Brat Pack icon Andrew McCarthy says drinking 'derailed my career entirely'

For Andrew McCarthy, fame didn’t cause his alcoholism — it only allowed him to "afford better vodka."

During the 1980s, the actor became one of the defining faces of the "Brat Pack," the influential group of young stars, including Molly Ringwald, Demi Moore and Rob Lowe, among others, that helped influence a generation of teen films. But during his rapid rise in Hollywood, McCarthy was also struggling with alcoholism, a battle that eventually led him to seek treatment in the ’90s.

In a recent appearance on Ted Danson’s "Where Everybody Knows Your Name" podcast, the 63-year-old reflected on the common misconception that his success fueled his addiction.

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"People always go, ‘Oh, well, you were too young, successful. That was too much for you, so you drank,’" McCarthy told Danson. "I’m like, ‘No, I would have drunk anyway. I was just able to afford better vodka.’"

When Danson noted McCarthy was "certainly functional" in the early years, McCarthy said, "To a point."

"Those kind of movies, that was early on. I was just starting to drink in those movies, but I certainly think it derailed my career entirely. ... Because not only the drinking, but then the years it took to recover from the drinking. 

"I was so clouded for years after and by then, that moment had passed, and I had no wherewithal what to do with that moment anyway. Had I not been drinking, not been a part of my life, I don't know that I had the wherewithal to sort of position myself [with] what's next and all that anyway."

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McCarthy has credited the sitcom "Cheers," set in a fictional neighborhood bar, with playing an unexpected but meaningful role in helping him get sober.

"I owe you a great, great debt, which you don’t know," McCarthy told Danson, 78.

"In 1992, I was in an alcohol rehab in Minnesota, and I was all played out," he explained. "I was 29 years old, and I was just done. I made a mess of everything, and I was in this rehab. They were trying to get us all to bond as a unit. ... But none of us liked each other. We were all disparate people. There was no way this was going to be a unit."

"But one of the guys then discovered that at seven o’clock at night, ‘Cheers’ was on every night," McCarthy continued.

 "... After the counselors all went home, we would gather around and watch ‘Cheers.’ And we would sit there and count people’s drinks and talk about how you made the drinks — he’s got a heavy hand, and he doesn’t. And so, we totally bonded over the alcoholic part of ‘Cheers.’ ... That changed my life, and I haven’t had a drink since. So, I owe you a great deal."

"Well done," Danson said.

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McCarthy also recalled being interviewed by Alec Baldwin for his podcast "Here’s the Thing." During their sit-down, the actors discussed early fame.

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"He said, ‘Well, maybe you just didn’t want it,’" said McCarthy. "And that hit me like a ton of bricks. I realized my temperament is ill-suited for that kind of thing. I want to be treated special. ... But my temperament is not suited for that kind of public [attention]."

"... I think now I could deal with it a lot more than I have, but back then I had much more than I could deal with," he shared. 

"And I think I recoiled from that, and that hung with me for years. And for years, after I stopped drinking, I sort of soldered success and drinking onto each other. And imagine one was like a rock, and there was a metal plate. I had this visual, this metal plate just stuck onto it. And it took me years to sort of have them separate because they had nothing to do with each other."

Back in 2021, McCarthy told Fox News Digital he didn’t blame his alcoholism on success.

"I think it took me several years to realize that I had a problem, then several years to do something about it," he admitted. "And those cries for help come very quietly at times. One day, I was in a hotel in Los Angeles. This was back in ’92. I was drunk in the morning. I just went, ‘I need help. This doesn’t work.’"

"Luckily, my drinking was so bad that I couldn’t pretend, ‘Oh, no, it’s fine. I got it under control. I’m managing this. It doesn’t get in the way of my work or my life,’" McCarthy said. "It was so all-consuming that I was lucky in that regard. I was just like, ‘This is out of control. I’m out of control. There’s only one thing I’m focusing on here, and it’s the wrong thing, and I need help.’ So, in that regard, I was quite lucky that I flamed out so intensely."

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Looking back, McCarthy said he would have approached Hollywood differently early in his career.

"I think Hollywood is very much a place of connections and relationships, and cultivating business relationships," he said. "And that’s one of the main keys to success. I understood that on an intellectual level. I was just never very good at it. And I can’t say that I’m particularly much better at it now, but it certainly would have benefited me to be more active in doing that. That would be the main thing."

When asked whether he watches his old films today, McCarthy laughed and replied, "I live with myself, I don’t need to watch myself."

"I have come a long way in my relationship [with those films], and I love them now in a very real kind of way," he said. "They’ve been kept so alive to me by people for so long that I’ve come to realize what they represent to a generation of people. That just feels wonderful. I loved the part in ‘St. Elmo’s Fire.’ I have great affection for ‘Pretty in Pink.’ I think ‘Mannequin’ is a delight. ‘Bernie’ is great. I have great affection for all those films. I don’t think that was always the case for me."