With a forward by Carl Reiner and 273 pages of well-written and entertaining prose that follows, who can resist the temptation to delve inside the life and times of one of the best-known television comedians in Hollywood? Readers of My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business: A Memoir, by Dick Van Dyke, certainly won’t be disappointed.

But don’t look for dirt. There are fleeting references to some less-than-perfect behavior by some very familiar stars from the era, but nothing that is so awful as to paint the parties in a bad light.

What Van Dyke does do is take the reader through his early days prior to his start in show business. His own father never thought he’d amount to much, but Van Dyke’s eventual success in show business proved that assumption wrong.
Certainly, life wasn’t all a blissful climb to the top for Van Dyke, just as is isn’t for many a Hollywood celebrity – or any other well-known public figure, for that matter. But the ups and downs in the comedian’s life are treated almost as if they were casual mentions, not really upsetting to the degree that the vast majority of us would be bothered.

Take addiction to alcohol and smoking, for example. While Van Dyke does admit to a lifelong addiction to both, he managed to get it under control. It isn’t until page 186 that he gets to the heart of the matter and discusses how he realized he had a problem and decided to get help to overcome it.
That’s something every addict can relate to, whether or not they actually take the life-saving step and do something about it.
How Van Dyke got to the point where he recognized he was an alcoholic is also a familiar one. He began, as he says, as “the prototypical social drinker.” At first, he began with a martini to open him up, to get past the shyness. Then it was three or four in no time at all, followed by three or four when he got home. By the second season of “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” the comedian says he was looking at his watch to see how close it was to five o’clock. Pretty soon, he didn’t need to glance at his timepiece to know the hour. His body and brain knew it was time to drink.

Van Dyke relates the time he made a frank admission to columnist Marilyn Beck, telling her: “Somewhere along the line I progressed from being just a party drinker to the point where I’d run a race with Margie (his wife at the time) each night to see if I could get drunk before she could get dinner on the table.”

Still, Van Dyke didn’t see himself as an alcoholic. He didn’t drink in the morning. He didn’t drink at work or go to bars. He didn’t believe he had a problem.

But a friend did and gently mentioned that he had been complaining too often about being hung over and perhaps should get some help. Eventually, though, Van Dyke, like so many now in recovery, recognized his drinking had gotten out of control and checked himself into rehab.

Talk about trepidation. Van Dyke says the hard-core addicts he saw in treatment “scared the hell out of me.” But he didn’t let that stop him from doing the work, attending group meetings, treatment and therapy. During therapy, it was necessary to dredge up painful memories of his parents fighting over his dad’s drinking, his dad leaving, and other distressing memories.

After three weeks at the Phoenix treatment facility, Van Dyke emerged clean and sober – for the first time in nearly fifteen years. What was a surprise, however, is that his wife, instead of coming to pick him up had checked herself in to deal with an addiction to Librium.

In 1976, speaking to the Washington, D.C. press corps, Van Dyke publicly acknowledged that he was a recovering alcoholic. Other celebrities at the event who sought to eliminate the stigma and shame that often prevents people from owning up to the disease included astronaut Buzz Aldrin, TV host Garry Moore, former baseball pitcher Don Newcombe and Representative Wilbur Mills.

This isn’t the end of the story, however. Van Dyke would go on to divorce his wife, having taken up an affair with another woman, Michelle, who would become his second wife. The private life of a celebrity isn’t all that different from the private lives of millions of Americans, filled with tension and stress and temptations, often blurred and blunted by one or another addictive substance.

That the comedian emerges toward the end of his life (Van Dyke is in his 80s) still entertaining, enthusiastic and filled with good things to say about almost everyone he’s ever come in contact with during his life in and out of show business, is probably the best outcome possible.

It shows that no matter whom you are, rich or poor, young or old, famous or the person next door, you can find yourself having to deal with issues of alcoholism and addiction. It also shows that if you have the determination and do the work, you can learn to overcome the disease. Don’t expect an easy road of it. There will be a lot of bumps along the way. But the goal is recovery, and that is always a more hopeful outcome.