My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business_ A Memoir - Dick Van Dyke [71]
During treatment, I dealt with those painful memories for the first time and faced other more recent and regrettable issues, like the way I’d snapped at Margie and the kids over the past few months. I saw myself repeating some of the mistakes my father had made and vowed to stop. There was no instant cure, but self-awareness was the first step to real change.
After three weeks at St. Luke’s, I was sober for the first time in nearly fifteen years. Feeling enlightened and empowered, I understood that alcoholism is a disease, one that does not care if you have strong moral fiber or no conscience at all, and that, like it or not, I was an alcoholic. I also understood that the disease does not quit until you do. You had to wave the white flag.
I thought that by going in for treatment I was better. I certainly had more knowledge, awareness, and the tools to help me.
But, as I would learn, that wasn’t enough.
On my last day at the hospital, Margie came to pick me up. I was sitting on my bed while she spoke with the counselor in the hallway. I thought she was getting tips on what was next for me. However, after a few minutes, the counselor came in and said that Margie was taking over my room.
“What?” I asked. “She’s driving me home.”
“No,” he said. “She just checked herself in.”
It turned out Margie had a problem with Librium. She’d been taking the drug for anxiety and depression and gotten hooked. I had no idea. The situation, while serious, was ironic. We were quite a pair—a drunk and an addict. I offered the same support and encouragement she had given me, and I visited regularly over the next few weeks as she confronted her problems.
As we sobered up, the two of us began to wake up to the realities of our lives, which were more complicated than we were ready to admit.
PART THREE
You know what Dick’s problem is? He always wanted to be smarter than he is.
—Jerry Van Dyke
21
SAILING AWAY
Shortly after getting out of the hospital, I moved back to L.A., leaving Margie and the girls at the ranch. I commuted back on weekends, but putting that much distance between us was a prescription for future trouble.
Were there other options? I did not think so.
CBS had picked up The New Dick Van Dyke Show for a third season, but the network insisted on making major changes, starting by moving production to L.A. They also gave us a new time slot, on Monday night at nine-thirty, and a creative overhaul that had my character, Dick Preston, moving to Hollywood to work on a daytime soap opera after his talk show was canceled. Some critics wondered why the network didn’t cancel the show in real life.
Others were even harsher. When Carl and I faced the press at the end of summer to talk about the revised premise and addition of new castmates Chita Rivera, Richard Dawson, Barbara Rush, and Dick Van Patten, I found myself defending the fact that my hair had turned white (“I have no control over that,” I said, “and I’m not going to dye it”) and trying to diplomatically answer a reporter’s rather nasty inquiry as to why Mary’s show was a hit and mine wasn’t.
“I got old,” I said. “Mary didn’t.”
People laughed, as did I, although you could hear a sour note if you listened closely. Although comforted by the fact that Carl was more involved with the scripts, I had a hard time going back to an empty apartment after work. I had never lived by myself. I had gone from my mother to Margie. I was lonely, confused, and filled with questions about my life—or rather the meaning of it—that came as a result of my struggle to stay sober.
I hadn’t liked the person I became when I drank, but I wasn’t especially keen on the refurbished version, either. I felt a pretty big vacancy inside. And one night in April, after going eight months without a drink, I lost my willpower. I fell off the wagon, as they say. On my way home from the studio, I stopped at the liquor store, bought a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, and