Many drinking alcoholics have not experienced any kind of pain. Unless they stop drinking, they will. Unless they stop drinking, they will hit bottom.
The crisis or bottom may be real or appear to be real. It can actually happen or appear to be close at hand. The alcoholic may lose his job, or he can be threatened with its loss. He can lose his wife and family through divorce, or he may be faced with that threat. He may have a car accident and kill someone, or he may be stopped and ticketed by the police for drunk driving.
The crisis may also be manufactured. The alcoholic can be confronted with his behavior by family, friends, and coworkers in an intervention. This intervention should be handled by an alcoholism expert. The goal is to force the alcoholic to seek treatment.
The crises may be totally emotional and mental, but the pain is real. Every drinking alcoholic must quit drinking, or hit bottom first and then quit drinking.
He tries to control his drinking to no avail. He tries to stop and cannot. He is at the lowest point of a totally unhappy life. He is faced with four choices: insanity, death, jail, or quitting alcohol.
The alcoholic has hit bottom. It is at this point he cries out to himself and perhaps to others: "I need help. I must stop or I will kill myself or die." He is a beaten man. Reaching out for help and admitting total defeat is a humbling experience that goes against the very nature of the alcoholic.
Graham Chapman knew all about quitting. He had "quit" drinking before. Alcoholics quit drinking all the time, only to start again. Trained and licensed as a doctor himself, Graham knew the medical symptoms of alcoholism. Although it is not recommended or necessary today, Graham made the decision to quit "cold turkey" to make an impression on himself. Even once the decision had been made, it took him two years to finally act.
Ten to fifteen percent of alcoholics quit drinking on their own. Graham's description of the mental and physical aspects of withdrawal demonstrate the powerful impact of liquor on the alcoholic.
Graham Chapman is an alcoholic. In addition to his own projects, he is a writer!performer in the British comedy troupe "Monty Python's Flying Circus" on television and in films.
Drinking didn't become a heavy part of the routine until the second series of "Python." At the same time, I was working on two other projects, two other television series. One was "Doctor in the House" and the other a situation comedy with Ronnie Corbett called "No, That's Me Over There." We had done a series of each of those programs, and they were all successful. In that one year, with thirteen Python programs to do, I had a lot of other writing to do. I needn't have done it all, but I took it all on. They brought in a lot of money, of course—and gave me a first-rate excuse for drinking.
At that point I began drinking at lunchtime. I would work in the morning and drink quite heavily at lunch. Then I'd go to the bar at the television studios and have quite a lot to drink before the afternoon writing session, which was for a different program from the session I had been involved with in the morning. I would take a couple of drinks with me to see me through the afternoon and be the first one in the bar in the evening. I felt a lot of pressure to be creative, certainly, and the drink helped to extend me, I thought, getting everything to flow out.
I think that was really the key period with me. Before that, it had been more of an extreme social type of drinking, but in control, and it certainly wasn't a necessity. If I went on a climbing holiday, which I used to do a lot, I would be off it completely, no problem. If we were in Scotland and happened to cross a pub in the wilds that had a lot of different brands of malt whiskey, we would try them, but that was quite different. It wasn't necessary. I didn't normally use it during the day or feel I needed it. Perhaps it was because of my training in anesthetics that I managed to keep it at about the right level. I would go overboard in the evening, but during the day I would cut myself off at a reasonable point.
I could get away with it because I was a professional loony. You can hide behind that a little or a lot. I could be quite outrageous and people would shrug it off by saying, "Oh, it's him, he's loony and he's a bit pissed." I must have insulted a lot of people dreadfully and even assaulted quite a few. I went through a period of feeling women's breasts at the bar, using the excuse, "It's all right, I'm a doctor." It did get me punched on one occasion. I didn't realize there was a boyfriend there. He didn't know that I was a loony. He was fresh to the country, an American guy, actually. Punched me straight in the face. Obviously, I did overstep the mark. My success fed this attitude, and I felt I could get away with more. The BBC light-entertainment party that year, for instance, was a rather boring occasion where everyone turned up in moth-eaten dinner jackets and stood around sipping sherry. Very boring. I was quite happily crawling around on the floor most of the time. No one else was doing it, so I thought, why not do it? Make the occasion less socially acceptable for everyone.
I certainly had the reputation of being very close to stepping over that point of reasonable behavior. I was living life very near to the edge. Still, even then, though heavy, my drinking was not really a problem during the day. I kept it at the kind of level at which I could function; I could work. That was not the case in the evening. I became very good at dealing with the problem to an extent during the day, pacing my drinking and holding back just before going over the top.
I never hid the fact that I was drinking. I was always very overt about that. I suppose that's from having been truthful and open at age twenty-five about the homosexual aspect of my life. I never kept a secret bottle somewhere. I would take it with me—openly, if not outrageously so. I didn't drive until I was thirty-seven because I would have been too drunk most of the time. I would sit in the back of the car with a bottle of gin, which I topped off with tonic.
I was always careful to use my knowledge of medicine. I took a lot of yeast tablets and multivitamins, which weren't popular in those days. I was aware of conceivable damage to my liver and my brain, and that was at least some kind of precaution. I was aware that I was drinking too much, certainly, but took as many precautions as I could to remain healthy. I managed to exercise and I ate well, which probably avoided some of the excesses of alcohol addiction in terms of the cells of my body. I was also quite reasonable about monitoring the progression of physical signs.
When the liver is shot to pieces, the pressure in the blood system builds up to the extent that you get varices, like varicose veins, around the base of the esophagus, which can bleed into the stomach, producing a massive hemorrhage that can kill you. Quite often, that is the way a cirrhotic dies, literally throwing out three or four pints of blood by projectile vomiting. I had been schooled in all the signs: the hypothymic flush, the reddening on the fleshy part of the hand just below the little finger, and spider nevi, which are little dilated blood vessels that look like little red spiders. If you press in the middle of these little red blemishes with a pointed object, the redness disappears. It is characteristic of them and differentiates them from regular little red spots that you get with age. These spider nevi appear with liver problems, cirrhosis in particular. They can occur in pregnancy, too, but they fade away very quickly. They also seem to fade with a reduction in intake of alcohol. When I was drinking, I allowed myself three of those and got rather worried about them if I got more. I also enjoyed my work and didn't want it to suffer too much from my drinking, obviously. Keeping an eye on things like that helped me to monitor it to an extent. So I probably drank a lot for a longer period than many people could have or would have. It was amazing, really. I knew exactly what was going on. I knew I was drinking too much. Yet still there was this idea—this is not me, I'm not the alcoholic. I think I was mentally obsessed with it from quite early on, but being physically addicted is a difficult point to define. I didn't really give withdrawal symptoms a chance for a few years. I would make sure that I got some alcohol to drink.
The most startling moment for me was the first day of filming The Holy Grail, which would have been in 1974 or 1975. My addiction and withdrawal symptoms were becoming so noticeable that I had to admit them. We were in the Glencoe region of Scotland, and I was out on a Scottish mountainside at 7:00 A.M. I hadn't taken any precautions, having arrived by train the night before. I hadn't a hip flask; I hadn't access to any alcohol that I knew of. We were filming some considerable way from the hotel. We were halfway up the mountainside, a long way from the road, and none of the crew had any alcohol. At that time in my life, I would usually have a coffee with a stiff brandy in it in the morning—that kind of "not drinking." I began to get D.T.'s for the first time. I got very cold and we were in a very cold place. It was wet and rainy, and I got a terrible tremor that I could control only with great effort. It was definitely that, and I had nausea, too. I really felt dreadful.
Sitting there, shaking, on the mountainside, I had to admit that drinking was beginning to affect my work. I was not being fair to the other people in the group. At the same time, it was not fair to me. It's not fair to me? I thought. That is a bit silly. That thought literally went through my head. Stupid. Then I thought, It isn't fair to me because I have to perform in a few moments and I'm not well. I won't be able to give my best. This is stupid. I'm supposed to be working in movies, and I'm not able to do my job properly. Somehow I managed to get through that day and that scene. It wasn't a terribly difficult one; it was actually the scene where King Arthur goes across the Bridge of Eternal Death, over the Gorge of Eternal Peril. I couldn't have gotten a bigger sign from heaven. The director, Terry Jones, thought it rather odd that an ex-mountaineer should apparently be afraid of heights. He thought that was why I was shivering. Of course, that wasn't the reason I was shivering. I got through it somehow. At that point I remember resolving that when I could, I would stop. When I had a couple of months free, that is what I would do. It was two years before I found those two months.
I felt I would need two months, certainly. I knew I would have a week of extreme unpleasantness in terms of withdrawal symptoms. Then it would take me some time to recover psychologically, to get to know the new me, the sober me. I was thinking in terms of being able to work again, and I thought it would take me probably a couple of months to be able to think of that. There was every possible reason for putting off that two months. I thought, I've got my work to do, I need to earn this, I've got to do that; or just while this little bit of tension is on. Perhaps I'll carry on, not too much. I was fooling myself, really.
I had always been able to stop. But I had noticed that I would very quickly get back to the same level of drinking. I used to make a point of trying to stop for a couple of weeks a year, at least. In fact, the first time I stopped for a month, and the next year it was two weeks, and the next year it was less than a week. Each time I'd quit I'd eventually think, Well, I can get back to social drinking now. Which, of course, I couldn't. I was very quickly back to the same sort of excesses I had been on previously.
Alcohol was affecting my work and my personal relationships, too. There were a lot more arguments, a lot more recriminations. Minor things would start off an argument. Sometimes I threw things around in fits of anger, rage. It was a very selfish sort of period, in many ways, with David and also with John. We all drank too much. I was certainly the leader in that respect. It did lead to a lot of arguments. At the same time, there must have been a great deal of love there because we got over those appalling rows. A lot of them were heart-rending sessions, and quite frequently there were tears.
There was a great deal of self-pity during that period. I think the situation improved with the realization that I had while filming The Holy Grail. At that point I began to admit that maybe I was the cause of a lot of unrest at home. Things were better for a time, once I admitted that to myself.
There were periods of incredible joy and depression, but out of proportion to the cause. A small thing would give a tremendous amount of elation or a tremendous amount of depression. Just as a tiny slight might be a cause for anxiety and depression or anger, so, too, any little thing that could be construed as praise or any small accomplishment would be a cause for tremendous elation, a reason to go out and celebrate.
At that point, I didn't really see myself living as long as I have. I thought, It might be another two years. That seemed to be quite long enough. Frightening, really. It never, at that stage, occurred to me to go for psychiatric help, because I felt, I'm supposed to be a doctor and I'm failing on that level. I ought to be able to deal with it. I am dealing with it. Am I dealing with it? I had plenty of friends I could have talked to quite easily about it, and A A was for patients, not for me.
The last year or so—certainly the last year of my drinking—I would have to have a drink first thing, as soon as I woke up. I began to keep a bottle by the bedside because if I didn't have a couple of shots of gin in the first half-hour of waking up, I would get withdrawal symptoms, the dry heaves, cold sweats, and a really appalling nauseated feeling. I didn't want to go through that every day. It became an appalling routine, waking up in the morning, needing to get a couple of drinks down me within the first half-hour or otherwise face the unpleasantness of withdrawal. That unpleasantness began to outweigh the supposed advantages of drinking. The pleasant side of it, the joyous side of it, was no longer sufficient to counteract that unpleasantness every morning. It wasn't worth it. I had to admit that I was dependent on it and needed it the first thing in the morning. Obviously I was an addict. And I began to resent the fact that I was being weak. I was having to admit to myself that I was not strong, not a hard-drinking man about town. I was weak to the point that I couldn't last a day, couldn't last the first half-hour of the day, without drinking, which restricted my life considerably. I had to go everywhere with a drink, I felt. And I did.
So after the two years of not doing anything about it, I got into a situation where two films were set up to be done the next year. Remembering that moment in The Holy Grail, I thought I ought to be responsible to myself as a performer. They were quite important films. I had the lead part in Life of Brian, and the other was a production of my own, my first effort, The Odd Job. Really quite a big moment. With that in mind, I decided to stick by my promise of being responsible toward my work. Those films gave me financial security for that period, too. There was work for that year, and it would pay quite well, thank you. So that removed any nagging aspects of worry there. It became a very propitious time for me to do something about my drinking.
I decided that Christmas would be the time, and again that was grandiosity, because that would be the most difficult time. I would do it then; I would show myself. I arranged that there would be no one else around. I'd told the family that I would be going away, although I knew I wasn't, and I told friends, too. I stopped on Boxing Day, the day after Christmas, and that was it.
Once the decision was made, it was either that or, quite frankly, death. That's the way it looked to me at that time, particularly because of my experience with my friend Keith Moon of The Who. I sat with him on a couple of occasions when he was withdrawing. On one of them, he had thrown a little fit. Knowing that I was drinking the same sort of quantities, I knew I would have to go through that, too, at some point. I stopped quite a few months before Keith died. Keith was more advanced than I, but I definitely did see a parallel. We became kind of soul mates because of the drink, I suppose. We both knew we had a problem and were talking about it. I was trying to help him, and he would have helped me, too. I got him to see a Harley Street psychiatrist who was a contemporary of mine at medical school, a very good man. He had a session with Keith and said that, unfortunately, Keith didn't actually want to stop, deep down. Keith had seen quite a few psychiatrists in his time because of this problem. The group was worried about him, too. I said, "We must be able to do something. I'll stay with him every moment of the day, if you want. We must be able to stop him somehow. He has withdrawn on a few occasions; he can do it." The psychiatrist seemed to think that Keith's life span from that standpoint would be somewhere in the region of six months to two years. It was, in fact, about six months.
I remember Keith was very pleased that I was no longer drinking. In that last year, in fact, he had withdrawn and had not been drinking for about six months. Then he went out one night and saw a movie, the first screening in England of The Last Waltz. I wasn't there. He found himself a bottle of brandy that evening. An old friend turned up in the audience. He started drinking. I think that was the first he had had for about six months. He felt very guilty about that, I suspect. He went home and took a handful of pills that he had for preventing withdrawal symptoms, which was a very bad mixture with the alcohol. Those pills and the alcohol did it. He was dead. The death of a very close friend had a tremendous effect in terms of re-enforcing my will not to return to alcohol.
At my peak, I had begun to buy booze in bulk. I had a cellar in my house, which must have contained about fifteen crates of gin and about six crates of scotch. It was an amazing sight. Buying in bulk was more cost effective and these were larger bottles than normal, pub-sized bottles. I was drinking sixty fluid ounces a day, we estimated. That's three British pints of gin—about two quarts American.
The day after Christmas I just stayed in bed and didn't drink. Because I hadn't had the usual loading of alcohol the night before, I began to get withdrawal symptoms, which lasted for about three days. It was the single most unpleasant experience of my life. I have had worse pain, but it was extremely unpleasant in terms of the lack of control of my body, the tremors, the hallucinations—auditory and visual ones—visually getting the impression that objects were attacking me. As I was looking at something, I would move, and something else would appear to move and make a lunge for me. Objects became the most unfriendly things, things that could leap out and take a swipe at me. I did not know whether I had been asleep or whether I was asleep now, and dreaming. This appalling thing was happening, and I felt maybe it would all stop if I went to sleep. Or maybe I was already asleep. Terribly confusing. There were cold sweats and tingling sensations on the skin, like ants crawling all over me.
I had thought of going to a hospital. Prior to that, on two or three occasions when I had withdrawn, I had taken medication to help me withdraw. In some ways, mentally, I attributed my failure to stay withdrawn to the smoothness of those withdrawals. This time, there was going to be no medication. I suppose the trigger for that was an experience many years before of a friend who was a heroin addict. I attempted to treat him. Eventually, all I could do for him was show him how to shoot up in a clean way, and provide him with clean needles and disposable syringes. He went on a working trip to Germany, and the firm that he was working for discovered that he was an addict, took him away for a period, and didn't give him anything. That was the treatment and it worked. He was O.K. after that. He had been in conventional therapy here and had had methadone substitution, but always went back. That sort of registered. So it was going to be without any aid this time, and it certainly showed me what I had been doing to my body.
It was a monstrous three-day king of a hangover, worse than I had anticipated. The worst aspect was the psychological one, the disorientation. It was an unknown experience. Although I knew that I should pull through, there was quite an element of fear there. About the third day, I woke up feeling really quite clear mentally and physically, the shaking finished. I could dress myself, whereas the previous three days I couldn't have borne to wear any clothes. It would have been too much of an irritation to me. I dressed and got up and was really feeling on top of the world. I had done it.
I called a couple of friends, and invited them around for a celebratory drink while I had a tonic. It was while pouring them a drink that something happened I'm still not exactly sure about. My version of the story is that I knocked over a Christmas card and was trying to stand it up again on the mantle shelf when the shakes came back. I concentrated very hard in order to try to perform this simple act in front of my friends, who were there to observe the new, well Graham. Suddenly, I went into total spasms and collapsed. That was a little epileptic fit, basically just like Keith had had. I possibly voided a certain amount of urine, too. Next thing I remember, I was in an ambulance. It was probably partially the three days of not eating, the loss of blood sugar—a little hypoglycemic fit. Actually, prognostically, it was rather a good sign for something as dramatic as that to happen. It was another good re-enforcement for not getting involved again with alcohol because it really was a frightener. It really scared me. The thought went through my head, Maybe I'm dying. It was a tremendous relief when I found that I hadn't, I must admit. Very close call, I felt. It wasn't, actually, but it scared the piss out of me anyway.
Thereafter, it was all rather pleasant. I mean, it was so positive. I knew that I had licked it in the sense that I wouldn't have to go through that again. The actual physical side of the illness at the time was minimal. I was able to notice improvement day by day. Because of being hospitalized, I then saw the psychiatrist I had advised Keith to see. He was the first person to actually get me to say, out loud, that I had been and was an alcoholic. I was ready to admit that then. His attitude was "Well, you're right, you've gotten over the big one now. I'm sure you'll be O.K."
The thought had occurred while I was drinking—and it was one of the reasons to carry on drinking—that I needed it for my work. Immediately after I had quit, I knew that that had been a lie. Mentally, I felt so much more in control, I knew that wasn't going to be a problem. In fact, everything was so much easier. I used to play a game of squash. Well, suddenly I was more coordinated. I could hit the ball much more easily. It's like discovering sex again, almost. The last year or so, I think I slept with dogs more often than with people. It's so apparent that everything is so much easier and more fun. That really does re-enforce your decision. Another thing was the speedy return of reasonable liver function tests. That was very gratifying to me. One of the tests that was very popular then, and I suppose still is, is the Gamma GT; it measures enzyme level, which is raised in alcoholics. Mine was three hundred when first measured, after I was admitted to the hospital. That went down to eighty after a month, and then was down to twenty after two months. Amazing recuperative powers the liver has. That removed the worry about cirrhosis.
It's amazing, actually, when a bit of truth does creep in and one realizes, I'm an alcoholic or I'm an addict. Then you can begin to do something about it. It's not that difficult once you've gotten to that point. But admitting it—that's the difficult part.
I think the decision not to drink again was probably the biggest moment to me. Once that decision had been made, I was surprised how easy everything else was from that point on, despite the unpleasant physical aspects of withdrawal. That was much easier to take than getting to the point of saying, "I'm an alcoholic and I must not drink." It was easy to say, "I'm going to stop drinking," but to mean it, absolutely mean it, was the most crucial decision on my part.
***
One of the most effective ways of forcing the alcoholic to look at his drinking is intervention. In Bob Welch's situation, the Los Angeles Dodgers confronted him and offered him support and options. The purpose of an intervention is to get the alcoholic to seek treatment. Bob had tried to quit drinking on his own and couldn't. He chose to go to The Meadows, a treatment facility in Wickenburg, Arizona. With the help of staff and fellow alcoholics, Bob finally faced the fact that he wasn't too young to be an alcoholic and accepted his alcoholism. During his thirty-six-day stay at The Meadows, he learned to trust other people for the first time in his life and get honest with himself.
Bob Welch is an alcoholic. He is a starting pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Off-season he is actively involved in promoting alcohol awareness among teenagers and college students.
I thought an individual who had a problem with alcohol could not be successful, especially as a major league pitcher who could purchase anything he wanted at a very young age, as I could. I thought an alcoholic had to be lying on a street corner on skid row. That was my definition of an alcoholic. I didn't believe I was one. When someone would raise the question and say, "Well, I think you're an alcoholic," he'd grab my attention, but he'd pissed me off more than anything. "Maybe I have a little problem with drinking," I said to myself many times, but there was no way I could be an alcoholic. I didn't believe it until I got over to the treatment center and saw what it was like for someone at my young age to have the characteristics of an alcoholic. By the time I got there, I was well on my way to drinking a fifth or a quart a day. That was three or four years ago.
My girlfriend, Mary Ellen, had no idea. She wasn't knowledgeable. She didn't know about the disease, what an alcoholic was. And I never paid attention to the fact that I might be causing my mother and father and my girlfriend some pain.
When I was fifteen years old some friends and I went out to a park, and I drank a bottle of Mogen David blackberry wine. I liked it. I liked what it did for me because I was able to speak with girls a lot more easily. That was important to me at that time. After the first time, I didn't need anyone to pull on me and say, "Hey, let's go have a beer." It just snowballed.
I was shy. I was scared to death of girls. But when I got drunk I could tell a girl I liked her. I couldn't wait for the weekend because I thought maybe I'd get a chance to talk to a girl and even kiss her. I also thought that if you didn't like a girl and she didn't like you, you could drink to cover it up. Very early on, I started running from my feelings, hiding instead of talking. I covered up my feelings by drinking.
As I look back now, I see that the friends with whom I first started drinking at fifteen were heavy drinkers. I started choosing such friends even before I started going to college. They had to be people who drank and acted and talked the same way I did. But whether it was in class or on a baseball team, if my friends didn't want to go get drunk with me, I'd go to a bar alone. I did that from the time I started drinking. I didn't go out to drink socially. I went out to drink for the effect, for what it gave me. I knew what I was going to be able to do after I drank—go to the football games, be able to talk a lot more, maybe even go to a party and dance with a girl.
I built up a reputation as both a great baseball player and a very good drinker at a young age.
In college I wanted to prove to people that I was the best baseball player, and when I was done playing, I wanted to show them that I was the best drinker. My mother told me at the treatment center that when I left to go to college the one thing she was worried about was that I was going to turn into an alcoholic. She had this insight when I was seventeen.
When I got to college, I was away from my mother and father and didn't have to worry about coming home, sneaking in the back room, or driving their car. It was a perfect setup for someone who enjoyed drinking. I had some friends there with whom I played baseball in the summertime, and I knew exactly which ones would drink like I did. Then I started finding people over at my dormitory. When I wanted to get away from baseball players, I'd go to these individuals. At seventeen I knew exactly what I was doing. I knew the people who lived in certain bars. There is a bar up in Ypsilanti where the gentlemen are full-fledged practicing alcoholics. I knew that I could go over there and fit right in with those guys. They liked me. I used to go in there and talk about playing baseball. They're probably still sitting there. I didn't associate with people who didn't drink and I didn't want anybody to look at me and question me about how much I drank.
I didn't drink and sip it. I didn't want to see what happened. It was boom! I guzzled the thing, looking for the effect. You like it or dislike it. I happened to like it.
If I pitched a game and lost, I went out and got drunk. I drowned my sorrows or my aggravation or my anger in drinking. If we won, I could celebrate. On both ends, I always had it covered.
I got to the majors by the time I was twenty-one. I'd go out and get drunk whenever I wanted to. In baseball, you don't even have to go anywhere. They have the beer in the clubhouse. It was a perfect setup. I started pitching once every five days. You start mapping out your strategy. You know exactly when you can get drunk, and you know how much time it takes you to recover. The thing that was difficult about baseball for me was that it gave me an opportunity to drink just about every day. I could stay out until three o'clock and sleep until three o'clock. I had plenty of time to rest. There were many times I said, "I'm not going out drinking tonight," but I was right back out there.
Everybody wants to be associated with a professional baseball player. They all want to party with you and buy you drinks, and they all want to push other types of drugs on you. In Los Angeles, where I was living, I knew who was going to get drunk, just like in college.
I'd get drunk four out of five days, get sober the night before pitching, and go back out drinking that night. I didn't wake up in the morning and have a drink or drink at a definite time daily, and I didn't drink every day, but 85 to 95 percent of the times that I started to drink, I couldn't stop. I'd drink until I was drunk or passed out or there was nothing left.
I had pitched in 1978 and done very well. I played in the World Series. In 1979 I participated for about two months and hurt my arm. I knew I wasn't going to play, and I was traveling to all these towns, so I'd get drunk during the games. I'm not going to play, I thought, so let's pop a few cans of beer. Not just one or two, but three or four or five or six. I justified sitting on the bench by saying, "Hell, I'm going to have a few beers and root and at least enjoy myself." I was terribly hurt that I wasn't playing, and feeling bad because one part of the team wasn't doing so well. I wanted to put myself in there and I just couldn't. I covered that up by drinking all the time.
On the way to the park, I'd know I wasn't going to pitch, so I'd say to myself, Why not have a nice little drink on my way there? I'm going to sit in traffic and I'm going to be itchy and edgy. I've got to have a drink. I'm going to have one on the way. Toward the end of the season, I really was not taking care of myself and not being concerned too much with my occupation because I was drinking so heavily. My girlfriend was beginning to hear some whispers. Friends and family members and wives of other baseball players were saying, "Hey, do you hear what your boyfriend does?" I could barely speak to her. My family was beginning to be concerned, too. I could tell not so much by what they were saying, but when I got around them they would look at me when I was drinking. They were concerned about how much I was drinking and where I was going. My health really wasn't affected too much. Basically, I took care of myself, but my ability to prepare myself to play baseball was starting to go downhill.
There was one time in San Francisco, after I was injured, that I had a chance to pitch. They wanted me to start a couple of games at the end of the season. I went out there and my elbow was feeling terrible. It was cold and windy in San Francisco. I gave up a home run. My pitching was a disaster. I went out that night and had a few drinks, went home, and went to bed. I really didn't get drunk. I woke up the next morning and I, another player, and a gentleman we knew in San Francisco went out to this place and had lunch. I started drinking, and I must have drunk three bottles of wine at lunch. The guy on our team went home. I stayed out there and drank ten more Seven and Seven's and a few more beers. I went back to the hotel about a quarter to five. Our bus was leaving about five o'clock. I went upstairs, drank a bottle of wine, guzzled it in about five minutes, then went down and got on the bus. There were a lot of reporters. I just started raising hell. I was screaming and hollering at the manager, making an ass out of myself, embarrassing everybody. I got to the ball park and fell asleep by the stall. One of my teammates woke me up and started helping me get dressed and tried to hide it from my manager. Everybody knew I was drunk. I thought it was funny. A couple of my teammates helped me out. I went out on the field and started a few fights with the guys on the Giants. I got out there in center field and then started a couple of fights with my own teammates. My manager called me in and said, "Hey, you've got to take off your uniform and stay inside." I was never so embarrassed in my life.
Before I went home to Michigan that winter, the Dodgers called me into their office and said, "We fine you for being drunk at the park. We want you to know that we want you to be a part of this club next year, and we're not going to finish last or next to last. We want you to be ready. We want you to take a look at your drinking." I told them all to go shit in their hats and leave me alone. I told them it was their fault, anyway, that if I didn't pitch in the bullpen, I wouldn't be getting drunk, I would have been healthy. "It's your fault," I said, "so why don't you get out of my life and leave me alone? If I don't pitch here, I'll pitch somewhere else."
I came home that winter and tried to quit drinking, but couldn't do it. I stopped for about two to three weeks, until Thanksgiving. That was a deadly time, because I liked to drink and there were a lot of parties in our family. I had my first drink and then I think I was drunk until after Christmas.
A telephone call came from the Dodgers on about January tenth. "We want you to come out here and speak to some people and meet with us." I knew exactly what it was all about. They didn't have to say anything about drinking. I knew what the hell was going on. I knew what was going to happen the next day. I flew out to LA, and when I arrived I smoked a couple of joints, then stopped at a place and grabbed a six-pack. I went to the Biltmore, went to sleep, woke up the next morning, and met with a gentleman who was a recovering alcoholic.
It was really the first time that someone knew exactly how to handle me, knew exactly what to say. It wasn't "Hey, you have a problem." It was "I have a problem." He sat down and shared his story with me, the story of what it was like when he was young, how his drinking had caused great pain to his family, how he had made an ass out of himself and embarrassed himself many, many times. Boy, I could see myself in that same category. I knew this was my time. I really wanted to do something about my drinking, and this gentleman helped me out by sharing his own story, not by saying, "You have a problem. What are you going to do about it?" It was more or less, "I care. There are things you can do."
He gave me the twenty questions, and I must have nailed thirteen or fourteen of them. I found myself answering yes to a lot more than I really wanted to. Those questions, they help. It may not have been the one thing that pushed me over, but those questions helped. Then the gentleman said, "I do believe, young man, that you are in the very early stages of alcoholism. You can tell me to go shit in my hat, like you did before, or you can start attending some AA meetings, or you can try to stop on your own, which you've tried, or you can go to a treatment center. There are some things you can do to help yourself. It's more or less what you would like to do. Don't do it for the Dodgers. Don't do it for me. Really take some time and decide what you would like to do." Five minutes later I said, "Get me into a treatment center." That was on Monday. Thursday I checked into The Meadows in Arizona.
I had three days in Los Angeles to really figure out if I was an alcoholic or not. I went and spoke with the gentleman I was living with at that time, and he was tickled to death that I was going. He helped me an awful lot because he could have said, "The team is just doing that for themselves. There is no way you have a problem." But no, he was right there and said, "You know, I've been around you drinking. It may be the best thing you could do for yourself." He was very supportive. He said, "I'm not going to tell anybody, and if you need me, I'll come over to see you."
I remember calling up my girlfriend and telling her. I said, "I'm going to a loony bin to find out what the hell is going on." She was still saying, "You don't have a drinking problem, do you? You drink like everybody else." She was confused. I got into that treatment center in Wickenburg and I remember being scared to death about calling up my mom and dad and saying, "Here I am in the treatment center." When I called them, I was just busting down in tears. The nurses were giving me support and saying, "Tell them exactly where you're at. You watch how much they care for you." My parents said, "If you need anything from us, we'll be there." I was fortunate. A lot of moms and dads don't give support because they're embarrassed that their child could be an alcoholic.
At The Meadows, I started to learn that I was full of shit, really. Everything I seemed to do was to bullshit myself, to cover things up by drinking. I didn't want to be real with my mom and dad and say, "I love you." When I first got over there, I said, "This place ain't me. The people are over fifty years old. They look like alcoholics. I don't look like one." Then I ran into kids younger than me who were there for drug abuse and alcohol. The one thing you really learn when you are there is to be honest because the place is there to help you. And if you have a problem, it's O.K., you're in the right spot. All the people there are like your family.
I had always been a quiet and shy person. I didn't have a lot of friends who would talk to me about the way I felt. We just went out and drank or got high one way or the other. When I got to the treatment center I was putting some trust in people for the first time. I began to be honest with myself. I had been lying to and cheating myself for quite a long time—not only in regard to the way I felt about my girlfriend, but about my mother and father and playing baseball, too.
I was in treatment for thirty-six days. When I first came out, I had the idea that just because I didn't drink, it was O.K. to smoke a joint or pop a few pills. I almost killed myself running into the back end of someone's car. I was on Valium. Until I eliminated everything, I really didn't get a good foundation. What helped was being in the AA program, and wanting to stay sober. I'm really just now getting to the point where I can finally give in. I don't care if I never take a drink again. I don't care if I don't get high again. It's O.K. to be right here, to be sober, not get high; that's fine. I've struggled for quite a while now. It doesn't seem hard not to drink.
There are three times I still really have a craving to drink. One of them is on an airplane. I associate it with getting drunk. When I first started flying, I always drank. Another time is after I play golf. Last, when I'm done pitching. My body at times still says, "All right, where's the fucking booze?" I'm flying after a game. My body is thinking, Where is the booze at, man? We've got to go to sleep. In those three areas it pops out like, "Am I going to drink or am I not going to drink?" But as long as I know what is going on, I can prepare myself.
I have always dreamed of marrying a particular woman. We're not together right now, but I know that I love her and that she loves me. Someday we may get married. I want that woman to be happy, whether it's with me or not, and there's no way I would have said that before I was sober. I want her to be happy, and I want her to have a very good life. Before it was always, "Well, you can have a great life but it's still got to be centered around my life. You can't have a career and be with me. You have my career and then you can do some things on the side."
Now I can also say that I love my mother and father, but it took me twenty-two years to say that. I love my mother and father, my sister, my brother. I also know that I'm going to be just fine whether I play baseball and make $800,000 a year, or whether I work in a factory. As long as I stay sober, my heart is going to be just fine. I know that now.
I think I've been able to communicate with people and share with people. I've gotten softer. I've gotten a lot softer as far as feeling. I'm able to talk and share with people. My family is a lot closer now. All we would talk about before was playing baseball. Now it's "How are you feeling?" That was never there before.
I've gotten thousands of letters from people throughout the country because of a little documentary film I've done. They say, "We've seen this film about this treatment center and we were thinking about splitting because we didn't think we were young enough to be alcoholic." I tell you, I appreciate that a lot more than money. Before, I thought you had to have a house, a Mercedes-Benz, and a boat to be happy. Now I know that my peace and serenity and sobriety are more important—ten times more powerful than pitching in the World Series or participating in any game. They really are. That's another one of the ways I've changed. That's the truth, too.
I know I will quit playing baseball someday. But sobriety will last for a lifetime. As long as I have that, everything is going to be fine, whether I'm playing baseball or not.
NOTE: Bob and Mary Ellen were married on January 21, 1984, in Boston, Massachusetts.
***
At his very first AA meeting, Elmore Leonard was able to see himself in the stories of others and admit he was an alcoholic. The only price of admission to Alcoholics Anonymous is the desire to stop drinking, and AA is the most readily available way to quit drinking. There is a difference, however, between admitting that "I am an alcoholic" and accepting it. From time to time, Elmore went back to drinking to test himself. Finally, with the encouragement of his future wife, Joan, he came to the realization it was all or nothing. Today, after accepting the AA principles, he looks at life with a sense of inner peace.
Elmore Leonard is an alcoholic. He is a novelist and screenwriter. His novels include Split Images, Cat Chaser, City Primeval and LaBrava. His latest novel is Glitz, and he has written the screenplay for the movie Stick, based on his own novel.
When I look back now, back thirty-five or forty years, I can see I had a problem. I can see I had a problem when I was in my twenties, but it wasn't noticeable. I didn't drink that much more than anyone else. The group I was with then were all fairly hard drinkers. You'd go to a party with a case of beer or bottle of Imperial. You could buy them both for five bucks then. Drinking was always kind of a macho thing—that idea of the hard drinkers in westerns and detective stories, the shot standing at the bar. I'm sure I was influenced by that. In the service I passed out beer on an island in the Pacific for a year and drank probably six or eight cans a day. I was nineteen years old. In the Philippines we weren't allowed to drink the native beer because of the water, so we drank whiskey. Three of us would sit down with a bottle of local whiskey on the approved list and drink it. That's what you did. It was a macho thing to do. I went out and got tattooed in Seattle. You'd drink whiskey and get tattooed. It was a lot of fun. I don't regret any of it.
Drinking was always fun. We'd never go to dinner anyplace that didn't serve liquor. I always felt the conversation was more stimulating and the evening was more exciting when we drank. I got to the point, though, where I believed that I was bored when I wasn't drinking. Talking to men in business was kind of boring for me, anyway, not being business oriented. Advertising was different because there were a bunch of swinging guys in it. But with the client, the straights, the manufacturers, I felt that I would have to drink in order to sit and listen to them.
I always took pride in my capacity to drink. I remember when I was at Campbell-Ewald in 1957, I went out to Colorado. I was getting material for Chevrolet truck testimonial ads. I would call on the Chevrolet dealer, who would then introduce me to a truck owner who had some fantastic story to tell about his trucks. One time, I think it was in Alamosa, I was out for the evening with a trucker. We were drinking whiskey and we had dinner. We were drinking brandy and beer and he said, "I haven't met a lowlander yet I didn't have to put to bed." We were probably at five thousand feet. I thought, "What is this? I know skinny guys back in Detroit who drink four to five martinis for lunch. They could kill this guy sitting at a table. He wouldn't last an hour with these guys in little three-piece suits." Before that evening was over, he was chasing a waitress down the alley. The next morning, I went to see him at his office, after I had gotten a couple of beers in me for my equilibrium. He looked up, red-eyed, and said, "Oh, my God, I never want to see you again."
I went on my own after I quit Campbell-Ewald in 1961. I didn't write any fiction for four years, but that was my reason for quitting. I got into business for myself. I started writing movies for Encyclopaedia Britannica and did some industrial movies. I formed my own ad agencies, and I was successful. I learned that 50 percent of it was asking for the money, and if you couldn't ask for the money, you had no business being in business.
I never reached the point of a couple of fifths a day. Not until the very end did I drink before noon. Noon was always that magic time when it became all right. If you could just hold out until noon. Sunday morning I used to hold out and then come back from Mass and have a big bowl of chili and a couple of ice-cold beers. Hangovers never bothered me because all I had to do was drink a few ice-cold beers or a real hot, spicy bloody mary and I was back.
When I think back to my twenties, social events always had to involve drinking. If someone came by, I'd always offer him a drink. I would be happy to see people drop in because then I could have a drink. I didn't realize, until later, that I welcomed this excuse. Now I am amazed at how little people drink and that they leave a drink when dinner is ready.
I was getting more noticeably drunk. I wasn't handling it the way I used to be able to. In fact, I was two different people. There was a definite personality change, like talking louder, acting wackier, which I thought was a lot of fun. I'm being funny, I thought. This is really funny stuff. It wasn't funny at all. But everyone was always laughing. Most of the people were not too far behind me, but I had to admit that I drank more than almost anybody I knew. There were a few guys who would keep up with me, but the majority of our friends didn't drink half as much.
In the late sixties, early seventies, I was going out to Hollywood quite a lot. I would take American and sit first-class because Universal Studios was paying for it, and fly the Captain's Table. They would come down the aisles, slicing the roast beef, serving drinks before the champagne, red wine with dinner, saying afterward, "Why don't you go up to the lounge for your cognac." Whatever you wanted, and I did the whole thing. Then I would be met by somebody at the plane. We'd go out to dinner and do the whole thing all over again. I'd have twenty drinks or more in me by the time I got to the hotel and went to bed. I remember once I had a meeting with Steve McQueen, who had bought a story idea of mine. We were going to sit down and discuss the screenplay, and I was so hung over that I was absolutely dying for a beer. We had lunch in his office and he said, "What do you want, pop or beer?" I said, "Oh, I guess I'll have a beer." I couldn't wait to get it down. One day I came back from California throwing up blood. I was in the emergency room and they couldn't stop the bleeding. They said they had to look in and see what the trouble was. So I asked my doctor, the internist, "What do you think it could be?" He said, "Well, I think it's probably an ulcer. If it isn't, it might be acute gastritis, but usually you only see that in skid-row bums." So they took me in and opened me up. It was acute gastritis. But it was still seven years before I had that last drink.
I did ease off for a little bit after my surgery, but within a month I was gradually drinking again, until finally I was right back where I had been. I was beginning to disguise my drinks more. I would drink a big whiskey collins instead of my favorite, which was Early Times over shaved ice. Twice I was arrested for drunk driving. That was toward the very, very end. Once, in Malibu, when I was driving too slow at 2:30 A.M., then a year later in Michigan. I drank for thirty years and nothing ever happened and suddenly two driving-while-under-the-influence arrests in a year. That's got to tell you something.
I remember a guy telling me that he had joined the AA program because he was always thinking of the next drink. Before he had barely started the first, he was ready to order another one. I was doing the same thing at the time. Finally, a couple of friends suggested that I look into the AA program.
All I had to do was sit at one meeting and listen to the stories to know that I was an alcoholic. I admitted it at my first meeting. I opened my mouth and it came to me, "I'm Dutch, and I'm an alcoholic." But this was admission before the acceptance. I did pretty well for a while, but about every two months I'd fall off. It took me a couple of years or more to accept.
I was afraid of getting caught drinking, so I flew off. The first time was to Marrakesh in 1974 to talk to Sean Connery and Michael Caine about a picture. They were doing The Man Who Would Be King at the time. The producer, John Foreman, brought me over to discuss a story idea with them. I sat around the lobby drinking for a week, waiting for the meeting. I stopped off in Paris on the way home and drank some more and came home. The same year, a few months later, I went to Israel to adapt one of my books for a film to be set in Israel, which didn't make any sense at all to me. But the producer was paying for it and it was an opportunity to see Israel. I drank as soon as I got on the plane. I drank in Tel Aviv, where there are only two honest-to-God saloons in the whole town, outside of cocktail lounges and hotels. I picked a country where nobody drinks to do my drinking. I went back to Israel a couple of more times to research my book and did more drinking.
I tried to hide my drinking from myself. I would sit in my office—actually I had three offices. I had a refrigerator in the front office and in the middle office there was a kind of lounge. I had a bottle of sherry and little glasses there on the table. I would go in there and have a little glass of sherry from the decanter, than I'd have another one. After that, I'd get out the bottle and fill up the decanter to where it had been, in case anyone noticed. Then I'd get a cold bottle of white wine out of the refrigerator and put it in my desk drawer. I'd open the drawer very, very quietly, though no one was in the office, and take the wine out and drink a big, big swig of it and put it back in. Not a soul was near enough to hear anything. I didn't want to hear it.
In 1977 I was divorced. I wonder if the booze gave me the courage to leave home, to leave the situation I was in, having been married for twenty-six years. Now that I know what I know, I'm sure I would have done it in the right way with a clear head. But I did it drinking and got away with it. There were all kinds of reasons. The drinking did enter into it, there is no question about that. My first wife doesn't have a problem that I know of, but we always drank. We always drank together. We always drank before dinner. We always had wine with dinner. Every single night, we would get into arguments, with me drunk and her part of the way, with me saying vicious things, which I couldn't believe the next day. I'd be filled with remorse. I saw some familiar things when I read the book Games Alcoholics Play some years ago. The month that I joined the program was the month that I left home in 1974. The year that I had my last drink, 1977, was the year I was divorced. It just happened to fall that way.
I was living alone between 1974 and 1977 in the Merrillwood Apartments and I was attending AA meetings. I had a whole cabinet full of booze, which didn't tempt me much, but every once in a while I would get a craving for red wine. There is some romantic notion connected with red wine. I always started with red wine, I don't know why. I would drink a bottle of red wine and I'd be off. The next day it might be something else. Scotch or anything, though usually the next day I would disguise it. I would put scotch in something that you never put scotch in—Vernor's ginger ale or something like that. I was great at trying to disguise the booze from myself. If I'd put that in a story, nobody would believe it. I really denied I was an alcoholic. I based that on the fact that I didn't have the capacity, or my drinking wasn't as intense as that of so many others whom I talked to. I remember asking a guy, "How do you have time to drink three fifths a day?" He said, "For Christ sake, you get up early. You put the first one, that first glass of vodka, right on the toilet tank while you're taking your shower, and you reach out and get it. Then you get over to the bar quick, and you order a vodka and orange juice. You drink half of it down and you say, 'Hit it again.' He puts another shot of vodka in and, by the time you're there five minutes, you've had about four drinks without even finishing the first one."
I think my present wife, Joan, had a lot to do with my quitting. She was so supportive, without any pushing or nagging, but with sympathy—the right kind of sympathy. She'd say, "You are absolutely out of your mind." Maybe it was the way she said it. "Why are you doing this to yourself?" she'd say. I think I kind of liked the idea of the tragic figure. I think this must enter into alcoholism, playing the role of the tragic figure. But, within the same moment, I could look at it as bullshit, knowing I was playing roles, playing games. It was inevitable that if I had any intelligence at all, I had to stop. I realized that I had to quit or go all the way and forget about it, the hell with it. Good-bye brains.
It's almost inconceivable to me now, all those games I played, all those things I went through to justify drinking. The big difference nowadays is that I don't have to look forward to anything. I get up in the morning and being is enough. There isn't anything that I want to go to see or anything that I want. I try to describe this to people, and I can see by the looks on their faces that I'm not explaining it properly. They think, Well, my God, that must be boring, just not doing anything. I don't have to do anything. I am much more aware of things going on but in a very quiet way. I don't need excitement. I'm into my work now, all the way and I'm not straining. I stop at six o'clock, but I'm giving it a full shot every day. I see that I can continue to get better at it. That's an amazing thing, after thirty-two years, to know I can get better. It's happening because I'm more interested in it. I have so much more confidence in my work. I can try different things. I can experiment in different styles. I look forward to working in the morning, something I didn't used to do. It was always a chore.
My personal relationships are better, there's no question about that. Getting out of myself and seeing other people and trying not to see me is the key. I'm not going to be able to play roles if I'm not thinking about myself. I just present myself as I am, optimistically, with natural, normal confidence. Here it is. This is who I am. This is what I do. Would you like to buy this book? If you don't like it, O.K., fine. Someone else will buy it. I used to be very self-conscious. What do they think of me? Walking down the street, I felt everybody was looking at me. Not anymore. It doesn't matter. I approach people now. I never used to. I approach strangers and talk to them. I was afraid of that before. I was afraid that they wouldn't like me, that they would form a bad impression of me. The key is getting out of yourself.
Today I realize I have complete trust in God. I'm in His hands. Now what I'm going to do is try to live according to His will. God's will, I think, is misinterpreted. God's will to me means one thing—love—and if I look at this as my primary reason for being here, all the specific things fall into line. When I get up, before I get out of bed, I say, "O.K. let me be an instrument of Thy will." I want to be His agent. I want to be used any way He wants to use me. I want to do His work. This is my main reason for being. My reason is not to be a writer, it's to be with everyone else and see what happens. I see a lot of people I don't like, but I see the humanness in them. We're all pretty much in the same boat. A lot of people have ugly dispositions and are fighting life for any number of reasons. But nobody wants to be that way. Nobody really wants to be antagonistic or hard to get along with. After a while, it becomes their nature. I think there is hope for everybody.
Today I don't drink. That's all there is to it. That dismisses the problem.
I can go back to the time of my last drink, 1977. From then on I have become more and more successful. There's no question about it. I can sit down and write anytime, anywhere. It doesn't matter. I don't have to be prepared. I think I kidded myself in that. I was turning out a book in four months then. But I'm doing it with so much more pleasure now that there is no comparison.
I'm doing what I do best. I'm doing exactly what I want to do. There is no better situation. I sit and look out the window when I'm writing away, I look out, and I don't believe it. I'm sitting here all by myself, doing this story, getting all excited about it and getting paid for it—a lot of money. I'm not bending to a certain commercial way to fit a commercial need. I can't do that. I have to do it my way, and thank God, it's saleable.