Hank Azaria

In fact, the day I left my marriage, now we're getting divorced, but I just let's separate and move out.

We're not having, this isn't going well.

I'm on my way to the hotel where I was gonna live, and I got a call that,

A dear friend of mine was in the hospital with pancreatitis brought on by alcoholism, and I spent the next two weeks in the hospital.

I was like... So taking care of one person... I was overwhelmed isn't even the right word.

And I'm sure I had some career, either good or horrible career thing going on that was either so good that it was overwhelming or so disappointing that it was horrifying.

Because there's very little in between.

Yeah.

That, um... They had Al-Anon meetings at Cedars-Sinai, where I was basically living for a couple of weeks, trying to nurse my friend through that with a few other people.

And I literally, I remember staggering over, like literally staggering, like, and I walked into this meeting and in the first, this is true, I'm not exaggerating this timeframe, first 30 seconds, I was like, cause I figured, well, if I'm gonna watch somebody die from this disease, he made it through that by the way and was okay, but it didn't look like he was gonna.

I should probably know the facts about alcoholism and, you know, get what's going on here.

And then 30 seconds, I realized I kind of know that.

I look at active alcoholics, I think of as like a locomotive coming at you full speed.

Like if they hit you, they will kill you in an instant.

But they're kind of easy to, they're loud and huge.

You see them coming.

You can like kind of go, fuck, and get out of the way.

You know, other Al-Anons.

They're the friends and family of alcoholics.

And it's called para-alcoholism.