eight drinks I thought a lot more of myself than I usually did. Then it started to take more. It took eight or ten. It took ten or twelve. I started blacking out. One night I'd have six drinks; the next night I wouldn't have any. The next night I would have two; the next night twelve. Sometimes during that period I would have a three-day-and-three-night blackout, when I'd just be gone. I'd wind up in some other town, in bed with somebody I had never seen before, in a room I had never been in before. I would have to go over to the desk, pull out the Gideon Bible, see the name of the hotel and the town stamped on it. I couldn't just call downstairs and ask, "Where am I?" Other times, I'd be walking down the street somewhere in LA with my nose busted open, my face all fucked up, looking for a can to puke in. I became a total lush. I was also taking speed. I got into that because I couldn't stand listening to my old man screaming at me anymore about my weight. I started going to weight doctors at a very early age. I have done everything to control weight that you can possibly think of. I just had this picture of myself that life wasn't worth a shit and I wasn't going anywhere. Whatever career I had going, I was sure I wasn't going to have it very long. People were going to get wise to me pretty quick, I thought, and I'd be out of the business. I acted like a guy who had no future.
Then I got into the army. We were great together. Once you get past basic training you can stay loaded as long as you want. There is that percentage of guys in every outfit. Whenever there's inspection the officers know these guys can't do anything, so they send them to the movies or on leave. I was one of them. I got the shirt that was too small and pants that were too long and the hat that didn't fit and two left boots. I just put them on and wore them. I created havoc wherever I went, without doing anything. They couldn't stick me in the jug. I wasn't doing any bad time. They couldn't put me in the crowbar hotel. I was a fucking drunk. I did no more than the exact order said to do. If you do that in the army, you'll drive them crazy. I had them crazy. But I was scared of them, too. They had me crazy. We were both crazy.
There was a wonderful WAC sergeant who saved me. Otherwise, I'd never have gotten through there. They finally put me in Special Services and we would go around to places and sing, places where they hated you. So we'd just get bombed. I don't remember half of those shows. They led me around by the nose for 730 days. I didn't know where I was.
They would have inspections. That means that the post would close down. You couldn't get any booze. I never knew when inspections were coming because I was always so drunk I never heard anybody talk about them. Boom, here comes the day. I was the guy they always sent away. They always hid me out someplace. I didn't have to stand these inspections because they knew I never could pass them anyway. Sometimes I would go into a seizure. I would be talking to somebody and the next thing I knew, somebody would be leaning over me. They would take me to the hospital and give me an EKG, or blow dye up in my brain and photograph it. They decided I was an epileptic. So they put me in the hospital, in the neuropsychiatric ward. I was in there with the crazies, where they take the belt away and you wear paper slippers. You lie there at night and listen to the crazies scream and cry and carry on. I figured I had epilepsy. They started me on Dilantin. I was taking that and still, every time there would be an inspection or I couldn't get booze for twenty-four hours, I'd go off my head. Finally I came out of the army.
I had lost my driver's license. I was out about six months when I went to the doctor, and he said, "You haven't got epilepsy; you're an alcoholic. Every time you can't get enough booze in your system, you short out. That's what's happening to you." So I went and got my license back by telling them I was an alcoholic. They said, "Well, that's O.K. Here's your license; don't worry about it."
Later on, in show business, I was doing a club act. I had been up to Vegas twice, once to see my brothers and once to see Don Rickles. Both times, at the end of the show, I went to stand up from the chair and couldn't move from the waist down. So I would just kind of hang on to the table and the paralysis would pass and I would go on about my business. I didn't do anything about it. Finally, I was preparing my own act for Vegas. I rehearsed one day and then came home and lay down on the couch. I was watching television and tried to reach for the phone, and I couldn't move from my neck down. They got me to the hospital and the doctor asked if I was taking any digitalis. I said no. He said, "What are you taking?" I told him about the succession of weight pills and the drinking. He got the weight pills and looked at them and found they were loaded with digitalis, which had caused a partial heart block. He said, "You have to lie down for six months." I said, "I can't lie down for six months; I've got to go to Vegas. You don't tell those guys you want to lie down because you're sick." He said, "O.K., here's what I'll do. I'll give you a shot of Bl2. You get a prescription for a shot of B12 and a shot of Dexedrine for every show, but in between shows there can be no drinking, no using; you've got to go to your room and sit down or you'll die."
So I went out there and, by God, I did it. I didn't drink and I didn't use, and I would go back to my room and sit down between shows. I got real friendly with one girl in the show and we fell in love. This girl fell in love with me at the time I couldn't take a drink. She never knew I had a drinking problem. We got married and it wasn't until twenty-three months later that I could drink again. Then the shit hit the fan. I was off and running. I was gone again: three days and three nights here, three days and three nights there. I was drinking in between, too, scaring my wife and child to death with the D.T.'s, screaming crazy things like, "The vampires are coming!" I was picking fights, once with a one-armed man in a bar—I'll never forget that. That's one thing that sticks in my craw to this day. Finally, my wife took our kid and moved out, and two weeks later I got a letter from a lawyer. I went to see her with my lawyer and she said, "You go away, dry out, and never take another drink or I'm leaving." I didn't want to lose her, so I went away. I went to this place and dried out.
For the next nineteen years, I didn't have anything to drink. I didn't use speed, got real straight at the church, and was always straight with my wife. I never cheated on her. I was playing the good father. But everything I wanted, really reached for, I never got, and the little jobs that I did get, I never wanted. I was ungrateful as hell because I couldn't gel the ones I wanted. God was handing me things in my left hand, and I didn't even look because I was busy reaching with my right.
Now you've got a real mad alcoholic. What you've got on your hands is a guy who has quit using, quit drinking, and turned to God, and nothing is working. I couldn't figure out what was wrong. There was nothing but sheer rage. I finally got demented, toward the end. What I figured out was that God was paying me back in the second half of my life for the things I did in the first half. He was making me pay, ironically, by making me reach for the big things that I wanted so badly, and then punching me in the belly, not giving them to me. I finally said, "Well, screw that; I'm not going to reach anymore." I slammed the door and stayed in the house. I'd go out for readings and stuff, but I knew I'd never get the jobs. I'd go half salty, half mean. They would always start out by asking me about my father. You walk in there crusty like that, and they ain't gonna hire you.
So for nineteen years, man, I sat and just raved to God and my fellow man. I didn't like me, I didn't like them, I didn't like anything. Finally, my wife couldn't take it anymore. She was a very positive person when I met her, arid she just couldn't handle it. She gave me my walking papers. The only thing that I was successful at in my life was being a family man, being a husband and a father, and here I was, busted. Now I'm sitting with nothing and I still don't get the message. I finally wound up with a triple bypass. Because I had fallen in love with another girl, because I loved her, I listened to the doctor when he said, "You need an operation." He said, "Do you want to live?" And I said yes, because I loved this girl. I wanted to marry her. I went and had the operation. The night before the operation, the doctor said to me, "You have no triglyceride problem, no cholesterol problem; you are here for two reasons—smoking and anger. If you can stop smoking and change your attitude, maybe you can live another thirty years. Will you buy that?" I was ready to buy that to live tomorrow. I said, "Sure, Doc, I'll try," and he did the operation on me.
I quit smoking because of that and came back down to LA and started going to a shrink, a lady gestalt therapist who had worked with alcoholics for thirty-five years at the Long Beach Naval Hospital. I had been going to her before I moved away to Vegas. I told her about the bypass and the anger. "Well, it's true," she said. "You've been angry all your life. You've got to go to AA." I said, "Come on, who are you kidding? I haven't been a drinker now for nineteen years. What are they going to teach me down there?" "I can't tell you," she said. "You've got to go find out. Either you go, or you don't come back here."
Now, I had been sending people to A A for the whole nineteen years I had been clean and dry and talking about being a former drunk. I'd talk to youth groups and older people, who'd ask, "How do you stay sober?" I'd say, "Don't do it my way; go to AA." Finally I had to phone them. I said, "What's going on down there?" "We can't tell you," they said, "You've got to come and find out." I said, "You've been talking to my shrink." I went down there and I wasn't in the room thirty seconds before I knew that was where I should have been the whole time.
Nineteen years I had been out there trying to do it on my own. Mr. Willpower. I can lick this by myself. I'm wonderful. I can handle this whole thing. All of a sudden, for the first time in my life, I felt I was with a bunch of people who knew exactly what was going on with me and I knew what was going on with them. It was the funniest feeling. When I walked through the door, for the first time in my life I didn't put up defenses. I didn't feel the need to put up a wall and be that funny character that I usually put out there when I first met strangers. I didn't feel I needed any defenses. I felt accepted for just what I was, a drunk.
I sat down and started listening and sharing and I wasn't there a week before I found out what I had been doing wrong for nineteen years. I had been praying and going to church and confession and Communion and begging God for what I wanted. It took three or four days at AA to realize it's what He wants, not what you want. You pray for what He wants. And it made sense. Made perfect sense. When I first went away and dried out, I bought that part about "I have no control over alcohol," but I decided to manage my life. I thought, As soon as I get sober I'll have everything. When I got to AA, I found out I could say, "My life's unmanageable." I looked back and it always had been. It had been unmanageable when I was drinking, and using, and it was unmanageable when I was clean and dry. I felt like a big rock had been lifted off me. There's a power that will restore you to sanity if you will let Him. And I said, "I'll let Him." I can turn my will and my life over to Him. Every time there is something I can't handle, I can turn to God and say, "Here, take this." I did it and it worked. The first couple of times I did it, and it worked, I said, "Oh, this is what life's about." And I just went on from there.
No one single outside pressure has changed. The career hasn't gotten any better. There's no more money coming in than there was before. As far as the things that used to drive me crazy, they're all still there. I've just done a turnaround inside my skin; I've learned to accept things. Little things very seldom drive me up the wall anymore, like they used to. I don't get mad twenty-five times a day anymore. I've got a purpose in life. Before, whenever I didn't get a job I wanted, I acted just like what they thought I was, a rich man's kid with no talent, no ability, no desire to work, just wanting to be a bum. That drove me nuts. If there was anything I wasn't, that was it. It used to drive me nuts when I didn't have a job. Now, if I don't have a job, I know it's because the Man upstairs has something else for me to do this day, so I lean back and try to find out what it is. If the phone rings, it will take me someplace and I'll run into somebody. Or I'll go to a meeting and somebody will be there and I'll say something that will help him for that day. That's what my life is now. I just live it from day to day. I don't worry about what I can't handle. I don't worry about tomorrow. I don't live anymore in the wreckage of my past or the disaster that can be my future. I just live today because that's all I've got. I know I sound like a walking cliché, but that's how clichés become clichés. They're true. I just live it the way the program tells me to and I do fine. I'm happier now than I have ever been in my life.
***
It is not necessary for an alcoholic to drink every day. Shecky Greene was a periodic drinker, but like so many alcoholics, he could not predict the number of drinks he would have or his behavior after drinking. Shecky experienced many of the classic signs of alcoholism: frequent blackouts, loss of ambition, car accidents, guilt feelings, unhappy home life, and loss of reputation. The solution for the alcoholic is to stay away from the first drink, but that goes against what being an alcoholic is. For as much trouble as Shecky got himself into, it took hospitalization for an unrelated illness to convince him he didn't want to end up the way he was headed.
Shecky Greene is an alcoholic. He is the favorite comedian of many of the biggest stars in show business. He has appeared at most of the major hotels in Las Vegas and in nightclubs throughout the country and costarred in the television series "Combat."
Good times? I never had any good times drinking. I wasn't that type of drinker. I would only drink to destroy myself. It was much easier to drink than to commit suicide with a gun or a knife or pills.
I had a tremendous amount of success in show business, but I was lying to myself about being satisfied with what I was doing. Although I was making a lot of money, I should have been doing more. I didn't really have the confidence to go on to movies, television, and things like that. So I hid out in the success I had in Las Vegas. I was working twenty weeks a year. I could live the way I wanted to live and do the things I wanted to do. But eventually it would have caught up with me if I hadn't stopped drinking.
Driving back to Lake Tahoe from San Francisco once, I went off the side of a mountain. That could have been the end. Another time, in Las Vegas, I was driving down the strip about ninety miles an hour and I hit a brand new lamp. Thank God, they had changed lamps the week before—they called the new ones breakaway lamps—otherwise it could have been over. Maybe in that state of mind I would have been happier that it would have been over.
I went to college to become a coach, but never finished. If I had continued in that direction, I don't think I would ever have tasted alcohol, but I may have destroyed myself in another way because I didn't like myself.
I never drank until I was twenty-eight years old. I was not that type. As a matter of fact, I was just the opposite; I looked down on people who drank. I was an athlete. I think my alcoholism has a lot to do with my childhood, but if you looked at it you would say it was a happy childhood. I grew up during the depression and my mother went to work. Maybe it was her not being in the house, her lack of involvement with us kids, despite the fact that she loved us. Maybe it wasn't that. Maybe it was something else. Maybe it was a genetic situation. Maybe I was bora with it.
My father bets horses. Race book every day of his life. I went the same route and I hated it. I hated to watch him do that. I hated what it did to my mother. I hated what it did to us. But I went the same route. My mother was always worried about money. I think that's probably why I began gambling. Money was a terrible issue. We had terrible arguments in the family about it.
I can go back and blame my alcoholism on my mother's going to work, but that's a cop-out. My mother had her own problems. She didn't use alcohol much, but my grandfather was an alcoholic. And when my mother did have a drink (and anyone who knows my mother would never think that she drank) she would be out of it—silly.
I had a cousin, Henry Salinger, who discovered Amos and Andy. He was the sweetest, nicest man whom God put on this earth. Once my mother was talking to him about my drinking problem, and he said in a very gentle voice, "I'm an alcoholic. All these years you people didn't know." So what constitutes alcoholism? Is it chemistry? Heredity? I guess it's a combination of many things.
My drinking was condoned when I was working in Las Vegas because I was doing such a tremendous business. If I had owned the Riviera Hotel at that: time and an entertainer did some of the things that I did there, I would have thrown him out and said, "That's it." Pardon my using the word whore, but that's the whore aspect of our society. If somebody—no matter if he's an alcoholic or what—if somebody's good for making money, we turn our backs on his problem. I went and talked to people. I tried to explain to the bosses at the Riviera that I was an alcoholic, that I needed help, and they all laughed. I had one boss I am still very close to who is a successful businessman, but he's the type of guy who buries his head. If he's got a friend, he doesn't want that friend to have any weaknesses. He can't accept it.
I would intentionally do outrageous things at the hotel. I really wanted to be fired and nobody would do it. I wanted the easy way out. I was hoping somebody would say, "You're out of show business. That's it."
I went to a psychiatrist and discussed my problem, but I still went out and drank. That was the lie I was living. I was still self-destructive.
Basically, I was an animal. Steve Lawrence once told me that if he walked into a room and heard I was there, he would hide behind a post to see what condition I was in. I never drank every day. I was a periodic drinker. People don't understand that there are many forms of alcoholism. There are hundreds. I was a periodic drunk. I would drink maybe every three months, maybe once every six months. Maybe once a year. But when I drank, forget it. I mean, if I started off with scotch, I would stay with scotch. If I started with beer, I'd stay with beer. If I started with wine, I would stay with wine. But I wouldn't stop until I was either arrested or something terrible happened. It's frightening to remember. I look back and have nightmares about some of the things I did, because that's not really me and it never was. There is a Jewish word, dybbuk. My mother said. "There's a dybbuk inside of you." It's like in The Exorcist. Something was inside of me and I couldn't control it. I always hated drinking. I knew that one drink would set it off, but I would drink.
I didn't drink that much on the stage, but when I did, it was over.
A successful period, a down period, anything could trigger it. I think I did a lot of things out of fear and lack of confidence. I was like a little kid, punishing myself and the people around me.
Working these places, I gambled and lost; then I drank. And when I drank, I would gamble. So one led to the other. I can't tell you which came first, the chicken or the egg, but I did both. I would punish myself. A lot of times, I would finish work and drink, then that monster inside me would take over, and all of a sudden I would go and gamble. I had no control. The next morning, I hated myself for drinking. Forget the next morning; it went on for a week, and then I hated myself for a month and I just said, "Let me get out of this before I kill somebody." I thought about suicide many, many times.
After these binges, there was bad depression. I couldn't face anybody later on because I didn't know what I'd done. I was having a tremendous number of blackouts—just about every time I drank. I drank until I had a blackout. Lots of times near the end I would see somebody after a drinking session and I'd say, "Hi, Charlie, how are you?" And he'd say, "You got the guts to talk to me, after what you did, you dirty rat? You used to be a nice guy." Then I would get into saying, "What did I do?" I would come back into the hotel and somebody else would say, "Boy, did you tie one on last night. You know what you did? You tore the telephone out of the wall." I had a thing about telephones. I went around tearing telephones out of walls. I did a lot of things in my life that were self-destructive, like two marriages. Both women, who I thought were exactly the opposite, were very much alike and very foreign to my life and culture. I think that, from the time I was a child, I was searching for something. I was very family-oriented and I think I was searching for the right type of family.
I attended only one AA meeting, and for me that was not the answer, but I know many, many people who have been helped by AA.
I would not be sitting here if I hadn't gotten ill. Out of bad sometimes comes good. I had a parathyroid operation, which damaged the laryngeal nerve. It paralyzed the vocal cord and I lost my voice. They put me on a pill and with the pill you couldn't drink, so it was a forced cleaning-up. I think if it wasn't for those circumstances, I would have gone on the way I was going until I was dead—and I would have been dead. I look back at it now and it's a frightening thing. I had to get ill to awaken to the fact that I didn't want to die that way.
I look back now and I think, If that Strip was crowded, like it's crowded today in Las Vegas, and I was driving on it at ninety miles to a hundred miles an hour like I did, I could kill a hundred people.
Let me tell you, the joy of my life right now is that I can wake up every morning and remember what happened yesterday. Whether it was the best day in the world or not, at least I can remember it. I can face myself in the mirror and go out and face the world. I can look at people and not be afraid. I don't have to say, "Did I see you last night? Did I offend you in any way?" I have a great respect for myself now. And it's getting better, even to the point where my career is getting back to where it was. I'm working and I'm enjoying the freedom I've got. The creativity is there again. For a long time it was lost. I was just frightened. Alcohol made that happen. I used to question myself. I don't question myself anymore. I was never meant to be an alcoholic. I turned out to be one. There are a lot of people, I'm sure, in the same situation that I am.
I can't go back and say alcohol screwed up my life. I screwed up my life. I'm the one who took that drink. I'm the one who did that. How can I blame it on a bottle? A bottle is an inanimate object. It stays there on the table. But I reached for that thing.
I don't want to kill myself anymore. I want to work and make enough money. I want to enjoy me. I want to enjoy the people around me, and I want the people around me to enjoy me. I think that's the thing—to find out who you are, what you are, and what you want to be.
I don't worry about other people as much now. I'm concerned about myself, and by straightening myself out, I've made the people around me happier.
This is a wonderful world. There are things to see and places to go and people are really wonderful. They really are. I have more of a sense of peace. Peace. That's getting better. I just want to go day by day. Don't project this. Don't look back. The worst thing that happens to alcoholics and compulsive people is that they look back. We cannot correct the past. The only thing we can do is develop our future, and that is the reason we have to live day by day. In living day by day and seeking happiness, you can give others happiness.