A few months ago, I wrote an article about drinking--or rather, not drinking--and posted it on this blog. It had nothing to do with theater, but it got a response from someone in a theater community a few hours away from mine that I thought warranted a conversation.
If you want to read the original article, you can do so here: https://thiscantbebroccoli.blogspot.com/2019/10/we-need-to-talk-about-drinking.html
I should probably say that since I've written it, I worry that it comes across as a little too snarky and aggressive, but if you've been reading these interviews, you know that's sort of my default setting.
Anyway, here's the interview:
ME: Let's just do the requisite first question--How long have you been sober?
THEM: Three years almost to the day.
ME: Wow. Congratulations.
THEM: Thank you.
ME: What made you stop?
THEM: I was on the verge of a divorce. I was not--there were a lot of reasons. I was not there for my spouse, who I love. I was--The main thing was that I love what I do. I love theater and I love teaching theater and it was getting in the way of that.
ME: How are you doing now?
THEM: It's a process. Today's a good day. I'm glad to be able to speak with you about what you wrote.
ME: Did I sound judgmental?
THEM: You sounded judgmental at times, but I also don't know if that wasn't justified because of what you were talking about.
ME: About being pressured to drink?
THEM: Yeah, I--I know that not every person who drinks does this, but I know for me--and in my experience--I was around a lot of people who needed to be around other drinkers and so--that's why I reached out to you.
ME: You're talking professionally?
THEM: Yes.
ME: So let's back up--you were an actor--a regular actor--at a theater in the area where you live.
THEM: About half an hour from me, yes.
ME: Around the time you stopped drinking, you also stopped acting there. Correct?
THEM: That's right.
ME: So the two were connected?
THEM: Uh--I tried to make it work. Being sober and working there. It...didn't work. (Laughs.) I don't know a better way to say it.
ME: You're laughing, but I'm assuming at the time it was--
THEM: Oh, it was hard. I had been working there for going on ten plus years. That's a long time to--to put your heart and soul into something then walk away from it.
ME: What made you decide you couldn't work there and maintain your sobriety?
THEM: I had never thought about it much when I was drinking, but once I stopped drinking, I saw that the culture there wasn't an artistic culture, it was a drinking culture. It was a culture not about, uh, artists who love to make art, but drinkers who, I don't know, in the past loved doing theater and loved acting and doing shows, but wound up at a place where drinking was the glue and the rest of it was just something that gave us reasons to drink. Bad rehearsal? Let's go get drunk. Great rehearsal? Let's go celebrate by getting drunk. It was non-stop.
ME: Did it have an impact in terms of how the theater was run?
THEM: After I got sober, I noticed more and more that I was being left out of really important--I was always included in things like what kinds of shows we were going to do. I directed for the company almost every year. I would give opinions about casting and stuff like that. When I stopped going out to drink with everybody, all of a sudden I'm shut out.
ME: Do you think that was on purpose?
THEM: Gotta be really transparent here--No, I do not. I do not think it was on purpose. I think that the bar became a place to have discussions about things that should only have been discussed in the theater, and that was something I participated in for years and benefited from, so I acknowledge the hypocrisy in me saying it was a problem. I also acknowledged that hypocrisy when I went to the people at the theater and said, 'This has to stop, not just because I'm not going to the bar with you guys anymore, but because we've been shutting out lots of people over the years.'
ME: What kinds of people? Sober people?
THEM: Sober people and people who just didn't like that environment. Some people drink and don't like bars. Some people don't feel like going out after they've just busted their ass in a rehearsal for three or four hours. Those people should never have been left out of those kinds of conversations because they weren't interested in the social part of what we were doing. And, you know, those conversations might not have been appropriate to have with me who wasn't even full-time staff there, but I get that people do all kinds of business at restaurants and bars, but people who advanced at this theater where I worked--It became clear that one way you advanced was the same way some of our past Presidents advanced--by being somebody you could have a beer with at the bar.
ME: Not necessarily talented.
THEM: Correct. No matter how talented you are, if you're showing up to a rehearsal drunk and the guy across the room from you is sober, that guy needs to get the part and you need to go get help.
ME: What was the response when you had this conversation with people at the theater?
THEM: I felt like they were receptive to what I was saying, but--here's where I'm at. I'm an alcoholic. I had a problem. I can work on changing. I can't change six or seven other people. If something is a culture, you need almost everybody involved in it to want to change it. For these people, that might have meant making some personal changes too. I know they didn't want to run the kind of theater where this guy or that woman gets a part because you offered it to them when you were drunk and they were buying you another round, but fixing that meant treating our theater like it's--like--
ME: Like a business.
THEM: But even in business, people go drinking together--
ME: Right, but theater's a little unusual in that--like you said, you could go out drinking every night and do a significant amount of business while you're playing pub trivia and nobody would think anything of it.
THEM: What's wrong with pub trivia?
ME: Nothing, except when people who can't act get jobs from being on the Artistic Director's team.
THEM: (Laughs.) Is that a future interview?
ME: I just throw in a little shade in here for fun every so often. So you go to these folks, they seem receptive, and then nothing changes?
THEM: Things changed at first. I think me going to them kind of scared them and so then there was this huge change which meant I knew nothing was going to last. They were all jumped up going 'Okay, okay, so we should just cut back on the drinking.' I tried to say 'If you want to do that, that's up to you. I'm just asking that we watch what sort of professional talk is happening when some of us are giving up control over what we say.' That was how I felt about it. Alcohol removes control from the equation. You're looking at someone talking money, talking jobs--these are things you should not feel comfortable talking about with someone if you're a place where tomorrow you're going to wake up and not remember those things being said.
ME: Did that ever happen?
THEM: It happened many times. People were offered roles--directing gigs--full-time jobs at the theater--
ME: Full-time positions?
THEM: We all came in one day and there's a woman standing where the offices are off to the side of the lobby. She's looking like she doesn't know where to go. We're all heading into a rehearsal. I say, 'Hi' trying to be friendly 'Can I help you?' 'Oh yeah, I'm here to start work.' I look over at _____ who's the GM and _____ who runs the box office because I wasn't full-time staff but the three of us had just been talking and I look at them like, 'I didn't know you all had somebody new starting here' and I can see they don't know who this person is. ____, the GM, says--She says that--She goes 'You're starting work here today? I didn't know about that.' She's being nice, but I can tell she has--We all know right away where this is going and it's this like--Oh f***, because we know that _______ and ______ and ______ were all out drinking the night before with a few people from the area who work at other theaters and they were also supposed to meet up with some people in town for this arts conference and we were like, 'Please don't tell me somebody hired this woman last night over drinks.'
ME: And is that what happened?
THEM: She was at this conference networking. Went out for drinks. Got to talking to ______ and _____ and ______ from the theater, and they all got wasted and offered her a job.
ME: Can you say what job it was?
THEM: Uhhhh. I can tell you, but you can't run with it, okay?
ME: I'll block it out.
THEM: (Names a Position.)
ME: You're #$%-ing kidding me.
THEM: No, I'm not.
ME: They offered her THAT over drinks?
THEM: Yes.
ME: Didn't she think that was weird?
THEM: It's theater, man, weird s*** happens all the time. I think she might have been drunk too and, uh, don't look a gift horse in the mouth, right?
ME: What did they do once they figured out why she was there?
THEM: We called up _____ and he was like 'Oh f***, oh f***' because he started to remember that he actually did it. The woman went back to her hotel that night and emailed him to get it down in writing--some of it--and he responded--still drunk--that night--then passed out. He saw the email and went out of his mind over the phone. I don't know how they handled it after that, because I went to rehearsal and I wasn't involved in that part of the theater, but I never saw the woman again.
ME: And all of that didn't force them to change?
THEM: They laughed about it. That was what would happen. It became a funny story. You take something unacceptable and you make it a funny story.
ME: But some people must have--
THEM: We lost ________ over that. The GM who was there. Not over that one thing, but it kept happening--on different, uh--with different things--and she left. We lost other people. People aren't always going to stick around and try to change you, they're just going to leave.
ME: But when you went to them--
THEM When I went to them, they got scared, because they saw how scared I was for myself and for them and for the theater. But nothing was put in place. It's like regulations. You put them there, because people are people and they're going to do the wrong thing unless there's something saying they shouldn't. Must be the old a**hole in me, but that's what I believe. So nothing was put in place about what we should or shouldn't do when socializing--even without drinking being involved--and so it all slid back to the way it was, and when I would bring it up, it was like...It became about my not drinking and how my not drinking shouldn't affect anyway but me.
ME: You told me when we spoke on the phone the first time that there was another element to it that you weren't comfortable with as well?
THEM: Performative recovery.
ME: Can you talk about that a little bit?
THEM: When I first got sober and I told the people at the theater, ______ said to me--some other people too--'You should write about that, man. You need to write about that.' I don't really write. 'You should talk about it. We could do this show about addiction and you could do talkbacks. You could do--' I go 'Whoa, guys--I'm not there yet. That's not for me.' I got asked to go to lunch with the Artistic Director and ______ the--one of the people from Devo--and they were like 'There's this great opportunity we have because there's this grant for thirty grand if we do a show about addiction and we can apply and you can be in it and it'll be so great because of--' This is six weeks out from me first telling them what was going on with me. I was like, 'Guys, I'm not using my f***ing--' I swore, I did, I'm like 'I'm not using my recovery to help you get f***ing grant money. Are you serious right now?' I couldn't believe it.
ME: Do you think that's just sort of how theater people are though and so they expected you to be the same way?
THEM: What do you mean?
ME: You know, like, something consequential happens to me and two weeks later it's 'Kevin Broccoli Presents An Evening About the Time He Got Food Poisoning in Serbia: A Global Journey Through Suffering.'
THEM: (Laughs.) Dude, I would watch that.
ME: I would get so much funding.
THEM: That's just not who I am and I could tell they were disappointed that I didn't want to make this struggle something that could be, uh--
ME: Capitalized on?
THEM: Yes.
ME: Have you done any theater since you left there?
THEM: No, and I just want to say, I don't--I'm not talking to you to try and hurt them. They're good people and what they do there is something I think a lot of other people at a lot of other theaters do too.
ME: Oh, I know that.
THEM: It was just a shame because I didn't want to leave that place. It was my choice, but it also wasn't, because it was something I had to do for my own well-being.
ME: But isn't it crazy that essentially you're saying a sober person would have had a hard time working there?
THEM: Not even working there, but succeeding there.
ME: That's still not really acceptable.
THEM: It's not. You would feel--When you would talk about it with them, you would feel like 'Can we do something about this since everyone is in agreement?' Because everybody was in agreement that it was not a good way to run the company. But drinking won. If it was all of us--unanimous--versus the culture of drinking--drinking was going to win. Every time.
ME: Did you ever think about having an addiction specialist come in and talk to everybody?
THEM: I did. I suggested that.
ME: I know. That's why I asked.
THEM: (Laughs.) You're a reporter all of a sudden.
ME: I'm, like, pretty much Katie Couric at this point.
THEM: I suggested having somebody come in, and we did have somebody come in.
ME: And then?
THEM: Nothing. A lot of head nodding. A lot of people getting it who didn't need to get it and a lot of other people skipping out on being there because they were hung-over at home that day.
ME: That must have been really hard for you.
THEM: That was--I think that was a few days before I checked out. Finished the show I was doing. That was it.
ME: Do you still talk with any of those people?
THEM: Oh yeah. There's really no--There's no hard feelings per se. I'm just worried about trying to get in with another theater because, uh, how do you do that and not run into the same problems? I can't show up somewhere and say 'What's the social culture here? Do you have policies about what can and can't happen if you're out with other people from the theater? Most places have sexual harassment policies, but how many have policies about how much alcohol intake is appropriate when you're with people you work with and whether or not you should be offering people jobs.'
ME: Malcolm Gladwell in his new book talks about how we accept that there's a problem on college campuses with sexual assault, but we hardly ever talk about the fact that alcohol is a major factor when it comes to--
THEM: It's the acceptable drug. If I had been doing any other drug as much as I'd been drinking, people would have sat me down and begged me to get help. Cigarettes might be the only other thing that--Well, I can't even say that because there are campaigns on tv trying to get people to stop smoking. You ever see a campaign about drinking too much? Just drinking--I'm not talking about drinking and driving.
ME: No.
THEM: We think it's part of doing the work. That artists suffer and people who suffer drink and do drugs and hurt themselves and it's so tragic. It's all a lie. Not the suffering part, but all of that--drinking, drugs--that's what compounds the suffering. It doesn't help your art. It doesn't make you more of an artist. It doesn't make you more interesting. It's boring and it makes you boring.
ME: Mary Tyler Moore talked about being a functioning alcoholic and she would talk about how it bothered her that she'd never know if she could have done better work had she been sober.
THEM: Those are the people who are really at risk, because they show up on time.
ME: I only show up on time when I'm spiraling out of control.
THEM: Really?
ME: Yeah, because I know things are coming apart at the seams, so I go 'Damn, I better start presenting myself better while I deal with this' so I start showing up on time and I dress a little better and as soon as I open my mouth, it's pretty clear that I'm not doing well, but nobody cares.
THEM: Nobody cares because you were on time and you look good and who has the time to worry about your crazy ass?
ME: (Laughs.) Some people care. I shouldn't say that. It's just that what we use as criteria to determine whether or not somebody is doing okay is kind of ridiculous.
THEM: I was always on time.
ME: So you were functioning?
THEM: I was early if anything, because I was the same way you are. Let me put on a show and nobody will say anything.
ME: Did it work?
THEM: Yes. It worked until it didn't.
ME: Story of my life.
THEM: (Laughs.) That's everybody's story.
Them is an actor and director and this month will mark their third year being sober.
If you want to read the original article, you can do so here: https://thiscantbebroccoli.blogspot.com/2019/10/we-need-to-talk-about-drinking.html
I should probably say that since I've written it, I worry that it comes across as a little too snarky and aggressive, but if you've been reading these interviews, you know that's sort of my default setting.
Anyway, here's the interview:
ME: Let's just do the requisite first question--How long have you been sober?
THEM: Three years almost to the day.
ME: Wow. Congratulations.
THEM: Thank you.
ME: What made you stop?
THEM: I was on the verge of a divorce. I was not--there were a lot of reasons. I was not there for my spouse, who I love. I was--The main thing was that I love what I do. I love theater and I love teaching theater and it was getting in the way of that.
ME: How are you doing now?
THEM: It's a process. Today's a good day. I'm glad to be able to speak with you about what you wrote.
ME: Did I sound judgmental?
THEM: You sounded judgmental at times, but I also don't know if that wasn't justified because of what you were talking about.
ME: About being pressured to drink?
THEM: Yeah, I--I know that not every person who drinks does this, but I know for me--and in my experience--I was around a lot of people who needed to be around other drinkers and so--that's why I reached out to you.
ME: You're talking professionally?
THEM: Yes.
ME: So let's back up--you were an actor--a regular actor--at a theater in the area where you live.
THEM: About half an hour from me, yes.
ME: Around the time you stopped drinking, you also stopped acting there. Correct?
THEM: That's right.
ME: So the two were connected?
THEM: Uh--I tried to make it work. Being sober and working there. It...didn't work. (Laughs.) I don't know a better way to say it.
ME: You're laughing, but I'm assuming at the time it was--
THEM: Oh, it was hard. I had been working there for going on ten plus years. That's a long time to--to put your heart and soul into something then walk away from it.
ME: What made you decide you couldn't work there and maintain your sobriety?
THEM: I had never thought about it much when I was drinking, but once I stopped drinking, I saw that the culture there wasn't an artistic culture, it was a drinking culture. It was a culture not about, uh, artists who love to make art, but drinkers who, I don't know, in the past loved doing theater and loved acting and doing shows, but wound up at a place where drinking was the glue and the rest of it was just something that gave us reasons to drink. Bad rehearsal? Let's go get drunk. Great rehearsal? Let's go celebrate by getting drunk. It was non-stop.
ME: Did it have an impact in terms of how the theater was run?
THEM: After I got sober, I noticed more and more that I was being left out of really important--I was always included in things like what kinds of shows we were going to do. I directed for the company almost every year. I would give opinions about casting and stuff like that. When I stopped going out to drink with everybody, all of a sudden I'm shut out.
ME: Do you think that was on purpose?
THEM: Gotta be really transparent here--No, I do not. I do not think it was on purpose. I think that the bar became a place to have discussions about things that should only have been discussed in the theater, and that was something I participated in for years and benefited from, so I acknowledge the hypocrisy in me saying it was a problem. I also acknowledged that hypocrisy when I went to the people at the theater and said, 'This has to stop, not just because I'm not going to the bar with you guys anymore, but because we've been shutting out lots of people over the years.'
ME: What kinds of people? Sober people?
THEM: Sober people and people who just didn't like that environment. Some people drink and don't like bars. Some people don't feel like going out after they've just busted their ass in a rehearsal for three or four hours. Those people should never have been left out of those kinds of conversations because they weren't interested in the social part of what we were doing. And, you know, those conversations might not have been appropriate to have with me who wasn't even full-time staff there, but I get that people do all kinds of business at restaurants and bars, but people who advanced at this theater where I worked--It became clear that one way you advanced was the same way some of our past Presidents advanced--by being somebody you could have a beer with at the bar.
ME: Not necessarily talented.
THEM: Correct. No matter how talented you are, if you're showing up to a rehearsal drunk and the guy across the room from you is sober, that guy needs to get the part and you need to go get help.
ME: What was the response when you had this conversation with people at the theater?
THEM: I felt like they were receptive to what I was saying, but--here's where I'm at. I'm an alcoholic. I had a problem. I can work on changing. I can't change six or seven other people. If something is a culture, you need almost everybody involved in it to want to change it. For these people, that might have meant making some personal changes too. I know they didn't want to run the kind of theater where this guy or that woman gets a part because you offered it to them when you were drunk and they were buying you another round, but fixing that meant treating our theater like it's--like--
ME: Like a business.
THEM: But even in business, people go drinking together--
ME: Right, but theater's a little unusual in that--like you said, you could go out drinking every night and do a significant amount of business while you're playing pub trivia and nobody would think anything of it.
THEM: What's wrong with pub trivia?
ME: Nothing, except when people who can't act get jobs from being on the Artistic Director's team.
THEM: (Laughs.) Is that a future interview?
ME: I just throw in a little shade in here for fun every so often. So you go to these folks, they seem receptive, and then nothing changes?
THEM: Things changed at first. I think me going to them kind of scared them and so then there was this huge change which meant I knew nothing was going to last. They were all jumped up going 'Okay, okay, so we should just cut back on the drinking.' I tried to say 'If you want to do that, that's up to you. I'm just asking that we watch what sort of professional talk is happening when some of us are giving up control over what we say.' That was how I felt about it. Alcohol removes control from the equation. You're looking at someone talking money, talking jobs--these are things you should not feel comfortable talking about with someone if you're a place where tomorrow you're going to wake up and not remember those things being said.
ME: Did that ever happen?
THEM: It happened many times. People were offered roles--directing gigs--full-time jobs at the theater--
ME: Full-time positions?
THEM: We all came in one day and there's a woman standing where the offices are off to the side of the lobby. She's looking like she doesn't know where to go. We're all heading into a rehearsal. I say, 'Hi' trying to be friendly 'Can I help you?' 'Oh yeah, I'm here to start work.' I look over at _____ who's the GM and _____ who runs the box office because I wasn't full-time staff but the three of us had just been talking and I look at them like, 'I didn't know you all had somebody new starting here' and I can see they don't know who this person is. ____, the GM, says--She says that--She goes 'You're starting work here today? I didn't know about that.' She's being nice, but I can tell she has--We all know right away where this is going and it's this like--Oh f***, because we know that _______ and ______ and ______ were all out drinking the night before with a few people from the area who work at other theaters and they were also supposed to meet up with some people in town for this arts conference and we were like, 'Please don't tell me somebody hired this woman last night over drinks.'
ME: And is that what happened?
THEM: She was at this conference networking. Went out for drinks. Got to talking to ______ and _____ and ______ from the theater, and they all got wasted and offered her a job.
ME: Can you say what job it was?
THEM: Uhhhh. I can tell you, but you can't run with it, okay?
ME: I'll block it out.
THEM: (Names a Position.)
ME: You're #$%-ing kidding me.
THEM: No, I'm not.
ME: They offered her THAT over drinks?
THEM: Yes.
ME: Didn't she think that was weird?
THEM: It's theater, man, weird s*** happens all the time. I think she might have been drunk too and, uh, don't look a gift horse in the mouth, right?
ME: What did they do once they figured out why she was there?
THEM: We called up _____ and he was like 'Oh f***, oh f***' because he started to remember that he actually did it. The woman went back to her hotel that night and emailed him to get it down in writing--some of it--and he responded--still drunk--that night--then passed out. He saw the email and went out of his mind over the phone. I don't know how they handled it after that, because I went to rehearsal and I wasn't involved in that part of the theater, but I never saw the woman again.
ME: And all of that didn't force them to change?
THEM: They laughed about it. That was what would happen. It became a funny story. You take something unacceptable and you make it a funny story.
ME: But some people must have--
THEM: We lost ________ over that. The GM who was there. Not over that one thing, but it kept happening--on different, uh--with different things--and she left. We lost other people. People aren't always going to stick around and try to change you, they're just going to leave.
ME: But when you went to them--
THEM When I went to them, they got scared, because they saw how scared I was for myself and for them and for the theater. But nothing was put in place. It's like regulations. You put them there, because people are people and they're going to do the wrong thing unless there's something saying they shouldn't. Must be the old a**hole in me, but that's what I believe. So nothing was put in place about what we should or shouldn't do when socializing--even without drinking being involved--and so it all slid back to the way it was, and when I would bring it up, it was like...It became about my not drinking and how my not drinking shouldn't affect anyway but me.
ME: You told me when we spoke on the phone the first time that there was another element to it that you weren't comfortable with as well?
THEM: Performative recovery.
ME: Can you talk about that a little bit?
THEM: When I first got sober and I told the people at the theater, ______ said to me--some other people too--'You should write about that, man. You need to write about that.' I don't really write. 'You should talk about it. We could do this show about addiction and you could do talkbacks. You could do--' I go 'Whoa, guys--I'm not there yet. That's not for me.' I got asked to go to lunch with the Artistic Director and ______ the--one of the people from Devo--and they were like 'There's this great opportunity we have because there's this grant for thirty grand if we do a show about addiction and we can apply and you can be in it and it'll be so great because of--' This is six weeks out from me first telling them what was going on with me. I was like, 'Guys, I'm not using my f***ing--' I swore, I did, I'm like 'I'm not using my recovery to help you get f***ing grant money. Are you serious right now?' I couldn't believe it.
ME: Do you think that's just sort of how theater people are though and so they expected you to be the same way?
THEM: What do you mean?
ME: You know, like, something consequential happens to me and two weeks later it's 'Kevin Broccoli Presents An Evening About the Time He Got Food Poisoning in Serbia: A Global Journey Through Suffering.'
THEM: (Laughs.) Dude, I would watch that.
ME: I would get so much funding.
THEM: That's just not who I am and I could tell they were disappointed that I didn't want to make this struggle something that could be, uh--
ME: Capitalized on?
THEM: Yes.
ME: Have you done any theater since you left there?
THEM: No, and I just want to say, I don't--I'm not talking to you to try and hurt them. They're good people and what they do there is something I think a lot of other people at a lot of other theaters do too.
ME: Oh, I know that.
THEM: It was just a shame because I didn't want to leave that place. It was my choice, but it also wasn't, because it was something I had to do for my own well-being.
ME: But isn't it crazy that essentially you're saying a sober person would have had a hard time working there?
THEM: Not even working there, but succeeding there.
ME: That's still not really acceptable.
THEM: It's not. You would feel--When you would talk about it with them, you would feel like 'Can we do something about this since everyone is in agreement?' Because everybody was in agreement that it was not a good way to run the company. But drinking won. If it was all of us--unanimous--versus the culture of drinking--drinking was going to win. Every time.
ME: Did you ever think about having an addiction specialist come in and talk to everybody?
THEM: I did. I suggested that.
ME: I know. That's why I asked.
THEM: (Laughs.) You're a reporter all of a sudden.
ME: I'm, like, pretty much Katie Couric at this point.
THEM: I suggested having somebody come in, and we did have somebody come in.
ME: And then?
THEM: Nothing. A lot of head nodding. A lot of people getting it who didn't need to get it and a lot of other people skipping out on being there because they were hung-over at home that day.
ME: That must have been really hard for you.
THEM: That was--I think that was a few days before I checked out. Finished the show I was doing. That was it.
ME: Do you still talk with any of those people?
THEM: Oh yeah. There's really no--There's no hard feelings per se. I'm just worried about trying to get in with another theater because, uh, how do you do that and not run into the same problems? I can't show up somewhere and say 'What's the social culture here? Do you have policies about what can and can't happen if you're out with other people from the theater? Most places have sexual harassment policies, but how many have policies about how much alcohol intake is appropriate when you're with people you work with and whether or not you should be offering people jobs.'
ME: Malcolm Gladwell in his new book talks about how we accept that there's a problem on college campuses with sexual assault, but we hardly ever talk about the fact that alcohol is a major factor when it comes to--
THEM: It's the acceptable drug. If I had been doing any other drug as much as I'd been drinking, people would have sat me down and begged me to get help. Cigarettes might be the only other thing that--Well, I can't even say that because there are campaigns on tv trying to get people to stop smoking. You ever see a campaign about drinking too much? Just drinking--I'm not talking about drinking and driving.
ME: No.
THEM: We think it's part of doing the work. That artists suffer and people who suffer drink and do drugs and hurt themselves and it's so tragic. It's all a lie. Not the suffering part, but all of that--drinking, drugs--that's what compounds the suffering. It doesn't help your art. It doesn't make you more of an artist. It doesn't make you more interesting. It's boring and it makes you boring.
ME: Mary Tyler Moore talked about being a functioning alcoholic and she would talk about how it bothered her that she'd never know if she could have done better work had she been sober.
THEM: Those are the people who are really at risk, because they show up on time.
ME: I only show up on time when I'm spiraling out of control.
THEM: Really?
ME: Yeah, because I know things are coming apart at the seams, so I go 'Damn, I better start presenting myself better while I deal with this' so I start showing up on time and I dress a little better and as soon as I open my mouth, it's pretty clear that I'm not doing well, but nobody cares.
THEM: Nobody cares because you were on time and you look good and who has the time to worry about your crazy ass?
ME: (Laughs.) Some people care. I shouldn't say that. It's just that what we use as criteria to determine whether or not somebody is doing okay is kind of ridiculous.
THEM: I was always on time.
ME: So you were functioning?
THEM: I was early if anything, because I was the same way you are. Let me put on a show and nobody will say anything.
ME: Did it work?
THEM: Yes. It worked until it didn't.
ME: Story of my life.
THEM: (Laughs.) That's everybody's story.
Them is an actor and director and this month will mark their third year being sober.
Addictions of all sorts interfere with our ability to function responsibly....and they are almost impossible to give up without help. Often our “friends” are not available to help us because they are somehow benefiting from our addictions and are not at the same place as we are in terms of “changing the dance step”. Sorry I felt like I wanted to say something but obviously I am not able to express it adequately....
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