Dick Van Dyke Talks Openly About His Alcoholism | The Dick Cavett Show

that that film called I think the was it morning-after as to correct yes that's really a frightening thing to see you that way and I know that a lot of people friends of mine were shocked when they found that you I guess the news came out in one of the news magazines first I think that you had been alcoholic actor that is incorrect to say is it because uh alcoholics never say they were alcoholic they say there this you know you said they say they're recovered or recovering alcoholics I'd like to say one thing very important before I forget it is there are a lot of people dying from alcoholism because the rest of us are enabling them to because there's a stigma about that disease as you probably know and for centuries they've been putting the blame on the character of the addict and it's not so there is no degeneration or loose morals or character defects in an alcoholic it's a physical disease and alcoholic has a certain metabolism and glandular setups that make them chemically adapt themselves to alcohol and for them and it's a stimulant and it is calories and it is food and their bodies adapt to it and it is a true addiction that it has nothing to do with the person not being mature enough not to drink too much it's a true addiction like heroin addiction does that mean that you were destined to become an alcoholic at birth if you ever took a drink that's true for me it took many many years is it just a social drinker along with everyone else yeah and of course by the time I realized I was in trouble I was too diluted like most alcoholics are to be able to understand what was wrong with me can you I know it's supposed to be hard to find the point where you became an alcoholic in the sense that you were over the line into the danger zone can you isolate that point in your life and I tried to many many times when did I go from the point where I drank with my friends at a party or something and when I begin to drink way ahead of them mm-hm and I can't I can't you tend I find to get with people who are heavier drinkers yeah without realizing what you're doing and now that I am a non drinker all too I find that I've lost most of my friends who drank very heavily they don't see they avoid you they kind of avoided me yeah I think i'ma get to their conscience a little bit now are there well-known people in the show in our business and show business that who are alcoholic that the public doesn't suspect obviously I'm not asking for names but you know there are many recovered alcoholics yeah in show business many many and of course they don't they didn't want to say so I can't blame them too much yeah a few do like yourself and some don't do they some don't like to talk about it he's McCambridge for one yeah particularly you know she gotta broke the ice for the rest of his thing I know Robert Young has talked about his yeah the Dean Andrews yeah it's fascinating it sometimes people have asked me you know this boring interview questions what are you proudest of in your career that kind of and it's always hard to think of those things but I I did two part show and alcoholism one time and yes I mean whenever you get a letter that says your show saved my life you know or something that I guess that that has a kick that you can't get in any other that's very real business and I'm sure you've got a lot of those or a lot of those television has a great power that way if you can you look at old shows that you've done and tell when you were crocked and or were you ever never I was never cropped I loved it during work yeah I did not drink before work or during work or ever in the daytime which was my own particular cop-out I said I don't know those guys have to have a drink in the morning and I do not drink in the daytime or at work I drink at home afterward and that proves to me that I didn't have a drinking problem that's right a lot of people say that I kidding I can go all day without a drink that's right but you really might eat and yet they can be alcoholic yo yes yeah Vernon Johnson wrote a book called I'll quit tomorrow which I recommend to anyone who has a relative or a husband or wife they think is a drinking problem it's marvelous but that guy in the book did all the wrong things he went to a psychiatrist to find out what was wrong with his character or his personality that made him drink and you say that's bad that's not even valid yeah what it was wrong with him he was physically addicted to our yeah that was the reason and you need a different kind of treatment different kind of help the shocking one of the shocking moments in that book is when she called the doctor and he said the coldly there's nothing I can do and he was right and he may have been right but he couldn't he could at least have explained that because why you know I mean he just sort of hung up the phone and doctors for some reason don't deal too much with alcoholics because there isn't anything medically you can do mm-hmm if they don't want to quit and most people who are deeply into a chronic or acute alcoholism do not at that point want to quit yeah they can't conceive of life without drinking it looks desolate and bare and dull to them you can see why people would go to a psychiatrist though because in your own case for example you you had everything you know fame success money family home all of that and you were destroying it theoretically therefore you must hate yourself therefore you must go to a psychiatrist would I suppose be the line of reasoning that's true that the fallacy is that there is no pre-drinking morbid psychology in an alcoholic it happens as a result of his physical addiction every time you get drunk medically or legally drunk you lose about 10,000 brain cells gone dead died forever and about a million to two million more with that are severely damaged that will go if you stop drinking and you actually lose IQ points in drinking you can lose up to 30 IQ points which you can't get back that's astonishing yes you say you were never drunk when you would say taping or filming a show but since you drank all those years there must have been some debilitation something that would might have showed over the years in your work we are you able to spot that and watching your work over the years no I'm not after losing the only thing I noticed was energy yeah a little debilitation and yeah I didn't have quite as much energy and I don't know what's the matter with me exercise and everything the delusion I didn't stop to think that it might be there in barber Mahoney's book it's terrifying that what happens to the wife of an alcoholic because she has the kids in the school and she the kids are embarrassed by the terrible scenes they see at home and say things like well daddy his daddy really gonna hurt you mommy and things when he would threaten her and or hit her or whatever and but she said at least the husband could get away even if he stumbled out of the house and went to work all day drunk he at least got away but she was there the whole time and she would drink too how did it work with your own wife well my own wife was an alcoholic too it turns out we were both in treatment as a matter of fact my wife is a therapist now at a treatment center in Phoenix at saint luke's hospital treating our treating alcoholics yes and doing very well at it so we didn't have quite that same problem but it's true than either spouse the one who is non alcoholic is as sick emotionally they're very sick and they need treatment usually if you don't treat both of them the alcoholic does not get well what happens is that that the alcoholic is very ashamed and very guilty about what he is doing and he cannot help himself but he can't stand to attack himself that way so he projects his own anger at himself on to his spouse said if it weren't for you I wouldn't drink you're the one you're the one that makes me drink and uses those kind of rationales so that eventually the spouse begins to feel maybe I am the reason maybe it's me if I just would change and treat him differently he wouldn't drink and they become very neurotic and sick themselves and need help which of you was that who decided to seek help it was me I was the one I began to have the one symptom that you cannot avoid and that's a personality change when I drank mm-hmm personnel I was always a very happy drunk if I got drunk and I had a very high tolerance which I found out later is one of them clues if you have a very high tolerance and can stay on your feet speaking clearly when everybody else was going down the drain that's a sign that you maybe have a propensity physically for alcohol yeah you do hear that very thing used by people who say well so-and-so is has no trouble because she never changes or he never you can take six or eight drinks do you never know it that is I've also heard that an increased tolerance is dangerous didn't increase dollars at a certain point this happened to me your your tolerance goes to nothing just all of a sudden you can't drink at all but strangely enough one of the things that makes an alcoholic physically physiologically is that it is a depressant for most people for an alcoholic it is a stimulant Keagan as long as blood level of alcohol is on the rise he'll perform better his motor responses will be better his concentration will be better a normal person gets worse that is so a lot of performers claim that they do get better in performance if they have a drink and this is true isn't it that with some cases tend to be people who will uh napped chemically to alcohol it very likely is true because there are people who will say that's never true it's flatly never true ever drink ruins you but well the limelight story I guess we won't mention any names of course no but it it's a that's a vicious trap because the performer has to be good he has to have his edge on so does yes he has to have that drinkin that I never tried I always felt that it that that would a dulling thing yeah and of course it was always the guilt there you know it's a bad thing it was a bad thing you were raised yes it was there no drop of liquor in your home as a child I think there was a drop of liquor in my home but nobody ever drank it yeah yeah I don't I come from a culture a Midwest in Nebraska you know where there was booze in the house but weeks would go by without anyone having any that's true that seems to have changed even there though I think it's the whole countries we've become a drinking culture we really have are there any figures on how many people are alcoholics and don't know it I don't know how you'd get them well they think about 15 million in the United States and of course there was there's only about 250,000 I think in a and a few thousand others in treatment centers around the country and the rest are people who are probably listening to us right now and denying to themselves they have a problem and something's gnawing back there mm-hmm yeah really I'm drinking too much but I like I always told myself I drink because I enjoy it I can quit any time I want and I was lying to myself I really couldn't but as long as you keep doing it you never have to prove that I've been I've seen reports this safe and alcohol it can be taught to be a social drinker in him but it isn't so because his his body never really changes yeah I think there's some damage that's done that never can be set right again mm-hmm and if you ever drank I think I'd be probably be back to drinking too much again and I like life too much without it now now that I'm completely free of it I don't have any desire for to ever drink again mm-hmm did it did anybody like an agent or anyone ever warned you to stop drinking or you'd ruin your career no but a very dear friend of mine did about four years ago I believe very dear friend of mine and it's amazing how deluded I was because I I really wasn't very nice about it when I said it that's my business I enjoy it that's my business I don't think you have any right and the poor man cried and I couldn't see it took me a long long time to understand you know that he was seeing me objectively I was totally deluded about and at the later point when you did an agent or anyone ever warned you not to admit that you were an alcoholic because that would ruin your career many many really yes the dome please don't do this they didn't care if he didn't quit but they just didn't want you to talk about well I didn't know what kind of reaction that might get I had a family on this show is really quite a gripping interview to do and send me to watch you on one of those alcohol chosen where the mother and the father and the daughter who had found the mother with a bullet in her head and tried to kill herself and I wonder why some alcoholics try suicide and others don't were you ever near suicide no although I it I thought of it at times I think almost every alcoholic does when they're when they're dre's a terrible depressant of it to your brain terrible depressant a lot of about 50% of the suicides in the United States are alcohol related but they're not all alcoholics if a set of circumstances he a human being someone here's maybe that he might be fired or he has something on his mind and drinks a little they can fall into a depressed state where they're not thinking clearly and commit suicide and it has happened they're not all alcoholics but it is alcohol-related do you wish that booze were not a subject for humor I do not and I've played my share of comedy drunks I did on Broadway as a matter of fact in a revue is my big thing to come out in one and do a drunk do you wish Dean Martin would let up on the booze humor I don't like to get that narrow-minded about it really yeah yeah I don't like to be a crusader or have missionary zeal about booze a lot of people can drink socially and they don't have any propensity towards alcoholism they'll never become alcoholics there are a lot of non-alcoholic irresponsible drinkers who drive and do such things as that but uh unless booze could just disappear from the face of the earth I'm nothing does anything gonna be done about it did you drive when you were Jeff I have yes I have fortunately nothing ever happened did you roll a car over once alone I had a reckoner sports car that was not related to alcohol I happened to be sober at the time gee there's a negative lesser than that I guess yes but wait can you tell what the worst aspect of it is when you're drunk is that looking back over at all is that the damage you do to your self is it the damage you do to your wife or your kids well all of that all of that is is a terrible thing because you do have a terrible guilt and terrible shame what really happens is that most of us have fairly high values and we get into characterological conflict or our behavior is in conflict with our values and we and it's a guilt producing thing but you're really in a grip of something you cannot do anything about you cannot do anything about not help he said your behaviors in conflict with your values I mean is it as simple as the fact that your parents would be ashamed of you if they saw what you had become of you that did it hearken back to your that a really strict upbringing or was it I think yes I think it was a strict upbringing I think I was raised in the church in the Presbyterian Church as a matter of fact I didn't drink much at all in my 20s I was in my middle 30s before he even started and then it was social you know I was I was one of the people who was bound to be trapped and didn't know just had no way of knowing that's why I'm talking about it now there are ways is there a test people can take or will there ever be where they take a piece of litmus paper or something and find out if your potential alcoholic I think probably just in the last year they found out an awful lot about what it does physically how it affects people who who might be alcoholics I think the day will come whether the weimar find out exactly what causes it it seems to be a variety of factors hormonal chemistry glandular something to do with the brain cells there are a number of things that make of human being adapt to it and they they they get to the reefs where they like the calories from alcohol because they're very easy to assimilate and everything else is too hard to assimilate alcohol you know diffuses across your brain instantly and it just as easier to get people can go for weeks and weeks just on the calories from alcohol and no other food how long was your siege your bad drinking years that's very hard for me to say very huh I would imagine about seven years now that's my own guess and I'm probably being very conservative about it myself as someone who observed me over that time I say are you kidding as it show in your liver yet fortunately I didn't have any damage any damage it was slightly enlarged and would have gone into that the cells in your liver will puff up to try and take on the job of assimilating all that a seat alcohol it's going into the system and it just can't and eventually what cells will begin to die and then you're in cirrhosis of the liver and you're dead when you were in the haze of being when you were boozing it forgive the crude term when you're drinking could you see through that haze people's attitude changing toward you and you know again he did not know I come over to the house in the evening or anymore and the people came over and like to drink as much as I did you check that sort of person I usually drank at home I must say I wasn't a swinger or anything like that I just drank at home I've got grandiose and verbose love to debate things like religion and all those things and now I go to parties cocktail parties where I don't drink and to stand off objectively and watch the transition of a cocktail party between 0.25 you know per millimeter I guess it is a blood alcohol as it goes up the decibels gets louder and louder in the room suddenly people aren't talking about politics and religion and solving Watergate yeah and then a few more drinks a couple of hours later and its really loud a lot of hearty laughter and back-slapping and hugging when the guys are starting to tell dirty jokes the ones they wouldn't tell other place and then later in the evening about 80% of those people will be very euphoric and happy but about 20 percent will either be angry or very sad you'll see people sitting down crying and saying leave me alone you don't understand or somebody will get enough terrible fight can you tell which ones are the problem drinkers well the ones who stayed on the party is over and then some usually on the problem yeah maybe headed for for addiction but there are a lot of heavy drinkers who are doing a lot of damage of their liver and of their brain who are not alcoholics are not annex that's that's the that's the tough part is to say I am an alcoholic isn't it it really is is the hardest part of treatment no matter how much help you have the job is to get somebody to admit that they can't handle it they have no control over alcohol if they drink they say are you VanDyke or did you have to drink before you had everything you get that attitude that's true as if something tragic had to happen to that's the common belief about alcoholism unfor that there's something terribly wrong in your life or you wouldn't do it but an alcoholic drinks for the same reasons that the social drinker does relief from tension and stress to be feel comfortable with strange people to lubricate social intercourse it really is what it is do you envy me that I can take a drink no no I went through about a year as I guess most most recovering alcoholics do it takes a year for your system to get back to where it was before yeah really resenting it sometimes other people can drink now I have no desire to drink and I don't envy people who do at all that's good [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: The Dick Cavett Show

Views: 1,330,884

Rating: 4.9104633 out of 5

Keywords: The Dick Cavett Show, Talk Show, Musician, Celebrities, Dick Cavett, United States, Chat Show, Interview, Dick Van Dyke, Dick Van Dyke Mary Poppins, Dick Van Dyke Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Dick Van Dyke Mary Poppins Returns, Dick Van Dyke Interview, Dick Van Dyke Dick Cavett, Dick Cavett Interview, the dick van dyke show, dick van dyke now, dick van dyke wife, dick van dyke family, dick van dyke alcoholic, dick van dyke alcohol, alcoholism, alcoholics

Id: XawJPRjKQvQ

Length: 20min 29sec (1229 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 24 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/unbalancedforce]

Older clips of shows just prove that current late night shows have become long commercials for the guest of the night. . .

[u/Oneloosetooth]

Watched it all. Thank you for the link.

[u/Asumi]

That's a sick beard.

[u/Budpets]

Both of these guys are still alive

[u/salmon10]

He and Paul Lynde were trying to get sober together, unfortunately it took Lynde's life too soon

[u/ksons]

This is one of the best discussions I have ever heard about alcoholism. Keep coming back.

[u/[deleted]]

I remember Dick told a story about getting so drunk while surfing he fell asleep on the board and floated away from land. When he woke up from his nap he panicked. Then he saw a fin in the water and really got scared. It turns out the fin was a dolphin and it helped him get to shore.

[u/mjgcfb]

He mentions alcohol kills brain cells and lowers your IQ.

This is proven wrong.

[u/pternstrom]

This is gold