Long before he became a beloved icon, John Goodman was quietly sinking. Alcohol wrapped itself around every part of his life: his work, his moods, his memory. He admitted that the pressure of never knowing when the next job would come only drove him deeper into the bottle. He wasn’t chasing fun; he was numbing fear, shame, and the hollow dread of failure. At his worst, he knew he was flirting with disaster, calling his condition “a walking heart attack,” fully aware that one more misstep could end it all.
In 2007, he finally chose to live. Sobriety didn’t arrive as a miracle but as a daily battle—one he still fights. He wakes from dreams where he’s been drinking, panic flashing before relief sets in. The voices that once terrified him now make him laugh, because they remind him of a simple, hard-won truth: he stopped, and he stayed.
