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Patricia Heaton says that a drunken moment in front of her sons caused her to become sober.
The Everyone loves Raymond alum opened up on Elizabeth Vargas’ addiction podcast, Heart of matter, on quitting alcohol altogether in 2018 after the incident in which she was “humiliated”.
The Emmy winner, 63, said she had lived “a life of alcohol,” starting as a child in Cleveland where “heavy drinking is the norm. And I love it. alcohol. I love bourbon. I love vodka. I love Maker’s Mark. I mean, you can smell it. You drink a drink, and you smell it from head to toe, just that thing running through your body It’s fantastic Until it isn’t.
She said that by playing in Everyone loves Raymond, she had four young boys under the age of 5, so she would relax at night with a glass of wine. However, working in front of the camera and all that involved – looking ready for the camera, knowing your lines, nailing your holds – “kept excess alcohol at bay” during the week. After the cassette evenings on Thursday, she would go out with the cast for a drink.
However, time has passed, Raymond finished and her little boys grew up, leaving her and her actor husband, David Hunt, like empty nests.
“My children were out of the house [and] I just noticed that if it was 5pm and I had nothing to do the next day, I would start drinking automatically, ”she said. “Then I would wait until it was 5 o’clock. Then I would go to lunch. with friends [and] having a drink at lunch, which I have never done before. … I really started to look forward to drinking and thinking about it in a way that I didn’t have before. … If we were going out for dinner, I would have two cocktails before the meal and then at least two glasses of wine and then maybe an aperitif. If I was with really good friends that I knew well, I would have three cocktails before dinner. “
Heaton recalled thinking as this unfolded, “I’m not an alcoholic, but I could see him on the road. I could see him tip over in there.”
The tipping point came when she was visiting a son in Nashville with two other sons. She thought about becoming a grandmother later, in 10 years, and how she wanted to quit alcohol before that. However, she feared that she would not be able to do this – which she expressed aloud when speaking to God – because she had already tried to quit drinking and had not succeeded.
The next day, she went to her son’s house for dinner. She brought a few bottles of wine and drank a lot.
“We drank while we were making dinner,” she recalls. “We drank while we had dinner. We drank while we cleaned up. And then we drank while we all played this board game. There were about 10 of us there: three of my sons, then their friends. I would just fill my glass with red wine during the five or six hours we spent together. I don’t know how many glasses it was, and I felt completely sober and good. I was playing a joke at the table, and I started off by saying, ‘You know, in our family it’s a tradition…’ And I couldn’t pronounce the word ‘tradition.’ I tried three times, and I couldn’t say the word. “
As it was happening, she said, “My son at the end of the table said, ‘Oh great, mom. You can’t even speak. ‘ And I was so humiliated in front of my sons and their friends. God knows that’s all it takes for me – for that kind of feeling that their mom looks drunk in front of them. “
She also feared for her health.
“I thought…” What’s going on in my brain? What is alcohol doing to my brain where the synapses are failing so much that I can’t say that word? “” she said. “It’s almost like having a stroke or something. And it rocked me. I thought, ‘That’s it. That’s it. “… There was all the elements I needed. There was a logical element and there was this, ‘Oh my God, my sons saw me drink too much.'”
The next day she went to lunch with a friend who was sober and she said, “Well, you’re the first person I say that to, but it’s the first day I never drink again.” ”
It was three years ago last July and she hasn’t been drinking since.
“I now feel like I can do anything if I can get rid of the alcohol,” she said. “Alcohol is the hardest thing in my life.”
In the interview, Heaton also recalled using cocaine in the 1980s, but being able to quit when she realized it triggered depression. (“The depression I felt was so intense,” she recalls. “I thought to myself,“ I’m never going to do this again, because I feel like I’m going to kill myself. ”And I didn’t. “) She also spoke about losing her mother suddenly to an aneurysm when she was 12 and how it left her with unresolved trauma.
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