I remember the beeping of a monitor, and I have an IV drip going into my arm, a nasal cannula, and the pulse thing on your finger to monitor that and the blood pressure cuff. There’s lots of stuff on me. Ingrid was holding our daughter, and as soon as she saw me, she reached out to Daddy because she loved her daddy and I loved her. She reached out to me, she wanted to hold me, and I wanted to hold her, and she couldn’t— I couldn’t—because of all the tubes and everything. And I heard the nurse say, “You know what, this is not going to work.” The nurse just kept saying that, and I never wanted to hear that again. I never wanted to go through that pain again, the pain of not being able to hold my daughter.
I’d hit that point where you’re not really drunk but you’re certainly not sober. You’re in that netherworld where there’s no relief at all from the pain. There’s just this hell, where there’s no drink, no pill that’s going to make it better. And there’s a bill that’s past due. You just keep paying the interest, telling yourself, “I’ll pay that next week. Let me get back to you,” because you want to keep drinking some more and taking drugs some more. Suddenly you can’t roll over the interest on that loan anymore. You got to pay the principal. That’s the day you have the DTs. That’s the day you wind up at Cedars.
That was as low as I ever went, but still I didn’t fully dive into recovery. It was a year and a month later, and I tried it again. I drank half a bottle of wine. Half a bottle, and I’m sick as a dog. I went, “What happened?” My wife said, “You don’t get it, do you? Your thermostat is broken and you’ll never get back to room temperature. You’ve abused the privilege. You’re never, ever going to be able to do this in a normal way, the way that you think other people can and some do.” I realized she was right. Even supposedly normal amounts were a no- go for me.
That was the next epiphany in a series. I went, “This is over. This is over for me.” The concept “Maybe I’ll have some wine with dinner”—that option was gone, because I had so altered my metabolism. Was it my kidneys, my liver? I don’t know. Maybe it was psychological. But I know there was a certain amount of grace involved in me surrendering for that year and a month, and then there was grace and understanding involved in me understanding that I had to make a change.
I think something physical happened with me long before that September thirtieth. I was kind of limping along with a broken thermostat and trying to make it work, and I think I broke it for good when I almost died. I only realized it when I opened that door again, and I just had to open that door because I realized I could no longer be funny. I couldn’t be creative because really creative people, they got drunk. Richard Burton and those people, they were drunks and they were brilliant because they’d get in touch with the spirit. No coincidence, the use of the word spirit. Through drinking, you got that relaxation and you got in touch with authenticity. All the wonderful, talented paint ers and actors and writers, they drank. I wanted to be like them, and I couldn’t possibly do it without drinking.
So then it was like some sort of biblical sacrifice. Abraham was asked to sacrifice Isaac, and he went for the whole thing before God said, “No, I’m sorry. I was just kidding. You don’t have to kill him.” I was willing to sacrifice my creativity, and I did. I just went, “Well, I have carpentry skills, I’ll do that. And maybe, even though I’m no longer talented, maybe I’ll get a job anyway.” I did get a job. I got a job in the show Battlestar Galactica, the original one, playing Ensign Greenbean. That led to the next big epiphany, the biggest positive epiphany of everything I’ve mentioned so far.
I’m there on the set of the show, and I remember vividly other actors that I’ve been interacting with, working with and talking to, socializing with a bit since the first day. This is maybe the sixth episode, and I noticed we’re all sitting in a semicircle, with our folding chairs. And then I noticed something. They were laughing really loud. They were laughing at something near me and I didn’t know what it was and I looked around, and there was nothing that was particularly amusing. I realized they were laughing at me. I was being funny again. That gift was being returned. I was willing to give it up, and it was gone for a while, six months or something, and then suddenly I was funny again.
I went, “Wow! That is pretty good. Is this just for today?” It turned out it wasn’t. I was in touch with an even greater depth, without the destruction or the haze of alcohol and drugs. It wasn’t just the same, it was better, and that was that big gift. That was the biggest epiphany of all, that moment with those chairs in a semicircle, and those people laughing really loud. At who? At me. At me being funny.
I don’t know why I got that moment , those moments, and why other people don’t. I think it’s part luck. Part of it might be my constitution, just being a big old 195-pound Irishman, to take that kind of punishment for that long, long enough to get to the moments. That was my blessing, but it was also my curse, because two days later, three days later, after the worst DTs, I start thinking, “I’m feeling pretty good. Did I have a problem?” Still, I stayed sober for that year and a month, until I saw that yeah, I did have a problem. Had one and still had it, always will have it.
I used to have this theory about the amount of pain that you’re expected to endure in life. It wasn’t just about the drinking, it was about all the other emotional pain that’s a part of life. I was like, “Wow! Okay, life is this. Life is a ratio, it was 60 percent pain and 40 percent pleasure. Maybe worse, maybe 70/30. You got to put up with the 70 percent pain to get the 30 percent pleasure.” Since 1979, when I finally started to really get well, that ratio has changed. It was more like 80/20 for years because I held on to other addictions, even though I’d given up drugs and alcohol. I held on to philandering as an addiction. I held on to gambling as an addiction. I held on to those, and that caused me that extra percentage of pain for a while. When I finally gave those up, the ratio went to 90/10, even 97/3, pleasure to pain. Bad things still happen to me, and I’m not suggesting otherwise, but I just don’t go to that dark place anymore. When I think I’m supposed to paddle, I paddle, but the river takes me, and it turns out that is the way I’m supposed to go.
Alan Watts wrote an essay called “This Is It,” all about how it’s not going to be better later, this is it. This is as good as it gets right now. This is not some dress rehearsal for when you get that movie or when you get that some dress rehearsal for when you get that movie or when you get that square-foot house in Studio City and have any complaints—I don’t. I haven’t had any in years. All my problems are quality problems, every one of them.
In 1998 I had my most challenging year in a long time. I got fired from the show. I’d never been fired from anything before. They picked up the options of all the other actors but not mine, and there was no reason given. They hadn’t come up to me on the set and said, “You’re doing this wrong.” It was nothing but fruit baskets and love letters and everybody loved me until they didn’t want me, and it was horrible.
Then the IRS lost the paperwork associated with my tax return and I had to pay them a lot of money. Then, through a clerical error, some neighbor owned my house through a quitclaim deed, so I couldn’t borrow money on my house. Then my mother died. It was just a horrible year, but in the middle of all of it, I just kept saying, “This isn’t so bad. Each problem I have is a quality problem. I have a house that’ll one day be mine again when they figure out this paperwork. At some point the IRS will get their act together. Did I eat today? Yes. Did I sleep in a Kelvinator box last night? No.” Period. End of sentence. I have no real problems.
Having said that, talk to my wife; she may have a different perspective on how I handle it. And I do have my moments where I get into a bit of stress, but I will tell you they are quite rare, especially compared to the way it used to be. I mostly do not stress out.
Kelly McGillis
Like many men in America, I fell in love with Kelly McGillis after seeing her in Top Gun and Witness. Kelly left Hollywood in the early nineties, and I figured
she’d decided she’d rather raise some kids, or do any of the ten million things less maddening than making a living as an actor. She did have two lovely little girls, but unfortunately, most of Kelly’s energy went into wrestling that 800-pound gorilla. Our paths crossed on a hot summer day in 2006, at the Caron Treatment Centers in Pennsylvania, where both of us were sharing our experience, strength, and hope with those still in treatment. That’s when I learned about her journey.
The story she shared with me that day, the story she agreed to share here, shows us a couple of things. First, beauty, talent, strength, and success do not immunize you from addiction. And second, you can recover from terrible trauma and addiction—and not just survive, but thrive.
I
n recovery, I’ve realized that life is about fun. It didn’t used to be about fun, and it really should be, because I’ve only got this one chance. Work used to be my whole life, and I sacrificed everything for that. I
wasn’t ever present for my kids. I wasn’t ever around. I was working or partying, and today I’m a full-time mom, and it has changed my relationship with my kids, and my life. We can actually talk, we can actually decorate the Christmas tree together and not have a major drama. Being able to laugh together. Those kinds of moments are things I’ve never had in my life. It’s a tremendous gift to just be a parent and be here with them.
That’s another thing I’ve learned how to do—to just be here, not always thinking and worrying and wondering. And those are the moments when I don’t see God, the spiritual—I experience it. I experience it with you. I experience it with my neighbor. I experience it sitting here being by myself. I experience it when I go hiking in the hills. I experience it when I hear a fabulous piece of music or see a beautiful painting. And I really was cut off from it before.
It took me twelve years to get sober. There were many things keeping me from recovery. One was the fact that I thought I could do it—I thought I could do everything—by myself. When I finally realized that I had a problem, still I thought, “I should be able to handle this. I’ve handled all these tragic events in my life and I can handle this one too.”
I realized just how much I cannot handle and how thinking that I can handle things all by myself just isolates and alienates me from myself and God. And it’s been freeing to know that Ican’t handle everything by myself. I don’t know how to handle things by myself. I don’t want to handle everything by myself. And that has enabled me to live with a sense of community, and I mean real community, not just a neighborhood. I think self- sufficiency was this huge problem for me, a kind of false, arrogant self- sufficiency.
When it was gone, it opened a place in my soul for who I really am to start emerging. That little door in my soul will shut down sometimes because I’m scared, because I don’t understand—for whatever reason. It wasn’t like the good fairy flew over my head and whacked me with her wand and all of a sudden I was a completely different person. It didn’t happen that way. It’s an ongoing process, and you can’t just call up those spiritually connected moments when you need them.
Sometimes, when I’ve really been struggling, I tell myself to trust that if I keep on going forward, if I just purge myself of whatever it is I need to get rid of, there will be a huge gift on the other side. I don’t need to know why, I just have to trust. I’ve had that miracle before. I’ve had lots of miracles in my life, but it took getting sober to be able to see them.
Those last few years , I knew I had a problem but I had all kinds of things that kept my denial intact. I had a lot of homes and I had a lot of handbags and I had a lot of friends. But even so, the last ten years or so, especially the last five, I was really trying to stop. I was going to mutual support groups, but I had this idea that if I just showed up at a meeting, I’d be struck by the sober fairy and that would be it. I never did anything that people suggested to me. Oftentimes, especially when I was on the road, I would just walk out of a meeting and go back to my hotel room and start drinking.
And then the drinking just got worse and worse and it started taking over. My kids would go on vacation with their dad and I’d think, “Woo- hoo, I can get drunk now because I don’t have any responsibilities.”
Finally, I lost everything. My marriage was over, my kids had been taken away from me, I had to sell my house because I hadn’t worked in a long time, and so I decided it’d be a really good idea to kill myself. I was living in Florida by then, and locked myself in this little apartment with a bottle of booze and some sleeping pills. I don’t know how many days I spent there—I guess maybe three or so—but every time I woke up I would just take more pills and drink more vodka.
I remember waking up at one point and I just heard this little voice speaking to me. The voice wasn’t outside myself, but inside my being, inside my soul, saying, “Not yet.” That was it, just this voice. I wasn’t hearing it, because hearing is something to do with outside; I was experiencing this voice. Whenever I talk about it, I put my hand on my stomach, where my diaphragm is, because that’s where I felt it, right at the center. I was feeling a lot of angst, a lot of despair, a lot of anger, a lot of fear, but after experiencing that voice, I felt a sense of peace. It was something I had never felt before, and I don’t know if I will ever feel it again—an absolute peace and stillness internally. I just stopped fighting and I asked for help. Then the next time I woke up, a gardener had broken in the door, and I looked up at him and I said, “I have to go now. I need help.”
This is what the disease of alcoholism is like. I’d just had this incredible spiritual experience, I’d asked for help, admitted that I needed help, and yet I spent five and a half hours in the car on the way to treatment trying to get out. My dearest friend had agreed to drive me to this place, and I made that whole trip hell because I was not ready to finally just give up. I kicked, I fought, I screamed, I cajoled, I begged, I pleaded, I did everything I could to get out of the car. I fought it, and I fought it, and I fought it, and then by the time I got there, I was just utterly defeated and I said, “I can’t do it anymore.” In that moment, I lost my desire. From that moment on, I have not had the real desire to drink or drug.
kelly mcgillis | 77
Which doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about it. That’s part of recovery, learning new ways to deal with things. That was so foreign to me. When I had a fight with somebody for the first time sober, of course my thinking was “I gotta go get drunk now.” You know how they say cows travel the same path until they wear it into the ground? Well, that’s the path I was headed for, because after thirty years of thinking that way, it takes a little while to stop. But even though I thought about heading down my little cow path, I didn’t do it. The compulsion, the absolute desire to do it, was gone. And having that taken away, that was a total spiritual experience.
Prior to that, recovery was an external experience, me trying to do it. After that moment, it was about being it and allowing things to happen. It doesn’t mean that I didn’t do things—I asked for help, I asked for a sponsor—but I wasn’t dragging it behind me like it had a weight to it, the way it had always felt before. It was . . . not easy, not effortless, but light.
The people who saw me at the treatment center, my ex-husband, my girlfriend, the people who came to visit me, they all said, “There is something amazingly different about you.” And I was different. I’d had a spiritual moment that I didn’t ask for. I just gave up and made room for God. Plain and simple, that was the end for me. I had no will left, none. I had no more will to live, I had no more will to fight, I had no more will to think. I’ve always been a big thinker. I always knew what I needed. “I drink too much because I’m in New York and I need to move to L.A.” Or “I drink too much because I’ve been working too much,” then “I drink too much because I’m unemployed”—I mean, I was a good thinker. So at that point when I could no longer think, I just didn’t know or care. I had no more will.
Now, whenever I’m around people I care about who are struggling, I don�
��t push. I just try to stand by my integrity and sobriety, try to be of service and be helpful to people. Maybe it’s because of my experience, where I felt that people shoved it down my throat, which just made me say, “Screw you.” So I just practice being in recovery. I listen to what they share with me about how they feel, and it’s really, really great to be able to say, “Yes, I used to feel that way too, and I’m really grateful that I don’t today.”
Gerry Cooney
As a professional heavyweight boxer, Gerry compiled an impressive record of twenty-eight wins and three losses, with twenty- four knockouts. I’ve been a boxing fan since I was a kid, and I still remember his 1982 fight against Larry Holmes. Gerry slugged it out for twelve rounds, even after getting knocked down. He showed a tremendous amount of heart. The Spinks fight five years later, which he talks about here, was his last major fight in the ring—but he’s continued to fight for sobriety, his own and others’. His or ganization, FIST (Fighters’ Initiative for Support and Training), helps other retired boxers make the transition to the post-ring life, which often involves helping them with substance abuse problems similar to his own. He points out a basic truth about the journey: you have to face the darkness before the real healing can begin.
W
here I ended up had a lot to do with where I came from and my upbringing. In my household I learned five things. You are no good. You are a failure. You are not going to amount
to anything. Do not trust anybody. Do not tell anybody your business. That is what my father’s father gave him, and what my father gave to me. Thank God, I did not give that to my children. I was given the cards I was given and I have to play them. I really wanted to give my children different cards.
Moments of Clarity Page 11