I always tell people that growing up in an alcoholic family is one of the weirdest things because it’s like being around nuclear fallout. Later in your life it comes up. It really affects your whole life.
My dad was a fascinating guy that I didn’t know. His father was a great inventor. He invented fifty things. He invented some sort of deep fryer thing way back. He was an alcoholic.
He sold all his patents to lawyers. Then him and his wife would go on these cross-country train drunks, and leave the kids.
During one of the trips, there was a murder in my dad’s house by a Swedish gang. His parents were gone, and there was a murder. They took all the kids away, including my dad. Because the parents weren’t there.
Then my dad got put up for adoption. You know where that term comes from? They put you up in front of the congregation at the church. And people would pick who they wanted. It was good and bad, you know what I mean? Like the kids didn’t have a place, so the community was trying to be helpful.
My dad and his sister got split up. He had a sister he was very close to and about his age. He went one place and she went another. It destroyed him. He got adopted by a German family who worked him as a farmhand and he stayed in a different part of the house. He ate different food.
Then at fifteen he went and made them sign a thing. He goes, “I want to join the army.” He says, “I want you to sign this and say I’m old enough to join the army.” They did, and he became a bugle player in World War I.
I figured all that out. I think, “Oh my God. My dad had a most miserable thing. He was a better person than his parents were in some grotesque way.”
Marc
You’ve got all this resentment at him for being an alcoholic, and you’ve got all this shame. All this stuff that you hold him responsible for, and he’s a monster in your eyes. It sounds to me that the process of working through this and finding more out about him, allowed you to see him as a person and maybe forgive him.
Louie
I did forgive him.
RACHAEL HARRIS
My stepdad was the type of guy that would come home after work and drink a six-pack of beer, but I would never know he was drunk. That was like a can of Coke. I didn’t see horrible ramifications, and he didn’t become mean. He might have done that with my mom, like the way that he talked to her or whatever, but it was my mom who was the crazy person, because of his drinking. She was the reactor, that was picking up everything, and she was feeling everything, so we were like, “Man, Mom’s the crazy person,” when really she wasn’t.
The way it trickled down for me was, okay, I’m going to clean the house before any of them get home, make sure everything’s in its perfect place. So Mom doesn’t come home and say, “What the hell, like what the fuck, why are these dishes in here? Didn’t I tell you to clean this up? I work all day!”
Marc
Your stepdad’s alcoholism didn’t affect you directly, it affected you through your mom trying to deal with his shit.
JASON SEGEL—COMEDIAN, ACTOR, WRITER
If Me Five Years Ago saw Me Now, I would be unrecognizable. I was drinking quite a bit. I got to the point where I felt like I was going to collapse under the weight of it. I felt very trapped.
I felt isolated. I also would very simply wake up in the morning and say, “I am not going to drink today,” and by midday I was drinking. It was not a party in any way.
Marc
Did it start as a party?
Jason
My hunch is it always starts as a party.
Marc
Then all of a sudden, “I’d like you to meet the monster. I hope you had a good time at the party, now you’re working for this guy.”
Jason
Exactly right. You’ve lost control. I got really lucky in that I had a real moment of clarity where I said to myself, “I want to be the best version of myself.” I got really lucky that that happened.
It was a dark day. I had something bad happen. I had not been drinking for a little while, for months. I decided, you know what, I’m going to drink. I didn’t have booze in the house for myself at this point. I had a case of rosé for guests. It was summertime. I decided I’ll have a glass of rosé. I don’t even like rosé. Basically, it turned into a weekend where by the end of it I was surrounded by these empty bottles of rosé. I thought to myself, “This is not for pleasure. I don’t like rosé. This is something else going on.”
The thing I realized about booze is that I am not going to win. They’re not going to stop making booze, I can’t drink it all. You know what I mean? For me, it’s like fighting Mike Tyson. I realized at that point the best strategy for me is not to get in the ring.
DAX SHEPARD—ACTOR, WRITER, DIRECTOR
I have so many stories that end with “And then I continued to get fucked-up for a year.” I think that people tend to think of it as a bottom. I have, like, eleven. I tried to get sober a dozen times and I could put together two months here, three months there. I always got sober for movies. I cared about that. And in between movies is where it got really dangerous.
So, I did this movie Zathura, and I knew I had to get sober to do that movie. And so I thought, “Oh, I’m going to go to Hawaii and have this one last vacation.” And I chose Hawaii specifically because I was like, “There’s no cocaine in Hawaii.” It just seems so far from everywhere. That was my assumption. It was hard to find. But I found it. I didn’t underestimate the amount of coke. I underestimated my willingness to search it out and find it.
Everyone’s a newlywed except for my buddy and me, who are just there to get fucked-up. So we’re at a bar, we’re drinking with locals. I’ve already done Punk’d, so I’m kind of popular with that crew. The first two days at the bar, it’s kind of cool I’m there. The third day, I realize it’s worn off. They’re going to kill us. But I met a guy who said, “I know where to get coke. Let’s go.” I go with him and his girlfriend. We’re driving. It’s raining. This guy’s driving way too fast. He’s got his shirt off, he’s got a beer between his legs. I’m in the process of telling him, “You’ve got to slow down and turn down the radio,” when we go through a left-hand turn, he loses control, we spin, we hit a guardrail. Cars are fucking flying off the road to avoid us. We somehow end up going straight. We drive out of it. He thinks it’s great. “I fucking drove out of that, bro!”