Saturday or Sunday
and ended up passing out in bed.
I'd go to bed at 4:00
in the afternoon
and sleep through
till the next day.
Miss a party in my own home.
People coming, and I'd be out.
I'd promise myself,
"Now, this weekend,
that's not gonna happen.
"This weekend I won't do more
"than have a beer or two
on Saturday, maybe,
and not earlier than 2:00
or 3:00 in the afternoon."
And by 11:00,
I'd be on the beer,
and by 3:00 or 4:00
in the afternoon,
on to liquor,
and pass out again.
And then I realized
that I had a serious problem,
that I had become an alcoholic.
Where did that take you,
that alcoholism?
Well, it took me
into a territory where,
as I say, uh, the, uh,
the looking forward to the drink
became a very important part
of my experience.
And I always took great pride
and great comfort in the fact
that it never
interfered with my work.
Because no matter how long
I had to go without alcohol,
if I was working, I did...
I went without.
So you never had the experience
of passing out someplace
where you didn't want to be?
No. The most frightening
experiences that I ever had
were occasionally driving home
and not remembering the drive.
Wondering, "How did I get here?
I could have killed somebody."
Did you black out
at any other time?
No. I don't remember
ever blacking out.
So you had a problem,
but it wasn't like...
what was the term...
I was not a fall-down,
obvios fal-down drunk,
but I'm sure that people
could see that I was not...
I wasn't energetic,
I would become reclusive,
I would become distant,
remote, quiet...
Not there. Not there.
As you know,
I leaned on you yet once again
when I was dealing with my wife,
who had an alcoholic problem.
And I remember you
telling me as we were seated,
something like this,
when I said
I was gonna get married,
you said,
"But she's an alcoholic,"
and I said I loved her,
and that...
I guess the implication was
that my love would cure her.
And I thought so at the time.
It is a strange affliction,
and as you say,
each individual is different.
Nerine was drinking
from a very early age,
it was part of her lifestyle,
her family,
in the same way as your dad
had a beer or a drink...
After work was not a big deal.
So alcohol
was part of her upbringing,
as it was not mine,
as was smoking was not mine.
And so I married her
knowing that
she had a drinking problem,
but not totally
understanding that,
never understanding
the pain that she had.
And I think somewhere
in that mix,
drawing the parallel
between Nerine and yourself,
that anger...
that word crops up
in your vocabulary a lot...
that maybe that alcohol
was assuaging the anger.
So the pain in Nerine...
I only had the insight into
what she must have been feeling
when the pain of her death
overwhelmed me...
did I begin to think,
good Lord, is this what Nerine
was feeling all the time,
and as a result,
was alcohol the only way
of anesthetizing the pain?
And I tend to think
that that's what happened.
Younger people have a belief...
I've seen it
in a number of cases,
including Nerine's...
that "I'm young.
In time, I will stop this."
Of course, you heard Nerine
express herself that way.
"But I don't have to yet,
I'm not there yet,
I still have
a couple of runs to go."
And I had reached the point
where I thought,
"I've got to stop now,"
and I got help.
I went to a program,
and the program worked for me.
I was absolutely blessed
to find a program...
I haven't had a drink now in,
I think, coming up on 13 years.
And about 1 or 16 years
of not smoking.
I feel blessed on both counts.
But I'm particularly lucky
that it came to me,
that the habit grew
to the power that it did
in my later years,
because I didn't
have that thought,
"I'm young,
I still have a distance to go,"
which is a devilish part
of the disease.
Did you ever have battles
with management... any?
Management or producers?
I...
I