Wives of alcoholics worry about their husbands' drinking and often blame themselves and their children for being the cause. Alcoholic husbands very often say that their wives are responsible for their drinking and that they are misunderstood at home. At home the alcoholic husband is very quick to point out that he is the breadwinner and complains of the great pressures he is under at work.
Life in the alcoholic household revolves around the whims of the alcoholic husband. Meals are delayed, social invitations are refused, holidays are ruined, and financial problems arise.
The wife of the drinking alcoholic threatens, and the alcoholic promises to mend his ways. He quits drinking and she hopes and prays—only to be heartbroken once again when he drinks. The wife and children are often subjected to abuse and ridicule, but she endures and tries to hold the family together as it falls apart. The wife of the drinking alcoholic loves her husband and often puts up with his alcoholic behavior for "the sake of the children," as her duty. Often the wife finds herself covering up for the alcoholic's drinking even though the alcohol appears to her to be more important to the alcoholic than she or the children. As the years go on, the alcoholic's drinking must become worse and the alcoholic's wife accepts the alcoholic's world. She, too, loses hope and accepts that this is the way it is and this is the way it is supposed to be.
It doesn't have to be that way.
According to Sybil Carter, "I went to the bitter end and did everything I thought I was supposed to do. I was the best wife anybody could ask for."
Sybil Carter cleaned Billy up if he got sick, picked him up if he fell down, and covered up for him by lying. All along, she thought he didn't care about her or the children. Until she went to Long Beach Naval Hospital for treatment herself, she didn't understand alcoholism as a disease and thought Billy could quit if he wanted to.
In her brutally honest story Sybil Carter relates how her world was turned upside down while she was in treatment and learned what she had been doing wrong.
Billy Carter is an alcoholic. The brother of former United States President Jimmy Carter, he is vice president of marketing for Scott Housing Systems, Inc. He and his wife, Sybil, and their two youngest children live in Georgia.
We got married when we were very young. I was sixteen years old. Just a baby, really. Billy was seventeen, right out of boot camp. When he was in high school and he went out with me, he did not drink. If he did, I didn't know it. He went into the service, and after we got married his buddies would come over on weekends and they would drink beer. At that point, I didn't feel it was a problem. We were busy raising a family. I think Billy knew that he had a problem a long time before I did.
When Billy first decided to go to AA I was astounded. Billy would work hard all week and he might come home and have a beer or two, but to me that was not an alcoholic. On weekends we would go out with couples and we'd go to dances, to parties, and Billy would get drunk sometimes, but not all the time. Things would happen to us the way they did to other couples if one of them drank too much. I might get angry with him because of something he said or something he did.
It did not happen every weekend or every time we went out, just occasionally. I was not aware that Billy was drinking as much as he was. It didn't show in his appearance. Whether he was just in better control of it at that time, I don't know.
Probably after we had been married ten, eleven, twelve years, when we were at home in the peanut business, I realized that his drinking had become heavier. It really bothered me the most when the children began to grow up. The older children were teenagers or almost teenagers, and I was the go-between with their father and them. He was always very strict with the children. There were so many times when I knew he was drinking, and he would make a decision about something that concerned them. He would not give any reason for his decision. We always tried to back each other up with the kids. If he said no to something, I would try to find out why he said no because he would never explain his reasons to the children. He would just say no, or "Because I'm your father and I said no." I felt that was unfair to the children.
If they wanted to stay over at a friend's house or to go to a ball game, he'd just say, "I want you to stay home tonight." It was really a problem because the children couldn't understand why. Here I was saying, "Your daddy doesn't feel well," and all the time, of course, they knew he was drinking. I was trying to say to them on the one hand, "Respect your daddy," and they're standing there saying, "Why?" I wasn't really giving them a reason, either.
Billy was never, never violent to any of us. He never raised a hand to any of us. But he could really be nasty verbally. To keep the children from going through that, it was easier to do what he wanted. He was boss and what he said was the way it was going to be. It was easier to go along with it than to argue with it.
Whatever Billy watched on television was what we watched. Whatever Billy wanted for a meal was what we had. If the meal was not on the table when he got home, he was very angry. Everything had to be done just the way he wanted it or he would get angry. The children went to their rooms a lot of times when their dad came home, just to get out of the way. We all tiptoed around the house, around Billy and his moods and his drinking. It was hell, literally hell.
Schedules were not met and lies were told over the phone to protect him. "We are not coming to the meeting" or "We can't come to the party because Billy doesn't feel well" or "One of the children doesn't feel well." Never "Billy is drunk" or "Billy just flatly refuses to come." He would say, "Tell them I'm sick" or "Tell them we can't come" or "Give some excuse." I didn't have to do it, but I did. I took the responsibility for what he did and I should not have done that. He didn't use force to make me do it. I did it. I did it to keep the children from hearing an argument.
It wasn't all bad. There were a lot of happy times, too. Billy was a good father. He loved his children. But he got up at five or six A.M. and went to work before they were up. At night, when he came in, they were already in bed. It was a demanding job, and he worked all day and he worked hard. On weekends, though, instead of spending time with his children, he played with his friends and drank. So he missed a lot of the growing-up years of the first four children.
We used to have high school basketball games. In a small town, almost everybody goes. Billy would go, and he would be drinking. The children saw him fall down the stairs. They were so embarrassed. They would come home and say, "Please don't let Daddy come to the ball games." They would never say it to his face. They would always tell him how much they loved him.
We have six children and I can remember wondering to myself a lot of times, when he was drinking, if the children and I were to blame. You blame your situation and wonder, Could it be because he works as hard as he does? We lost three children, so we had a lot of things along the way that added to it. Could we be that big a burden on him?, I wondered. Could it be stress? Could it be his job? He was constantly working. It takes a lot to feed and clothe a large family. In the back of your mind, you're thinking, Well, it could be us. It could be us that's making him drink. You are constantly looking for reasons and wondering if you are it. Not until I was in treatment and he was in treatment did I realize that I was always taking the responsibility for what he did. He never asked me to do it. I just did it because I thought that was what I was supposed to do. I loved him and thought I was protecting him.
With Billy's family being who they were, in politics and in the limelight, I think a lot of the way I handled things had to do with not saying anything that was going to cause a furor or bring embarrassment to the family. You play everything down and keep it quiet; you don't let it out. The funny part about it was that all the time I was thinking this, he was out there doing his own thing, getting drunk. I don't know why I didn't think everybody else knew. I took a lot. Had I been somebody else or had the family not been in the public eye, I would not have stood it as long as I did. I know I would have thrown up my hands much earlier and said, "Go to hell."
One time I went to Jimmy and talked to him about Billy's drinking. Jimmy agreed with me that Billy needed help. Jimmy's way was, "I'll do anything I can for you." But Jimmy would not go to Billy and say, "You need to quit drinking" or "You had better quit drinking," or "You have to quit drinking." I don't know if Jimmy ever really talked to Billy about it or not at that time. I know he didn't in the later years. Jimmy seemed to be of the opinion that Billy could quit on his own. I think I decided then that this was my cross to bear, and I was going to bear it the best way I knew how.
When Billy was running the peanut business he did a wonderful job. I kept the books at the office and we worked together. I don't think you could find anybody who knows anything about the peanut business who won't tell you that Billy did a fantastic job. He loved the work. He grew up in the business working with his dad, so he knew it. He loved the farmers and they loved him. He never asked anybody who worked with us to do anything that he wouldn't do himself.
In the earlier years, when Jimmy was governor, I never saw Billy take a drink during the day when he was working. When he would get through in the afternoon, he would drink beer. But when the business was taken away from him, I could see a decided change in Billy.
When Jimmy was elected President it was unreal. It was like you went to bed one night and everything was normal and quiet in this little old sleepy Plains, and you woke up the next morning and found yourself in the middle of a world's fair. You went out your back door to get into your car to go to work and people were standing in your yard taking your picture. People were walking into your house without knocking. Your children couldn't go outside and ride their bikes without people taking their pictures or going up and touching them. You've got a little baby and you're afraid for the lady who takes care of him to take him for a ride in his stroller. You've got the telephone ringing and your children answering and some idiot saying, "There's a bomb under your house. We're going to blow up your house. We're going to kill your daddy before the day is over." You've got all these things going on. You've got your children screaming and crying. You're just trying to be a normal person during all this and keep your children normal and happy and well adjusted, and it's a nightmare.
People said, "Well, it must be wonderful to have Jimmy be President and you live in the White House and go to all these parties." I went to the White House twice in the four years that Jimmy was President. We didn't live at the White House. We didn't go to every party that was held in the White House. We didn't know what decisions Jimmy made about policies or political things. We didn't run for President. We just happened to be his family. And we had people saying, "You can't do this because Jimmy is President." Or "You mustn't talk that way or you mustn't dress that way." We had to act in a certain way because Jimmy was President. The bad part about it was that we didn't change but people around us did. They expected us to act differently because Jimmy was President of the United States. I think that's one reason Billy started drinking heavier than he had before, to prove a point, to prove that he had not changed and he would not change. He would not conform to what everybody else thought he should be because he was the President's brother.
My resentment grew because Billy started traveling. It was not a resentment so much toward him as toward the press and people in general. I became tired of being pushed around. When you get in a place where there's a lot of people and Billy is there and everybody wants to meet him and everybody wants to shake his hand and everybody wants his autograph and you have a reporter turn around and say, "Who are you?"—I finally got to the point where I would say, "I'm his maid."
I was happier at home with my kids, anyway. During that time there were a lot of stories in the papers and everybody would send me a copy of any story Billy was in. I knew that he was drinking more. I could tell by the way he talked and the things that he said and the way he acted. I felt I was lucky not to be with him, because I would have been angry all the time. I worried about what he was going to say that would be in the paper or what he didn't say that was going to be in the paper. It was just easier to stay home with the children and not be involved.
I threatened Billy a number of times. I said, "If you don't quit drinking, I'm going to leave and I'm going to take the children." Billy would say, "I promise you I will. I know I drink too much." If I had a nickel for every time he promised me not to drink again, I would never have to work again. I'd be rich, independently wealthy. And every time I would believe him, because I wanted to. I loved him. I don't think during all that time I ever seriously thought about divorcing him, because I felt if I did that, it would be the end of him. He wouldn't have anybody to take care of him. He wouldn't have anybody to love him. And that would be wrong. That would be a sin on my part. I married Billy and I promised to love him and take care of him, and that was what I was there for.
When Paul Braun, our friend and doctor, came to me and said, "Sybil, Billy is sick; he is going to die if he doesn't quit drinking," I said, "Well, Paul, I have done everything I know to do." I had talked to Billy a number of times. I knew he drank too much. He would be gone a week or a week and a half at a time, not seeing his children, not seeing me, maybe calling once or twice. He would come home drunk. By that time it had gotten to the point where I didn't care anymore. I just did not care. I didn't care whether he came home or not. In fact, we got along a lot better when he wasn't home. There was no bickering. The kids were happier when he wasn't there. They didn't have to worry about being quiet. They could live their lives and do what they wanted to without having to worry about what he was going to say or do. I didn't care, and that was bad. But still, when he came home, I was right here. I was a glutton for punishment. I still took responsibility for what he did, lied for him, made excuses for him. I was like a zombie. It was as if I was programmed to do that and felt I would be wrong if I didn't; do it.
I had mentioned to Paul that Billy could not keep anything on his stomach. I knew he was getting sick. It was early 1979. Paul said, "If we can get him into the hospital to take some tests, let's do it." I said, "O.K., but he's not going to do it for me." I had tried and tried and tried. I said, "Maybe you can get through to him." So Paul talked to him and said, "You know, Billy, I think you might have pneumonia. That cough is really bad." Billy was smoking an awful lot. Paul said, "Please come in and just let me check you over good." So Billy finally agreed. I knew he must feel bad if he agreed to go in.
Paul said, "I'm going to get him so that I can take some x-rays and tests." Paul really shot him a line about what some of the tests were about. After the tests, Paul told Billy about his liver. Paul came out to the house and said, "Sybil, I talked to Billy about drinking and the fact that he needs to quit or he will kill himself, and he said for me to come and talk to you and see what you thought about him going into treatment."
I said, "Paul, God knows I want him to, but I can't make Billy do anything. I don't want the decision to be my decision. It can't be mine. It has to be his. Because I've said it a hundred times, 'Billy, you have got to stop drinking.' " I realized that Billy could not quit drinking because of me or the kids or anybody else.
Paul said to me, "Billy thinks if he goes for treatment that you will leave him."
I said, "Now, that really does not make sense. Why does he feel that way?" He said, "Well I don't know, but I think that's what he feels. I get the feeling from his conversation that he thinks you will leave him if he decides to go somewhere for treatment."
I said, "My God, Paul, I've been with Billy all these years and I've put up with all the shit and I've stayed here and I've raised his kids. Why does he think that when the time comes for him to get help that I would leave him? Doesn't he have any sense at all?"
And Paul said, "I don't know, but will you just talk to him?"
So I went to the hospital and I talked to him. I said, "Billy, I don't understand. You know what the problem is." He said, "Well, everybody in the world is going to know if I go for treatment. Every newspaper in the world. The children are going to know. Everybody is going to know. All of my friends are going to know." I said, "Billy, they know already that you are an alcoholic." He just lay there and said, "You wouldn't leave?" I said I wouldn't have any reason to leave. "It would be the happiest day in my life if you went. Not just for me but for you. You are just existing; you're not living." He said he was worried about the kids. So I went home and told the children. The four oldest could drive and they all went over to the hospital at separate times to talk to him, to tell him how proud they were that he had decided to do something about his problem. I think that's what really made him decide that he would go for treatment.
We got him through those days in the hospital in Americus. He went to see the children at home, and we left immediately. I was the delivery lady. I got out to Long Beach, dropped him off, and said I was going home. Dr. Joe Pursch said, "No, you're not." And I said, "Oh, yes I am. Here's the drunk; now make him well. I'm going home to see about my kids. I've got things to do." He said, "No, I don't think so." And I said, "Why do I have to stay?" He said, "Because you're sick." And I told him, "No, I'm not sick, I'm going home. You don't understand. I've got six children who need me at home. I didn't come prepared to stay. Billy is the one who needs treatment, not me."
He said, "But you are sadly mistaken. You need treatment as badly as Billy does." I said, "I'm not an alcoholic." He said, "No, but you are an alcoholic's wife." I started to cry. I had never met this man before. I stood there and cried, and he told me if I went home I was copping out. Why should I expect Billy to go through treatment if I was not willing to? After everything I had been through, I thought, You pompous son of a bitch, you don't know anything about what an alcoholic's spouse goes through and here you are trying to tell me. I finally told him, "I'm going home."
And he said, "Well, if you are not willing to get well, too, then Billy is probably not going to stick." I said, "O.K., I'll give you this much. I'm going home. I'll see about my children. I'm going to tell them that their daddy is not strapped in a hospital bed and he's not in a loony bin with crazy people, because they don't know what is happening to him. I didn't come prepared to stay. I didn't know I was expected to stay. You can believe me or not, but I've got six children at home and I have to make arrangements for somebody to stay with them, to my satisfaction, to know that they are taken care of. Right now, they are my first consideration. I have to be satisfied about their well-being or I can't stay up here."
He said O.K., but he didn't think I was coming back. Later I found out that he was goading me all the time. He thought I was copping out. I told him, "If I tell you I'll be back, I'll be back." So I left, and I came back.
Those three weeks were the worst three weeks of my life, without a shadow of doubt. My whole life was brought before my eyes and torn apart. Every statement I had ever made, everything I had done was ridiculed and belittled and torn apart. I was told that I was a do-gooder and holier-than-thou and that I was as much to blame for Billy's drinking as he was because I took responsibility for what he did, and that I really helped him be an alcoholic. Every day was like going to hell and climbing back out again.
I wasn't allowed to see Billy. He was in one group, I was in another. I couldn't figure out what I was doing there. It was as if everybody was against me, and if I cried they belittled me. If I didn't they belittled me. I was criticized because I had compassion or what I thought was compassion. I was called a do-gooder because I'd done the normal things that I did in taking care of Billy and my family.
I finally realized that what they were trying to do was make me see that I was a human being who had rights, that I was not put on this earth to be Billy's doormat. In essence, that's what I was. So I learned the hard way that I could be happy, that I didn't have to be responsible for what Billy did, that I could have interests of my own, that my life was not completely entwined with his, that I didn't have to agree with everything he said.
What they try to make you understand is that you have to get rid of all the anger and resentment that you hold toward the alcoholic, because if he begins to recover and you still have all the resentment and anger, then your relationship is not going to work. The family situation is not going to work, because he's getting well and you're staying the same. You're still angry with him because of what he said last November at a party, and it's there and it grows and grows and grows. In essence, your whole life has to be turned around and changed.
I had to be made to realize that I could live my life without Billy. I had never said that before, because I didn't think I could. I finally realized that I could. I didn't need him to live. I loved him and I wanted the marriage to work, but if Billy were not there, I wouldn't die. I could get along without him. And the day I admitted that I could live without Billy was the day I began to be a whole person, on my own. I realized that all the things I had been doing all those years were wrong. It was as though my whole life had been for nothing. That's a hard pill to swallow. I was really not helping him. I was harming him all the time by agreeing with him and helping him to drink, being a crutch for him. I felt as if I wanted to die.
When we first got home, Billy decided the treatment was the worst thing that had ever happened to me because it had really changed me. I'd turned into a bitch, he said, whereas before I had been nice and sweet and docile. I guess in his eyes I was a bitch. If I disagreed with him, I said so. Before, I would never have said it. I would have been afraid that he would get angry, and I didn't want that disapproval or the verbal abuse that it brought. But there is an awful lot of love between us now, and a lot more respect. There has always been a lot of love, but it was misguided love. I guess it was family-rooted love because we have been married twenty-eight years. It was a childhood-sweetheart-type thing that has just gone on through the years. As I have said, in recent years I always loved Billy but didn't like him a lot of times, and I am sure he feels the same way about me. In fact there have been times I have loved him but hated him at the same time. There have been a lot of times I wished he was dead. Lots of times I said it jokingly, but a lot of times it was no joke.
I still have problems. I think since Billy has been sober the adjustment period has been harder than the drinking was in some ways, because he has become a different person and I have, too. It's exciting because we're learning to know each other all over again. There are areas that we get into now and talk about that he never would have talked about before. We share a lot of things that we didn't share, especially feelings about things. That was one of the points they kept bringing out in treatment. "I don't want to know what you think, I want to know what you feel," they'd say. To me that was the same thing. I kept on saying, "Well, I think so." And they'd say, "I don't want to know what you think; I want to know what you feel." They kept throwing it back in my face. "You don't want to say this because you are afraid of what he'll say. You don't want to be criticized. You can't take criticism."
Life is a whole lot better, as they say, a bunch better. We are closer today than we have ever been in our lives. And happier. And we don't have any big problems hanging over our heads. He likes his job and we enjoy being where we are and our kids are all healthy and happy. What else could we ask? I think we're richer for the experience that we went through.
I am happy with myself. There are a lot of things I would like to change and need to change, but I have no qualms whatsoever about doing what I want to do.
Up to the time I went for treatment, I felt as though I existed for Billy and the children, and I put myself last. After treatment, I put myself first. I do the things I do now because I want to. If I do something for Billy it's not because he demands it; it's because I want to do it, not because it's expected of me. The same thing with the children. I have spent all my married life, in a sense, protecting my children, not from violence, but from hurt and anger. I've been in the role of a protector. Now I want to be the one who's protected. I want to be the one who's petted and looked after and loved and spoiled a little bit, and I am. They do that for me.
Being married to Billy has been interesting for me. I've been angry a lot of times, mad as hell part of the time, sad a lot, and happy a lot. But I have never been bored, and I want to stick around because I want to see what Billy is going to come up with next. I want to be there. Whatever it is, I want to be there.
***
Physical sickness and fear caused Billy Carter to go into the hospital. It was just for tests and, like most alcoholics, he had no intention of quitting. Confronted with the information about his health, he feared that Sybil would leave him and it would be played out in the press, which Billy feels has not always been fair with him both before and after his drinking.
In looking back, Billy Carter regrets more than anything else the hurt he caused Sybil and his children.
I drank like everybody else did, in high school and earlier. Not too much, not too little; I just followed the crowd. Later on, in the service, I probably drank too much. My first inkling I had a problem was in the early sixties, when I tried AA for the first time. The first AA meeting I ever went to was probably in 1962. It was an old-line group. I drove an automobile and I hadn't lost my job, so I figured there was no way I could be an alcoholic that young. So I started back, and I drank again for four or five years. I tried AA again, around four or five years later, but it didn't stick. I went maybe three months and then stopped going. One time I quit drinking for eighteen months, then started back. I drank steadily from then on. I drank every day.
I didn't drink any heavier than any of the people I saw socially, so I'd found my own level. I first started getting into the papers because I was a beer drinker. I had a beer joint. I didn't drink any more than most of the press people who were writing about my drinking. We were drinking buddies even when Jimmy was governor, and even after he started running for President. It was the only thing to do in town. I got a reputation as a beer drinker. I always drank beer, but I guess you might say I drank beer for show, more than anything else. During that time, I was drinking hard stuff a lot more than I was beer. I drank beer in public, lots of bourbon, otherwise.
I drank with the press and had a good time with them. I talked a lot then. One of the first things I found out was that they believed almost anything you told them. They printed it. It got to be kind of an ongoing game. I had a usually friendly, but sometimes unfriendly, war going on with them. My drinking caused some of it, I guess. I would have been a lot more quiet and in the background if it had not been for my drinking.
Nobody knew who I was when Jimmy was governor and I was drinking. Nobody knew who I was when he was first running for President and I was drinking. Then the press got so hot on his born-again Christianity because the Yankee Catholics were scared to death of it. They had to have something to offset it. I was there. I don't regret it. Lots of people say I lost Jimmy the presidency the second time. I didn't lose forty-four states. I think I had a lot to do with him winning the first time.
My hard-drinking years were after Jimmy became President and I quit the peanut business. My lifestyle changed completely. If Jimmy hadn't been President I probably would have drunk myself to death, like 99 percent of the alcoholics do. They told me that at Long Beach.
I don't think my drinking progressed any more the last three or four years I drank, except that I had more time to drink. I traveled full time. I very seldom worked during the daytime. Most of my work was at night. My reputation was such that I was expected to drink. It was Billy Beer time.
When I was on the road, speaking or doing whatever I was doing, my son-in-law, Mark, and Ty Coppinger, who now coaches football at the University of South Carolina, traveled with me. I drank until four or five hours before I was supposed to make an appearance. I'd take chlorohydrate to knock me out for six hours, then get up and do what I had to do. If I had to give a talk, I wouldn't take a drink until I went on. After I went on, Mark would give me vodka in a glass. I would drink it down. If I stayed on over thirty minutes, he would bring me a glass of water with vodka or gin. I would function that way and go back to the room and drink all night. I didn't like to be by myself. Someone would stay with me all the time. They'd rotate nights sleeping. I think that during that time, probably Mark, Ty, and Sybil were the only ones who had any idea how much I was drinking.
Eventually, when I got up in the morning, I had two drinks and puked blood for thirty minutes. I needed a drink to function for the day. I knew something wasn't quite normal. I couldn't hold any food at all on my stomach. I would go home and my daughter would cook what I wanted. I'd eat half a meal and throw it up. So I wouldn't hurt her feelings, I'd come back and eat the rest of it; but I'd throw that up. I couldn't hold anything down. All this time I was still functioning fairly well. There were still a lot of people who didn't think I drank anything but beer. I was drinking, I think, close to half a gallon of booze a day then, plus beer. I was getting paid to drink beer, so I drank some. I would keep a beer can in my hand most of the time, and I drank a lot of vodka and bourbon all day long, too. Like most alcoholics, I never missed anything I had to do. I was a functioning alcoholic. My tolerance, instead of getting lower and lower, was getting higher and higher. I was functionally sober with a 2.5 alcohol level. That's what it took to keep me operating. They told me that at Long Beach.
Then I got afraid. I got afraid I was going to die. It was getting so bad I couldn't handle it. I had been under the impression that every alcoholic is under, that I could quit any time I wanted to. I couldn't. I thought, When I want to quit, I'll quit by myself. I couldn't.
I tried. Sometimes I said, "Hell, there's no need to quit." I would always have the same story in my mind, "I can quit, so what's the need to quit." Finally, I just gave up. When I went into the hospital, I had no desire to quit drinking, and I didn't go in to quit drinking.
I had no thought of quitting. I just wanted to slow down. And even after I went into Long Beach for treatment, I had no thought of quitting for the first three to four weeks I was there.
I went to the hospital because I was killing myself drinking. I'd quit eating. I'd gone on a complete alcohol diet, nothing else. It was full time. I don't think I had eaten any solid food in over fifty days—I couldn't hold it on my stomach. I went to the hot-vodka route. It would have to be room temperature for me to drink it, particularly when I started in the morning. Anything colder wouldn't stay on my stomach. This was February of 1979. I agreed to go into the hospital—for acute bronchitis. That's when the press got on it so hot. They didn't know why I had bronchitis. I went in to sober up. I agreed that I wouldn't drink while I was in the hospital. But I went in with four pints of vodka in my briefcase. When I got everybody out of the damn room and got ready to settle down for a good night, I opened my briefcase, which was still locked, and my vodka was gone. I never did figure out what happened to it.
In treatment I resented everybody. Why the hell was I there? Why was I there when everybody else was out having a good time? Why was it me? I finally realized that it didn't make a difference to anybody else whether I quit or not. The only one it made any difference to was me. I could go ahead and drink myself to death. I could go ahead and stay drunk full time. I think after three, four, five weeks I realized that if I was going to quit, I couldn't quit for Sybil. I couldn't quit for the doctor. I couldn't quit for my kids. I had to quit for myself. It finally clicked. I could quit for myself. It was worthwhile, too.
I can truthfully say I have no desire for a drink, and I think if I were to drink today I would immediately drink myself to death. I would feel that I had given up completely on myself. I don't stay sober for Sybil Carter or Jimmy Carter. It sounds egotistical as hell, but, as far as I'm concerned, I don't drink for myself, and that's it.
If I hadn't started to drink, I never would have had to stop. Now it makes me feel good when somebody comes up to me and says, "Well, I quit drinking six months ago. I thought if you could do it, with all you went through, I could do it." People respect me for it and I don't catch any static from anybody about not drinking. I know it's all right with me if I don't drink. It doesn't bother me anymore. The only people who resent my not drinking are people who have tried to quit themselves and haven't been able to.
I don't think I did anything spectacular. I don't think I did anything anybody else couldn't do. I'm definitely not a hero about it.
I regret that my drinking hurt Sybil and my kids. If I hurt some of my friends, too, I regret that. I've become real close to my four oldest kids since I quit drinking. I hardly knew them when they were coming up. I regret that more than anything else. I regret the way it hurt Sybil, but I think Sybil and I are both stronger since we came through all this. Heck, we've been married twenty-nine years and still love each other. I think we're as happy as anybody now.
I enjoy life more. I enjoy every day. I think I'm happier now than I have ever been. It's different. I enjoy the job I've got. I look forward to every day. I feel basically good every day, but I don't think I have changed much. I'm a little quieter. I'm not the life of the party anymore. I can't dance anymore, but we do basically what we want to.
I live a normal life. I enjoy not drinking. As I said, it's all right for me not to drink.
***
Florence Caesar could tell, just by looking at Sid Caesar, that he had been drinking. Things had to be "perfect and smooth" around the house, and she sometimes wondered if it was something she had said that set off Sid's drinking. On the other hand, Florence did realize "it was his problem." As his alcoholism progressed, it was a relief to have Sid fall asleep, drinking.
The kids were critical of Sid's alcoholic behavior. According to Florence, "The youngest one said one time, when Sid was ranting and raving, 'Why don't we get a different daddy?'—at two and a half years old."
Sid Caesar is an alcoholic. He is recognized as a comedy genius. "Your Show of Shows" and "The Caesar Hour" rank among the top series in the history of television. Sid and his wife, Florence, live in California.
Everything Sid liked had to be a lot. He had steak in those days, a heavy big steak and a big roast beef. If one drink was good, two or three were better. So it was gradual and it started to affect him, affect his attitude, his manner. He was very different when he was drinking from when he wasn't. As he worked, he was very successful from the beginning, so there was a lot of stress there. That was his reason. He came out of the service, and we were married. He played nightclubs for a while, movies, a Broadway show, and television. He was the star, a hit. He became a star very quickly. And he drank along with it. What saved him, in a way, was that he would eat, and he took a lot of vitamins. I think that's what saved his health, although the alcohol was affecting his liver as he drank more and more.
Five or six years after we were married, he began to get very difficult when he was drinking. He'd get angry. He'd forget about it, and the next day he'd say, "What did I do? What was so terrible?" He wouldn't even remember.
Eventually, the doctor put him on pills to get him off alcohol. It started to affect him in about 1953. That's when it started to bother him physically, when they put him on pills. Then he'd sleep. He would do a lot of sleeping, which, as far as I was concerned, was much easier. He'd just fall asleep, drinking, instead of raving and ranting. It wasn't normal for the kids to see him sleeping so much, but it was a little more peaceful. I'd watch television, read, do what I wanted. He did a lot of sleeping. It was amazing. Before he opened his Broadway show, Little Me, in 1962, he was sleeping for hours and hours. But the opening was wonderful. The show was wonderful. He was good in it, too.
***
Sid Caesar was appearing in a play in Canada. It was opening night. As Sid recalls, "I did the first act, but I couldn't do the second act. I didn't know where I was." Sid missed cues, forgot lines, and couldn't remember whether to sit or stand. In his dressing room, between acts, he looked in the mirror, made his choice between life and death, and told the theater staff to "get a doctor."
Nothing says so much so briefly about alcoholism as the words of Sid Caesar. The hopelessness, lethargy, and slow suicide of the final months of his drinking in 1978, stand in stark contrast to the zest, vitality, and enthusiasm in his life today.
I lay in bed for practically four months. I never left the house. Just lay in bed and read and read and read. A big thing was to go out and get a haircut. That was really a big achievement, if I could make it. I didn't care anymore. I had given up on myself. I was thinking about doing terrible things to myself. I could never bring myself to it. I never got dressed. I remember very well just walking around in pajamas. Never left the house.
I was a lump, just walking around in a stupor all the time. All the pills, the beer, the wine, it didn't make any difference.
I had given up. I didn't believe in myself anymore. It was just too painful to get through a day, because I was just killing time, wasn't doing anything. I didn't care to do anything. I had reached a point where I was just doing it slowly instead of quickly.
What do you think drinking is? For people who can't control it, like me, it's slow suicide.
Today, I walk around my garden and look at the flowers. I watch the gardener. I look at the house. I say, "Gee, I'm a lucky guy." Let me get out in the morning. I get the paper and stop and smell the roses. I do. I appreciate things.
I'm positive now. I don't say, "This is no good and that's no good." It's so much easier to live by saying, "Isn't that nice?"
As much as I intended to destroy myself physically and mentally, that's how much I'm devoted to turning it around 180 degrees. I look forward to working out. I really do. I enjoy it. As addicted as I was to alcohol, that's how I am to working out. You take a good workout and a good steam and a shower. Oh, boy! Little lay-down for about twenty minutes. You get up. You feel like a trillion dollars. That's it! That's what I look forward to now.
So I built myself up. I take pride in myself. And I'm good to myself because I deserve it. I went through a lot with the other guy. I'm with this guy now.
I watch what I eat. I don't drink anymore. You couldn't pay me to take a drink.
I go out and have fun—real fun. Really. I look at myself and say, "What a lucky guy I am. I caught myself."
***
Lois Robards thought she was headed for a nervous breakdown and would end up in a psychiatric ward. She would wake up in the morning and begin to cry. She couldn't take it any longer and made the decision to leave.
She had thought that the birth of their second child—a son whom Jason desperately wanted—would change everything; but immediately thereafter it was life as usual. After discussing escape money with their accountant and lining up a job in Canada, she told Jason of her plans to leave—and she meant it.
Jason Robards is an alcoholic. He is considered to be one of America's finest actors. On the Broadway stage, on television, and in film, he has won all the major acting prizes, including two Academy Awards. He and his wife, Lois, and their two children live in Connecticut.
What I knew about Jason was that he was a totally good person. It wasn't as if he was a real rotter. He didn't chase women or beat me. I thought of him as someone who never could really accept love. He just didn't believe somebody could love him completely, and in his drinking behavior he would drive you away to prove that love didn't exist. That's really how I saw him. I remember when we were first married, he got up after dinner one evening and declared, "Work is the only thing. It's the absolute. The only thing that really means anything to me is when the curtain goes up and I'm working in the theater." My sister was there, and she was dumbfounded that I did not believe that Jason really meant it. She said, "He declared to everyone at the dinner table that he did not care about his children, his wife, anyone, as much as he did work." I said, "I don't believe it."
From the very beginning, when his mother left, I think he had the feeling that if he did love somebody, that person would go away. So he was not willing to express that. He might tell me how much he loved me and everything like that, but there were moments when he was drinking when he would say how the theater was all that was important to him. It hurt, but I still didn't believe it was true. Maybe something in me would say, "I can prove to him that he's wrong." I don't know.
We met in 1966, when we were working on a show called Noon Wine, a Katherine Anne Porter short story. I was in TV and film production, and I was the associate producer on the show. I worked for the Suskind and Melnick Company at the time. Oddly enough, I didn't really see Jason at all when we were working. It was after that he called me up and asked me to go out to dinner. I said all right. Then my secretary, a great big, long, tall, spindly Englishwoman said, "Oh, he's divine. He's married to Lauren Bacall." I said, "What?" I absolutely didn't know that. So I said, "Oh, my gosh, he's married. Call up the studio and leave a message that I can't go." He was working over at Twentieth at the time and I was at CBS. She left word at the gate because we couldn't get through to the studio where they were shooting. So I went home and I was in my bathrobe, and guess what? Knock, knock at the door at nine o'clock. "Gee, sorry I'm late," he says. "Why aren't you dressed and ready?" It was one of those situations where you go, "Ah, ah, ah ... You didn't get my message? Ah, ah, ah..." So I went out with him, and that was the beginning.
I suppose when you're going out with someone, you think of drinking as just having a good time. You never think that it's going to stay that way all the time. You think, Well, when he is working that doesn't happen, right? But then I did know, because I went with him to Europe before we were married, and I realized that he had a terrible drinking problem. But by that time I was very much in love with him. I had every intention of not marrying him because of his drinking problem. But I did anyhow.
At that time, he could go along for a week or so and work and do whatever he was doing, but then he'd come for the weekend and he might just be drunk all day Saturday or Sunday. We'd go out to dinner on Saturday night and he'd start drinking brandy after dinner; then we'd play music into the morning and carry on and sing, and he'd be really out of it. Never an unhappy drunk. There was just no tomorrow. It was all wonderful. The world was wonderful. But I knew this man had a very serious problem.
We'd start out drinking and I'd think, Well, this is going to be a perfectly wonderful evening. We'd have a couple of drinks and we'd have wine with dinner and I'd think that was going to be it. But it wasn't. It'd be a drink after dinner and then drinks all night. Some nights he would have no drinks, or just a drink with dinner, and everything would be perfectly fine. He could go along for months in which he wouldn't get terribly drunk. But then, suddenly, it was out of control, especially whenever there were any money problems or any kind of emotional problem, such as with his ex-wife or children. There were always problems with alimony. He would get very upset and that would always mean two days drunk. It would definitely mean that.
When I see someone doing that sort of thing, I think I have more concern for their sake than I do for the embarrassment of the situation. Embarrassment never had anything to do with my feelings about his drinking, even if we were in a restaurant with someone and he was singing very loudly or if I had to look for him in bars, asking for him by name. Those things did not bother me as much as my concern for him.
I never ever discussed it with my family. Don't ask me why. That's one of those areas that I could not discuss with my family. I didn't want them to feel sorry for me or think less of Jason. Most of the time, after we were married, we were under enormous stress. I did not want them to know. I just felt that I was an adult, I had made the choice. Even with my brothers and sisters, I could not share it.
My parents were staying with us in Connecticut at one point, and Jason had not come home overnight. They knew he was in Moon for the Misbegotten, and they were getting up to go on a trip with my other sister in the morning. I called her and said, "Carol, could you please pick up Mom and Dad by eight-thirty?" Someone had found Jason. He had been out overnight in a bar and had been located. I had been on the phone all night. My parents got up and were tiptoeing around to make sure, just as they always did, that Jason would not be awakened, because he'd had a terribly tough night doing Moon for the Misbegotten. To this day, they still do not know that he was never home. They left and then the other car came with Jason. Just a half-hour in between cars. I had to make sure they didn't see the sad scene of this man singing away, gone to the world. They never saw that.
He quit when Shannon was three. She was accustomed to being quiet while Daddy slept because he had been in a lot of plays when she was small. His sleeping late wasn't a big problem with her, particularly. But one time Jason did not show up from the theater. It was when he was doing Country Girl. I had to wheel Shannon through the rain in her stroller, in and out of bars on the West Side until it was her naptime, looking for him. He eventually showed up with a package of sausage and an off-duty New York policeman who had decided to bring him home. The policeman had heard from one of the bartenders along the route that we were looking for him.
I wouldn't say these things were common, only maybe every three to four months. You just never knew when it was going to happen. Never any idea.
I don't think his drinking got worse. I think his ability to drink got worse. His tolerance was less and less. I think his intent was, Oh, I'll just have a couple of drinks. But once he started, he'd be standing in a bar someplace and he would remember an old song or the old baseball games and he'd just keep right on going. I don't think he ever had any conscious intent, saying "Oh boy, I'm going to lay one on tonight and forget my troubles."
What I used to say most of all was, "Why do you do this to yourself?" I would always wait until a hangover was over—because he always felt very guilty when he had done something like that. He'd be the one, rather than us, tiptoeing around the house, saying, "Oh, no, no, don't bother, I'll get my own breakfast," whenever he happened to get up. "No, no, no, I don't need anything," he'd say. "No, that will do." Everything was perfect, no matter what was going on. He'd try to melt into the woodwork. I knew that I couldn't say anything because the guilt was so heavy already—especially toward the end, when he was dong Moon, right before and after Jake was born.
We had gone to see a psychiatrist. Jason really had gotten particularly bad on Moon. He was carrying a heavy role in a heavy play and it seemed that his ability to drink was gone. He had already had his car accident, and he had quit drinking for a while. Then it was just a little wine, then heavier drinking. And then it was just as if nothing had ever happened. It was so reckless of him to do at that particular time, a man who had just come so close to losing his life. And he was in a play that no one expected to be worth anything. They expected no more than a five-week run. He was into it almost a year when he really started drinking heavily.
I realized I was going to leave him when I began to think I was having a nervous breakdown. And I was, I am sure. It wasn't any pretend part at all. I was pregnant with Jake. I was told I was going to have complications with the delivery. And here I was with this man who had absolutely no will to take care of himself, to fulfill life for himself, let alone care about what was happening with his family. This child was something he had wanted very much. Here this child is about to be born and I can't even find him at night after the show. I think he realized that I meant it when I said to him, "Jason, I cannot worry about you and about me and these children, too. I can only worry about them at this point, so I am leaving when this child is born. I am going. I have to."
He disappeared again right after Jake was born. I'd been driving down to the theater when I should have been breast-feeding our child. The milk would be pouring out of me. I would go right into his dressing room and say, "You're coming home with me." Often he'd dismiss the driver and then the driver would call me and say, "He's done it again." I'd say, "I told you to stay there at that curb until he came out." And he'd say, "But he won't get into the car with me." So I would have to go storming down there and say, "O.K., you're coming home." I wasn't embarrassed when the stage manager and the doorman and everybody stood right there, listening to my harangue until he came out. The policeman outside got accustomed to my car being double-parked outside the theater.
At that time Jason was still doing Moon. I don't know how much subconsciously, as an actor, Jason began to feel as though he was destined to be that character, Jim Tyrone, that he was going to booze himself to death.
I really never wanted to leave Jason, but when I got up every morning I would start to cry. I was breast-feeding a newborn child, and I couldn't look at the day because I was in such emotional pain. I thought that I might have a breakdown. I don't know what I'll do with these two little children, I thought. If I don't do something, I may end up in a psychiatric ward at Norwalk Hospital. That's where I'm heading. It would terrorize me to think about it, the fact that I might end up in a mental hospital soon if I didn't do something to change my life. I would be driving the car, going to the station to pick up somebody, or I would be alone, and I would cry. I would get up in the morning and have to wash away the tears. I began to feel very unstable. I felt I had to change this. It was not the time for me to fall apart, because I would leave two children behind.
I think that Jason probably recognized, too, what was happening. He made an appointment to see a hypnotherapist. After the first appointment, he called me up and said, "Your mumbo-jumbo man worked and I'll never take a drink again." Of course I thought this had to be too much of a miracle. It couldn't happen in one time. But he came home that night and said, "I feel like a great weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I will never drink again. My son will never see me drunk."
I said to myself, "I've got to believe. I've got to believe. I've got to see this, but I've got to believe." I'd never ever heard him say, "I will never be drunk again."
I think actually leaving does a lot more than saying, "I'm leaving." I had spoken to our accountant about the financial arrangements, and I had called to find out if I might be able to get a production job in Canada, which I could. I realized that I was going to have to support myself. If I were going to disappear, I wasn't going to move down the block from Jason. If I was going to move out, I was going to move. I was going to leave, definitely. I don't think there was any doubt in Jason's mind. But he stopped drinking, and I stayed.
***
Jason Robards never set out to get drunk, and he remembers that some of his drinking was fun. But he also says some of it was "madness" and "paranoia" and he sometimes drank to handle problems and worries. When an alcoholic quits drinking and then goes back again, he picks up where he left off. It's as if he had continued to drink. At one time, Jason quit for a year and a half, then went back to drinking as usual. Later, after a car accident that nearly cost him his life and necessitated plastic surgery, he resumed drinking at the same level, and then worse.
Until that moment of truth when the alcoholic comes to grips with his alcoholism and realizes he cannot drink anymore, the revolving door keeps on spinning.
In the early years, I never could afford to drink. I had a wife, and we were barely getting by, living in a cold-water flat. I was trying to be an actor and was not terribly successful until I was thirty-five years old. It was eleven years of struggle. During those years, my twenties and early thirties, I was not really a drinker. I had a beer, once in a while, a nickel beer. It was not a question of alcohol being a daily occurrence. At Christmas we would buy a bottle of PM, the cheapest whiskey we could get, and make a punch for our guests. We never had whiskey or wine, just beer once in a while, when we could. I never had any problems with drinking.
It was during the run of A Long Day's Journey into Night that I really started to drink on a daily basis. I don't mean getting drunk, falling down. I couldn't have. I was doing a play and I never drank before a performance.
In those days the curtain was at 8:30. You didn't get out of the theater until close to midnight. In New York, in those days, everything stayed open. All the great restaurants were open until two, three in the morning. And so it became routine. "I'll meet you at Frankie and Johnnie's. We'll have a steak. We'll have drinks." "I'll meet you at Downey's. We'll have hamburgers, drinks." It's in the profession, in a way. I'm not blaming the profession. But so many people in it, at that time, met and drank and ate and went home to bed about four, because the whole workday begins at night.
I noticed it during Long Day's Journey into Night, which I played for two years. I played the older brother, who is really dead the minute you see him. I found the longer I played it, the harder and harder it was to separate myself from him, off stage, when I was finished. I was getting praise, which I didn't know how to accept at all. I didn't accept the warnings about being unable to shake a character that you are playing—and he's a devastating character. O'Neill knew the classic case of the guy who was unable to face things and was killing himself through drink. He takes that man ten years later through another play, Moon for the Misbegotten, which I also did, and shows you his demise. He doesn't die physically on the stage, but he is dead the minute he leaves at the end of the play. So here we're dealing with a real classic. I was that guy. I know now. Later I went into a play called The Disenchanted, in which I did Scott Fitzgerald, and I died on the stage from drink.
I don't do a role and just learn lines and go back to the hotel. I still have the residue of that play and cannot throw it off that easily.
My life was disintegrating. So were my marriage and my drinking. My first wife drank along and she became an alcoholic, much worse than I. It was also compounded with mental illness. The depression of alcohol on top of her own depression kept her in hospitals, off and on, for almost fifteen years. Most of the time I raised my oldest children by myself. I would hope for a job so I could get a baby sitter, but by the time I paid the baby sitter I came out with nothing.
I'd pick up empty bottles. You could trade them in for a nickel to get food. It was that kind of existence. My wife would come home from the hospital, but then she would get sick again and go back. At first I didn't connect it with alcohol. I thought it was just a mental condition. But the two combined finished her. She died about six years ago.
I never missed a performance as the old man in Long Day's Journey. I never missed a show, just like the character, who is a drunk and who's also never missed a performance. I was always on time. I didn't drink before I went on. I have gone on with hangovers, but I never had a drink less than twelve hours before a show. That came much later. I had youth, when your enzymes are working for you. You have everything making it go, so you're not even having hangovers most of the time. You feel like a million bucks. I was a distance runner. I had great endurance. Great energy and power were natural to me. I'd think, What the hell—wait for the weekend and we'll get shit-faced, and then we'll sober up—Sunday. We'll perform Monday and we'll be fine, and we were. We were fine.
My wife and I broke up. I went with another girl, got married, but was married only about three weeks. Wonderful girl, and I was drunk the whole time. I didn't know what the hell was going on. She got wise and pulled out. I don't blame her.
Then I married Betty, and she said, "Oh, I'm used to heavy drinkers. Bogey was a heavy drinker, but not an alcoholic." I could never figure that one out. It killed him. She thought there was a correct way to drink. There was no way for me to handle a drug like that. And you can't handle an alcoholic by strident behavior. You can't just yell at a guy. I was constantly moving to a hotel room. I loved to go to a goddamn hotel and lock the door. At least I got peace and quiet. I kept checking into hotels. When I heard the doors slam in some of those toilet hotels I stayed in, I thought I was in a Cagney picture. I'd be sitting on the bed and the priest, Pat O'Brien, would be giving me the last rites. The cell door would slam. But it was still better than being badgered at home. I thought everybody was badgering.
I made great attempts at being a nice fellow. I tried very hard to be a father to my stepchildren, Bogey's kids. It lasted for about eight years, I guess, that relationship.
Every girl I went with, I married. Completely in love. When I was getting divorced for the second time, I had only one day to fly to Juarez to get the divorce, because I was getting married and I had a show Monday night. My father, who was in the play with me, said, "You know, Jason, I think you ought to take the weekend off. Your marriages are overlapping."
Having to be married was another strange thing that came from lack of self-esteem. If I didn't marry a girl, I was sure I was going to lose her. You can't keep a girl, I thought. Each one was the ideal of my dreams. So I married. Again and again. You do that three times and you see the destruction and the death of relationships. It's the death of a person, an ideal person. I felt it as a death.
I married Lois when I was really starting on the way down. I don't know how she took the first five years. That's something she has to explain. I wouldn't have taken it had I been she. I couldn't take that kind of thing. A couple of times it came very close to falling apart, and the last time it came close is when I quit. That and the problems with work did it.
The last thing to go is work. It's always the last thing to go. The family, your health, everything can go, but work remains. When the work goes, you hit the bottom. Rock bottom. That's it.
I could not face my problems, my children, my wife. The only thing that kept me anchored was the work, to the point where I said that the only thing that mattered in the world to me was the theater. It was a haven. I went to the dressing room earlier and earlier every day, so I could stay there longer. I left later and later at night. Usually you spend four and a half hours in the theater. I would spend eight to ten. Never leave. I don't mean for the audience. That's only the two and a half to three hours. I would go in earlier and earlier, get the feel of the theater, walk around, talk with the stagehands, be part of that womb. That dark womb. Those empty seats. All that is left after the show are crushed orange drink cartons and the programs with your face stepped on by a million people.
You can't play a drunk drunk. There's where you get into trouble. I tried. I wasn't shit-faced, but I had had a few. When that happened, I had the choice of life or death—that and the threat of Lois leaving both happened simultaneously.
With Lois it was never really a threat, just straight. I saw her cracking. Psychologically finished.
Isn't it odd that this guy in Moon for the Misbegotten is a dying drunk, seeking forgiveness, love, and understanding, but he is too far gone? Isn't it odd that the character I played as a young man, I played many years later as an older character who dies? I made the choice not to die. I let him die and I began. That was ten years ago. I let him die. I never drank again. I played that role another eight months, and I was better than ever.
Colleen Dewhurst said, "I will never forget that performance. You were Jamie, Jim Tyrone. You were that man dying in my arms that day. I have never seen truth like that before." It was the truth of knowing that I was finished. I thought I was really finished in life, as an actor, as a husband, a father, lover, knowing that I was going to my death and trying not to do it, not to die. It was the culmination of thirty years of technique that got me through that performance, but what was going on way underneath was the classic case of the alcoholic. Everything destroyed. All you could give him/me was pity and forgiveness, which is what is said in the last line of the play. The character and I became one. And that isn't acting. Because otherwise, if you do Othello you have to be arrested for murder. You have to get a new actor to kill Desdemona every night. Colleen didn't mean what she said as a compliment. She meant it as terrifying truth.
At the same time this happened, a psychiatrist whom I saw sent me to a hypnotherapist. He was a little guy named Nat Fleischer, on Fifth Avenue in the Village. I could see the son of a bitch was in some kind of trim. He said, "I'm sixty-four years old and a diabetic. Look at me, I'm healthy." He was. He was terrific. "I'm going to give you two hours here," he said, "and it's going to cost you nothing because I work with drug addicts. I work in hospitals all around the world. I have just come from France, where I did four major operations using hypnosis, where people cannot use any anesthesia."
I went to him three times, once a week. Finished. I was completely ready. I admitted that I was an alcoholic. I got the re-enforcement at the moment that I admitted it. So it helped. I never drank again.
I cannot take a drink, and I'm not interested in it. It doesn't even cross my mind. It's a different stage of my life now. I have no desire. I can sit in bars and sit at dinners and love it. I get emotionally drunk.
We were in France, at a castle friends of ours rented. They had wine with dinner every night, and I was not drinking. It was as if I were ... The mood was wonderful.