Grateful American: A Journey from Self to Service(50)
I didn’t know where to turn. I started going to Al-Anon Family Groups, for people worried about someone with a drinking problem. I started seeing a psychologist who specialized in alcoholism and helping families through difficult challenges. I learned that family members must become tough in their love. I needed to become ruthless in combating this addiction—for the sake of my wife. But it was very hard to do. You want to plead and beg and appeal to the wonderful, loving person you know is there deep down inside. But that person has been consumed, swallowed up, and cannot hear you.
One evening in January 1997, I came home from rehearsal and found Moira drunk, and we got into a massive fight. It was just before shooting began on George Wallace, the biggest movie role I’d ever had, and it was hard for me to stay focused on the movie with so much turmoil happening at home each evening. I called John Frankenheimer and finally told him everything. John had been very open with me when we first met. At one point in his life he’d been on top of the world as a director, but he’d become insane with alcohol, and it ruined large pieces of his career and family life. He’d now been sober for more than twenty-five years and was a serious attendee of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. He was a hard-core AA warrior and told me what I needed to do. I needed to take Moira to rehab—and I needed to do it right away!
The next morning, Moira became very apologetic. She promised she’d never get drunk again, but I explained that when I got home that evening, she needed to go to rehab. I called the psychologist, and he recommended a place in Port Hueneme, just north of us, called Anacapa by the Sea. That night when I arrived home, Moira was drunk again. I packed a bag for her and helped her into the passenger seat of our black Ford Mustang. She was on edge, resistant, but got into the car anyway. We started the ninety-minute drive north on the Pacific Coast Highway to the rehab facility. Twenty minutes up the road, Moira started freaking out—screaming, going crazy. I thought of Linda Blair in The Exorcist when confronted by the priest. I was so scared. At one point Moira started fiddling with the door handle as if trying to open the door to throw herself out of the car. I reached over, grabbed her, and held on, wondering, Who is this person? What the hell is happening?! It was the longest drive of my life.
When we finally reached the rehab facility, the therapists took Moira into their care and ordered me to leave. As I shut the door to the lobby, Moira looked back at me through the window, staring daggers. Her face was so startling. So not her. Normally, Moira is the most beautiful and wonderful spirit. But this was not my wife. The Moira I knew was lost, and I wanted to help find her again. She truly didn’t have control over her life.
When I returned home that night, I sat, exhausted, on a large landscaping rock that sat outside our front door. I stared up into the night sky. The kids were safe inside with my parents, and I couldn’t go into the house just yet. I needed to be alone for a moment. I’d just left Moira with people I didn’t know, and I desperately hoped I’d done the right thing. As I sat on the rock, a shooting star streaked across the sky. The brilliance of light startled me to stillness. There are greater things at work in the universe, I reminded myself, and I almost relaxed. At least I felt a measure of peace within my despair. I was able to put one foot in front of the other, go into the house, say hello to my family, hug the kids, climb into bed, then get up the next day to begin work on George Wallace again.
An average stay in rehab is twenty-eight days. My wife stayed in rehab for seven weeks. She was there the entire time I was shooting the movie. I received a call from the facility at one point, and a rehab supervisor indicated they were having a hard time getting Moira to admit she had a problem. She thought she was fine and that everybody there was messed up. That meant trouble. If you never admit you have a problem, then you’ll never get better.
Moira’s mom was a very funny lady. She reminded me of the eccentric and endearing character of Aunt Clara played by actress Marion Lorne in the 1960s television show Bewitched. But when Moira’s mother drank, and she drank regularly, a different personality would emerge. She had lost both her husband and her firstborn son to cancer, and as time went on, alcohol became more and more of a companion. Once, Moira and I were staying at her home, sleeping on the floor near the kitchen, and I saw Moira’s mother get up at 7:00 a.m., shuffle to the fridge, put ice in a coffee cup, and fill it with vodka. Plus, she had some health problems for which she took medications, and she often mixed her medications with booze. One night in 1991 she went to sleep on the couch and didn’t wake up. Her heart had simply stopped beating. The loss of Moira’s mom was very difficult for everyone—and very tough on Moira. They were very close and much alike. And neither one thought she had a problem with alcohol.
The counselors at rehab asked me to get letters from Moira’s friends, writing her honestly, telling her what they had observed about her drinking. I gathered those letters and sent them to her. They were difficult for her to read. She became troubled and thoughtful, but also indignant. At one point, we’d both partied with these people—and now they were telling her she had a drinking problem?! She concluded they were all nuts.
The pressures at work began to overtake me. Each night I needed to learn a lot of lines for the next day. At one point I asked my parents to stay with our children, and I moved out of our house into a hotel, the Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard, so I could focus on the part. I worried constantly about Moira. Worried constantly about my kids. Worried constantly about doing a good job on George Wallace. I received another call from the rehab center saying that they wanted to increase Moira’s stay because she still was not admitting the problem. The first step to healing is admitting that you are powerless over alcohol. I put John Frankenheimer on the phone with the folks at rehab. and John told them to be tougher with her and not to let up. He remembered what he had been like at his worst, and he explained that if people hadn’t been supertough with him then, he never would have gotten sober.