Ed Begley Jr. spent years hooked on gambling and unable to form a stable relationship due to his other addictions.
The ‘St. Elsewhere’ actor, 74, takes a “deep dive” into the decades he spent off the rails in his new memoir ‘To the Temple of Tranquility… and Step on It!’ and realised he had to be truthful about how he was an addict for far longer than he used to admit.
He told Closer magazine: “For years, I said I was an addict and alcoholic for seven years – ’71 to ’78 – but that’s not really true.
“I did other things long before that. I was a compulsive gambler; I was incapable of being in a monogamous relationship because of my other addictions.
“There were a lot of lessons I had to learn in the ’80s and ’90s.”
Dad-of-three Ed - who has been married to his second wife, actress Rachelle Carson, since 2000, said his life changed when he had the shakes from alcohol withdrawal while making a film – and missing out on holding his young daughter after nearly being killed because of what he’d “ingested”.
Asked what motivated him to get clean, he replied: “It really happened in two steps. The first step was to have the DTs (delirium tremens) for the first time on a movie set. It was horrible.
“Then I’d just drink a Bloody Mary in the morning and, ‘Hey, look at that, I’m fine’.
“The second thing, when my daughter Amanda was one year old, I was at Cedars-Sinai because I had almost died from things I had ingested.
“She wanted to hold me, but she couldn’t get close to me because I had all of these tubes everywhere.
“That’s when I realised I had a problem and the growth began.”
Ed, who has been sober since 1979 and was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2016, had daughter Amanda, 45, and son Nicholas, 44, with his first wife Ingrid Taylor, and daughter Hayden, 23, with Rachelle.
The actor – whose dad was Oscar winner Ed Begley – decided to start writing his autobiography after he turned 70.
He added: “I figured I’ve got kids, I’ve got grandkids. I should write down sone of these stories from my dad’s past and mine.”
