John Cullum drank and smoked. He doesn't drink or smoke now.
We called drinking and smoking "sinful" because it hurt John and affected me and our son JD, as well.
How did we manage to get John to quit?
What did JD and I say and do, what did John himself do, that worked? (And continues to work though John will admit, he misses smoking and sometimes, wishes he could have a drink.)
Here's our story.
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5 comments:
Thank you for sharing this story. It is a lovely story. And 3 cheers to JD for the role he played.
Love is such a powerful motivator, much better than fear, and the love you two share comes through in every story you tell.
I salute you John Cullum! Neither of those are easy to give up!
My family always had the wise attitude that they would rather I drank with them than sneak around. So there was no glamour about it for me. Friends would call me up in high school and say: "We've got a bottle of wine! Come meet us!" And I'd say: "Well...I'm sitting here having a scotch with Dad, so..."
When I started going to bars in my early twenties, I found that other people's smoke didn't bother me if I smoked too. So I smoked off and on for twenty years. But I was never suited to it, because it gave me chronic bronchitis. So it wasn't hard to quit. Especially when I stopped going to bars! Now I can have a drink without even thinking about a smoke.
There is a famous story about "Camelot" that I wonder if John can verify. Someone challenged Burton to drink a fifth of scotch before the show, and then perform. He asked Andrews afterward how he had been, and she said: "Rather better than usual."
I found this especially interesting as I'm currently reading "My Thoughts are Bloody," about the acting family of Junius Brutus Booth and his sons Edwin and John Wilkes. They were all hard drinkers and JW was a bully and a street fighter (not to mention the assassin of Abraham Lincoln). Does Shakespeare drive his actors to drink?
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