The Harder They Fall

by Gary Stromberg

  It’s hard to know exactly when I became an alcoholic. What I do know is that growing up I felt misunderstood, not appreciated, and needing validation. I didn’t feel I was getting it from important people in my life. They had their problems, their own concerns. I felt sort of invisible. The way I handled that was by leaving. By going to college, which was great. People were listening to me. They were younger of course—it was college—but I got validation for my point of view. Then I found out that I was funny, and I realized that this was like a natural high. I could make people laugh. So when I got out of college, I became a comedy writer.

  My father died before I ever went on stage. He was a great caterer and a powerful figure in my life. I put him on a pedestal. I would have become a comedian eventually, but when he died, when I was twenty-three, it had such an impact on my family, on my mother and my siblings. It was such a shock. He was a giant to us, such a Babe Ruthian figure. I had a hole in my soul when my father died. I had already begun to write jokes, but that wasn’t filling me up. So I went on stage, but I was thrown into a business where I was judged every time I went on stage. Whatever psychological problems I had—and I had my share from growing up—were accentuated being in an environment with so much booze. Slowly but surely drinking became my way to relax, to celebrate. It was a way to numb the pain of bombing. It was a way of dealing with things I didn’t want to deal with. Drinking made me feel not as miserable. It was a great Band-Aid.

  It progressed, but it didn’t stop me in my career. I’ve done well, and I was an alcoholic at the height of my career, when I really hit. When alcohol really got me by the throat, I quit stand-up comedy. Acting was easier. Easier to stay sober most of the time, do my work, and know I’m off for three days. Then I’d drink as much as I wanted ’cause I didn’t have to show up anywhere. I did most of my drinking alone, but I certainly did a lot of drinking while dating. The women weren’t enabling me … well, maybe a few did, offering me drugs toward the end. Not all of them knew I was an alcoholic. I hid it well early on. I remember one woman said, “You’re so much nicer when you don’t drink.” Like everyone else, I have these tremendous horror stories, and my life by my early forties was totally controlled by my need to drink.

  One very economical visual would be … On the road, I had finished my concert the night before in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A lot of these cities have different rules for alcohol. It was Sunday and it was in the afternoon, but there was this cage over the bar. It was closed, but I felt like a wild animal wanting to break into the bar. All sources of alcohol were closed. Apparently they didn’t sell alcohol in Albuquerque on Sunday. I wanted to pry open the metal cage.

  There were tip-offs, even way early. I remember getting some sort of sexually transmitted disease that was going to last for a week. I had to take certain antibiotics, and I remember the doctor very nonchalantly saying, “Oh, by the way, you can’t drink for five days.” I was going to New York to appear on the Letterman show, and all I thought about was, “Oh my God, there I am in first class, five-and-a-half hours in an airplane, without booze. There I am in New York with my friends and no booze. I can’t even have a couple of glasses of wine in my hotel room to relax before the show.” That’s all I thought about. I wasn’t thinking of my career. I wasn’t thinking about anything but “I can’t believe I can’t drink.” It was horrifying. And that was thirteen years before I bottomed. I tell a lot of people now, in sobriety—like I told someone today who had almost two years and he slipped—I said, “You know you really put a lot of sober time in the bank. You have to know that that time you spent sober is not lost. I’ve heard you and seen you inspire others when you were sober, including me, man, so believe me, not only was your life better off, but so was ours and it’s time not lost.”

  I left rehab because I was ashamed. People recognized me and that made me ashamed. Plus, I guess I hadn’t bottomed out yet. I knew I had to stop drinking. It was murder to do, but I had to stop. I knew I was going to lose everything: my career, my friends, my house, my work. I could go crazy. Anything could have happened.

  A friend of mine who is a psychologist said I would never survive rehab because of my shame, and he was right. I felt that I was there not just as an alcoholic like everybody else needing help, but I also felt like “the celebrity” and it made me feel singled out and even more ashamed of myself. So I left, but I knew I was in trouble. So I went to this self-help group back in Los Angeles, and I’ve been going ever since. I’ve had two slips. One slip, and then I had a really bad slip, and that was my bottom. These were brought on by God knows why.

  It got to the point where I was in my early forties. I was very depressed and in my house. Then the epiphany happened. I flashed back to wandering the streets of New York. Broke. Then I thought, “You know, I bought this house in the Hollywood Hills by telling jokes. It’s a dream come true.” I was hallucinating. I was emaciated. Holed up doing coke for six nights. I was just isolating and using, and I said, “This is a nightmare, what I’m doing.” I felt like I was sinning against myself and whatever God I believed in. I was ashamed to waste my life, given all the blessings I had. That I would throw away my life needlessly. To have a disease that I could stop giving myself, if I surrendered, finally.

  Then I called some friends and said, “I’ve had it.” And that night, I did surrender. I quit. No más. They took me to an ER where the doctor recognized me and the nurses were pointing at me, and it was similar to the experience I had before in my brief rehab stint, but this time I felt no shame. I was just so thankful. A nurse came over and I was sweating, and she rubbed my brow. Then the doctor looked down at me—he was a thirty-something guy who probably grew up watching me on Letterman—and he said, “Richard, what are you doing?” I said, “I’m killing myself, but no more. I quit. I can’t beat this disease.” And that was it. August 4, 1994, and I’m just glad my bottom was there and not in the ground.

  It was like what I told this guy today, “You didn’t waste a damn minute sober. That time is in the bank. Go back to your sobriety bank, and remember how you were last month. You know how it feels to be healthy.”

  When I was in the treatment center and ready to leave, some of the staff walked me around for hours telling me it was going to be all over for me if I left. They were really firm about it, but I was still in denial, so I had to get away. I felt scared bolting, but I was too fucked up to surrender, although if it hadn’t been for the embarrassment, I would probably have left anyway. I would have said the beds were uncomfortable or something. My disease was cunning. Now, of course, I look back and wish that I had stayed and left with a better understanding of what had got me there in the first place. Yet even though I bolted, I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t be sober today without spending that one night and morning, a hopeless drunk, feeling humiliated and out of control in an actual rehabilitation facility. I realized I was not superhuman, that I was teetering on a demise and had to acknowledge my alcoholism. The real reason I left rehab was I wasn’t done trying to die. It was three months later I hit my real bottom.

  Again though, the therapists told me in no uncertain terms that if I left, I was flirting with death, doom and destruction, insanity, and all the rest. They were right. I’ve been to enough funerals in the last decade of people who I’d once held by their lapels, begging them to stay the course yet never ever seeing the light of belief illuminate their eyes. It was clear to me, even in very early recovery, that the only people who ultimately saved themselves and seriously entered recovery were those who not “just maybe” knew that they needed it, but also wanted it. I’ve discovered that those who tried to get sober for anyone other than themselves usually had a tough go at it or failed completely. It takes a lot of courage—and faith. I had that darkness of denial and disbelief in my own eyes up through that night when I looked in the mirror at my house and didn’t even recognize myself. I had no idea who I was looking at. When I looked in my mirror in my bedroom, when I hit rock bottom and saw how I l
ooked, I realized I was throwing my life away. That’s when I totally surrendered to the disease. You know, everyone has a story, but for me, I felt pitiful. “Pitiful” is a good word to describe how I felt. I felt it was a sin to die of this disease if I didn’t have to.

  Right now I’m in an almost-seven-year relationship, a relationship I could never have been in if I was still drinking. It’s funny. This woman saw me in a sitcom back in the late eighties, but she said, “Oh, he’s too neurotic.” Believe me, the neuroses wouldn’t have done us in; the booze would have. This is a woman who has never seen me have a drink. She’s known me seven of my ten sober years. If something comes up and we have a little argument, I fall into the trap of saying to myself, “You have no idea how bad this argument would be if the Drambuie was hidden behind the cornflakes, man! You have no idea what an asshole I’d be.”

  In fact, many times, especially early in recovery, I felt that I deserved recognition simply for acting saner and more principled. Of course, I felt this way, in particular, with people and in relationships with those who never saw me loaded. Almost as if I expected to feel, from time to time, like there ought to be a ticker-tape parade in my honor, with yours truly the grand marshal, sitting atop a float waving to the cheering throng and saying, “Hey, look at me, I’m sober! Thank you, thank you very much!” But, of course, there’s no parade. It took me quite awhile on my sober path to feel grateful just for not drinking. For any alcoholic, it’s true what I heard a fellow addict once share: that for us, even if we do nothing else in a day other than not drink or use, that alone is huge.

  For sure, when the feelings hit home, sometimes they hit harder when you’re not high. You feel them full force. I sometimes get a little irritated when things aren’t going my way, because I’m feeling the feelings too strongly. But at least I’m able to feel them and be relatively clear. This was never the case before, when I was high and the disease made clarity virtually impossible. It’s a pleasure in recovery not just to see things the way they really are, but to know that your side of the street is clean and finally be able to trust your own feelings.

  I wish I had more sober time with my mother. My mom died in 1999, and I regret to say she had a horrible last couple of years. She really didn’t even know who she was. My mom had a great sense of humor but a lot of problems. My father was a workaholic and a great caterer—sort of a big star in New Jersey and New York. When you needed a caterer, he was the best. After so many years of struggling, when I became successful and well known, it seems to me that I became a threat to my mother. It wasn’t like she was mean spirited. I think my father was a real big shot. Not that he flaunted it, but he was. My mother gradually slipped into the shadows. I really don’t understand it. I have an older brother and sister, and I don’t think even they know. I do know that my mother had a tough time and really didn’t enjoy her life. Consequently, I inherited a lot of her traits. I didn’t enjoy a lot of my life either.

  I would say to my mother—and it’s very humorous now—I’d say, “I’m on The Tonight Show,” and she’d say, “Who else is on?” You know, it was the opposite of a nurturing mother. Now, at fifty-seven, I can look back and see that maybe behind my back she’d tell people that her son is on The Tonight Show. But to me, she was very hard.

  A mother is a mother, and if you’re not nurtured in a way that is loving early on, there’s like a dark hole that can stay with you through decades of psychotherapy. A lot of that is filled with the need for accolades, applause, and affection from women. I ultimately needed alcohol and drugs, for which my mother is not to blame, but she had problems. My father was never home, my sister moved away when I was eight, and my brother had his own stuff to deal with. Left to my own devices, I became an alcoholic. My mother was also a hypochondriac and had all these dysfunctions, which I think she left me in her will. We weren’t an odd couple; we were basically two peas in a pod.

  It was important for me to get affection from women, but I was also scared shitless. You know, in sobriety I’ve made amends to every woman I had a serious relationship with. They all told me that they cared about me, loved me, and I’m still friends with some of them. Some are alcoholics, and I’ve tried to help them. I might have hurt them or hurt their feelings at the time, but I gave them enough love, affection, and caring when I wasn’t high that they knew I had a disease. After the fact. I’m proud I didn’t burn almost any bridge. I didn’t burn my career, wind up insane, or go to jail. I didn’t kill anyone while drunk. I made amends to everyone I thought I hurt. All my relatives and everyone said they loved me and they are proud I’m overcoming this disease.

  I can’t say that for a lot of people. A lot of people I know have blown up their lives and sometimes can’t get a lot of it back. I remember an older guy I met who would always say, “Hi, I’m so-and-so, and I’m a grateful recovering alcoholic.” He’d been in recovery for thirty years. I just thought it was his hook, you know, like every comic has a hook. An alcoholic with a punch line. But now I totally get it. Sometimes I even say it. I’ve stolen his hook! I mean, “I am sooo grateful for two main reasons: I didn’t kill anybody, and every amends I made was taken with love and respect and best wishes for me.”

  Back to my mother, who was unfortunately the type of woman who felt guilty about everything. She had a very interesting personality. She was incredibly narcissistic and unbelievably filled with low self-esteem. I’m certain I inherited part of that. I’m not as narcissistic as I used to be. You have to have some to be in show business, or you’ll get trampled to death. And self-effacing? I’m even less that. The more grateful I got, the less self-effacing I became.

  I remember one day, I was about two or three years sober, my mom had this wonderful man, Jack, who is still alive, whom she met a year or two after my dad died. They became boyfriend and girlfriend for twenty-five years. Jack used to work in sports as a soundman. He’d work at Yankee Stadium, wherever. He’s a great guy. He’s getting up there. Jack was great to my mom. And when I’d be in New York, it was almost like a religious thing: the Friars Club in New York has maybe the greatest brunch in the world, and almost every Saturday, I’d take Jack and my mom. So this Saturday we were at brunch, and I told my mother I was an alcoholic. “No you’re not!” she said flat out. And I blew it. I lost it. I took her into the other room in a frenzy, to talk privately, and said, “Don’t you ever say that again. I am an alcoholic, and I’m in recovery. I’m a drunk, alcoholic, drug addict, and I’m fixing myself.” And she couldn’t accept it, because she felt responsible. At the time, I was angry because I was in early recovery. A lot of people would have said, “Hey, good for you, you’ve surrendered.” I understand my mother’s reaction now, but then it made me so, so angry. I got sober in ’94. My mom started getting sick in the middle of ’97 and died a year and a half later. I had moved to California so I didn’t see her often. When I saw her the last time, she had lost her marbles. It was very hard to see her that way. I’m not sure she knew who she was or not. I told my older sister, who was in the trenches with my mother on a daily basis, “I want to be alone with Mom.” She really was pretty gone by that point. And I held her hand, and I didn’t talk about alcoholism, but I said, “Look, you did the best you could given who you were, with warts and all. I did the best I could too. I love you and I know you love me. And if you know what I’m saying, can you squeeze my hand?” And she squeezed it really hard. That was the last time I saw her.

  I was born into the Jewish religion. I’m not a huge organized religion person, and I’d feel a lot better if I could see some proof. On the other hand, I’m convinced the big bang wasn’t Hugh Hefner’s first party at the mansion. I think maybe there was also some kind of spiritual thing going on: “All right, there’s going to be a big bang, and then we’re going to have some apes, and the apes are going to evolve.” I think something came first, and that’s where I’m at. I’m very spiritual in a lot of ways. Like Spinoza said, “God is everywhere.” I have personal ideas of what a deity
is, and it saved me. Initially I had problems getting sober because I felt, being an agnostic, I was being forced into being more spiritual. I hated it. I remember in college when a new band came out, like Led Zeppelin or something, as great as they are, I waited months to buy their record. I hated to follow the line around the record store. I disliked following. I felt like people were forcing me to believe in something I didn’t believe in. It took me some time, but I found something other than Richard Lewis, because Richard Lewis was going to kill me. So that was a good thing.

  I guess with women, though, I was an affection junkie. I don’t think I was so much a sex addict as I was an affection junkie. I really needed women. Laughs were great and accolades for my art were good, but women …

  I guess it had a lot to do with my mom, in that I felt rejected by her so much of the time. She had no choice but to reject me, because a myriad of reasons stemming from her own complexes made it so that she just couldn’t accept me. She would’ve had such a nicer time if she could have. I would always hear, “Oh, your mother’s so proud of you,” but in reality, she had a hard time being proud of me. I think I searched out as many women as I possibly could. Being well known, it was easy to meet women, but it was empty.

  This past year I ran into a lovely woman whom I recognized, and we’re friends now, again, but this is how bad it got towards the end. She came over and introduced herself. I had forgotten her name. I had gone out with her about three years before I bottomed, so I was really on a bad roll. Apparently, she told me, we had gone out for four months, and I had no recollection of making love with her, kissing her, seeing her. I totally blocked out the whole relationship. I remembered her. I remembered who introduced me to her. And then she started telling me specific events of parties that I recalled. She knew my license plate! She’s a producer and married now and has a beautiful child. This episode scared the shit out of me. A four-month relationship! If you can’t remember dating a woman for four months! Now that we’ve become really great friends, she has shared something interesting with me. She only went out with alcoholics. She had a problem with commitment back then. Finally though, she met her husband-to-be, and I was the last drunk that she went out with. Thank God! She said, “You know, when they carried you out of the restaurant on New Year’s Eve, I thought to myself, ‘You know, it’s time maybe to find another kind of guy.’”