Andrew McCarthy credited Ted Danson’s classic sitcom Cheers with helping him get sober.
“I owe you a great, great debt, which you don’t know,” McCarthy, 63, told Danson, 78, on the Wednesday, May 20, episode of the “Where Everybody Knows Your Name” podcast.
McCarthy has previously opened up about seeking professional help for alcoholism at a Minnesota rehab center in 1992. (He once told London’s The Times that he would have landed in rehab “whether I was in the movies or not.” )
“In 1992, I was in an alcohol rehab in Minnesota,” he explained to Danson. “I was all played out. I was just 29 years old and I was just done. I’d made a mess of everything.”
McCarthy recalled that the rehab staffers were having trouble getting the patients to “bond as a unit” until they discovered that everyone wanted to watch Cheers reruns. (The NBC sitcom — which was set in a Boston bar called “Cheers” — originally aired from 1982 to 1993. Danson played barman Sam Malone in all 11 seasons.)
“After all the counselors all went home, we would gather around and watch Cheers,” McCarthy said. “We would sit there and talk about people’s drinks, and how you [Danson] made the drinks … We totally bonded over the ‘alcoholic’ part of Cheers. That changed my life and I haven’t had a drink since.”
“Well done, may I say,” Danson congratulated McCarthy.
Ted Danson, John Ratzenberger, Rhea Perlman on “Cheers.” Courtesy NBC / courtesy Everett Collection
McCarthy previously explored the long-term impact of getting sober on the “Inside of You Host” podcast in 2023 when host Michael Rosenbaum asked if he still felt the urge to drink.
“Well, I certainly never think that,” he answered. “I think once you’re a pickle, you can’t ever become a cucumber again. I see my obsessive and compulsive qualities in other aspects of my life.”
The Pretty in Pink star remembered having “a moment” where he realized he had to completely change his life.
“I was sitting in a hotel. … I was at the Peninsula Hotel [in Beverly Hills] because I was in a grandiose phase of blowing money,” he told Rosenbaum, 53. “I would spend lots of money so people wouldn’t think there was something going wrong.”
McCarthy continued, “I remember being up all night, having emptied my minibar. I just heard a voice say, ‘Andrew, you do whatever you want. I’m tired.’ It freaked me out. I literally was looking under the couch — ‘Who just said that?’”
“That [incident] just cut through to me and I made a call then and went and got help,” he concluded.
After McCarthy got sober in 1992, he was married twice — first to his college sweetheart Carol Schneider from 1999 to 2005 and he later tied the knot with writer and director Dolores Rice in 2011. He shares son Sam, 24, with Schneider as well as daughter Willow, 19, and son Rowan, 12, with Rice.
“Like most parents, I believe my children to be more dynamic, more charming, funnier, smarter, more perceptive and sensitive, more athletic, and more beautiful than other people’s children,” McCarthy wrote in a 2013 blog. “I love my children. At this moment they still adore us. It’s a lovely time of life.”
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