But with support from her family, she sought out professional help and has been in recovery for nearly five years. They discuss how Dedee’s family continues to support her in her recovery, how she helped her sister – actress Michelle Pfeiffer – prepare for her role as Betty Ford in “The First Lady” and why she sees recovery as a time of rebirth.

Episode transcript

Elizabeth Vargas:

Dedee Pfeiffer, welcome to Heart of the Matter.

Dedee Pfeiffer:

Hi. Thank you for having me.

Elizabeth Vargas:

It is so lovely to meet you. I saw your story on Instagram a few months ago and told the team, “We have to get her. She is amazing.” So it’s lovely to have you. Your recovery story, you’ve been very honest and open. Something that not a lot of people are, to be honest. A lot of people keep this very quiet, and very private, and that’s their right and everybody can and should do what is best for them. But you have decided to be very open about your journey to sobriety. Tell me why.

Dedee Pfeiffer:

It’s called, Recovering Out Loud. I did not make that up. I absolutely stole that from another person whose I believe podcast is called ,”Recovering Out Loud.” And I just love that. And I told him, “I’m going to steal that from you.”
Every day I say this and I never get tired of saying that I think we need to gently remind people that addiction is not a choice, it is a disease. Just like no one wakes up saying, “Hey. I think I want cancer. That sounds like a good idea”, anymore that anybody wakes up and says, “Hey. I want to be an addict.” I mean that’s crazy making right? No one would wish this upon anybody, let alone oneself. So if we can maybe almost help educate those around us, including the person’s act in their disease, that this is not your fault. That you’re not alone. For me, the shame was awful. I just felt like a big fat loser. Because I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop, so I felt like, “What is wrong with me?” Because it’s not like something that you can just stop if it really truly is an addiction, right? So I think educating people, that helps a lot, and letting people know that they’re not alone. If you have one hour of sobriety, that’s huge. Actually, that is huge and scary. But as long as they know that they’re not alone and the journey ahead of them is a rebirth.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Did you think when you were really, really struggling all those years, that you were alone? I know I did. I know that. And it’s incredible to me now, because I go to meetings and meet with people almost every day who all have stories just like mine, or very different from mine, but with that same common thread. And I can’t believe I thought I was alone, but I did.

Dedee Pfeiffer:

No. For me, also, my dad was this hot-blooded North Dakota farm, old buck who never finished high school, but if you cut yourself, you just sewed it back up. Put it in a whiskey bottle, sewed it back up, didn’t hurt, move on, and you’d never ask for help. Because that was weak, that’s how I grew up. So asking for help was weak. And I got to tell you, one of the things I said at the Betty Ford 40th anniversary, I was the keynote speaker, and one of the things I said was, “Who in the hell told us that asking for help was weak? Who said that?” Asking for help is really hard. So to conquer and do something that’s really hard, takes some strength and, excuse me, some balls, right? Asking for help is huge. It’s not a weak person that does that. A strong person.
And those of us out there who are afraid to ask, right now, I look back, and there’s no way I could have done myself. I was going to go to the light way too soon. I was not going to be here one day talking to you had I just continued trying to do it by myself. So one of the things we do is got to work on the shame. We got to work on educating people that it’s not a choice. And also letting people know that you’re not alone. I right now I feel so loved and supported for the first time in my life, on a level that nobody can understand other than someone else is in recovery. And I met lucky girls up here. I know you know me, I know you. And we just met, what, two minutes ago, right?

Elizabeth Vargas:

Yeah. We’ve walked the same journey, and there’s a real kinship in that. And it’s deep because it was a tough rocky journey. Like everybody, no matter what their addiction story is, and their sobriety story is, it’s tough to do what people in recovery have done. And it should be something celebrated certainly, and not shamed.

Dedee Pfeiffer:

So true. Because I’m on the set of Big Sky. Wednesday nights, 10:00 PM.

Elizabeth Vargas:

A little plug there.

Dedee Pfeiffer:

I got to keep my butt employed. So here’s so interesting. I go on the set, “Hey Dedee Pfeiffer, nice to meet y’all. I’m sober.” They’re like-

Elizabeth Vargas:

Really?

Dedee Pfeiffer:

… oh yeah. I’m very open about it. And I have people who come up to me, crew, and directors, and cast who quietly say, “Hey. I love the way you were recovering out loud. I have 35 years.” Or, “Hey. I have five years.” And I go, “Hey. Why are you whispering?” And boy you want to see them stop and go, “I’m not sure why.” I said-

Elizabeth Vargas:

That surprises me, even in your industry. And Hollywood, that and of all the industries out there, it feels like people have been most open as actors, directors in the movie making, TV making business, on the entertainment side at least, people have been very open about it. Are you finding that there is still a real quiet majority?

Dedee Pfeiffer:

No. But those like me, and the Robert Downeys. And God, there’s Eminem. There’s a whole bunch of us out there right now saying, “Hey, it’s okay to be sober. The waters here’s okay over here.”

Elizabeth Vargas:

Anthony Hopkins, Brad Pitt.

Dedee Pfeiffer:

Oh. All of them, man. Oh. I just say thank you for joining us in helping other people. Because making people not feel alone is so important. But it is shocking how I still get that. I get their whispering. I’m like, “Why are you whispering for 35 years? I’d take a billboard out on Sunset if I’ve had 35 years. I’ve got four plus years, and I’m still a newbie at this.” But I said, “But I get your journey, and I respect that.” But there’s still that icky, I call it like the sting out of the word, “addiction.” There’s still a sting that when you say, “I’m an addict”, or, “I’m in recovery”, or, “I go to AA meetings”, or whatever that is, there’s still a sting and a stigma. And I’m like, “Okay. That’s cool. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” This podcast is one bite at a time. Anybody else out there today who can say, “I got 35 years.” Other people like me go, “Oh. Oh. Thank you for that, because I know that I can do it.” Because like it’s a tough day, but we can do it.

Elizabeth Vargas:

You said recently you have four years.

Dedee Pfeiffer:

Four plus years. July it’ll be five years. Yeah.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Wow. Congratulations. That’s amazing. Tell me, you have said in many interviews that you were in your teens when you started drinking. How old were you?

Dedee Pfeiffer:

Oh baby, if you really want to go there, I was like, yea high, sitting in my dad’s lap across the street at Earl’s house where they were gutting fish, drinking Coors tall boys, smoking cigarettes, me on my daddy’s lap. And him giving me sips of Budweiser, which is AKA, piss water. And me making that face and them laughing. In my world, that was love. My dad actually acknowledged me. So sipping nasty beer on his lap at, I don’t know, three, four years old, whatever that was, maybe younger, I don’t remember, was love. And my dad always had a tall boy in his hand. And by the way, back then he had it in his lap driving, and we were in the back holding onto ladders with no car seats, no seats. Very different generation back then.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Right.

Dedee Pfeiffer:

So I learned from the best how to be a high functioning alcoholic. By the way, we are different cats.

Elizabeth Vargas:

How so?

Dedee Pfeiffer:

High functioning alcoholics, we’re very cutting, we’re very clever. A lot of people when they found out I went to rehab were like, “What?” Others were like, “I’m not surprised. It’s about time.” There were a lot that went, “I had no idea.” A lot of this is uneducation on what alcoholism looks like. I could leave a glass of wine at the table for you, which is a visual, that’s for you, by the way. So that you are not caught on the fact I’m going to go home and pound them a bottle when I get home by myself, right? There’s ways in which we hide it. Never drink at work, never drink at school, you know what I mean? You don’t drink in places where they can catch on, but when they’re not looking, you’re pounding. At least I was so-

Elizabeth Vargas:

And you also, when you say, “a high-functioning alcoholic”, you had this incredible career in Hollywood. I mean, you were acting at a level that was getting you plumb roles in both movies and TV shows.

Dedee Pfeiffer:

Yes. I was extremely fortunate for 30 plus years working in TV, and film, and stage, and as a producer. And yet all I could really think of at any one day was at the end of the day getting to that glass of wine, or the end that martini, or that happy hour. I know if I wasn’t working, and there was nothing to do and the boys are with their dad, I was at a happy hour, whatever. And I was always disguising it like, “Well, I’m at the bar studying.” I was studying by the way, for my master’s of social work, my A.A., my B.A. I was studying while drinking. I was drinking while making sure my kids were provided for. I was drinking when no one was looking, and I would disguise it. High-functioning. High-functioning because we’re sneaky. Remember the addict we’re sneaky, and that addict inside of you will take no prisoners to stay alive and kicking. And I call it “driving your car.” My problem is my addict doesn’t know how to drive, okay? And she was going to smack us into a wall, and take us both out, if I didn’t finally have the courage to say in my fifties, I might add. So if I’m 58 right now, do the math. What is that? 54, 53, 54. I said, “Hey. I need help.” But you know what happened, my family came to me and said, “We want to do an intervention.” They didn’t know that at that very time I was looking at 800 numbers on TV.

Elizabeth Vargas:

So at the time when you were hitting inside of yourself, that bottom of knowing, “I can’t keep the wheels on this car any longer. Everything is about to go really out of control. I think I need to get help.” It was right at that moment that your family did an intervention?

Dedee Pfeiffer:

Well they tried. They tried to do an intervention, but I blocked them. It’s so mean. They could see that I was struggling in this disease. You know, I was following my father’s footsteps and my grandfather’s alcoholism, so all over the family. And when you’re close to those of us, when we’re active in our disease, those close to us see it. They know there’s a problem there. But then they go, “Oh. But she went through her whole pregnancy without drinking, so she must not be an alcoholic.” See there implies the wrong information, but that’s okay. I get it. That’s old information. We have to renew that. Like any college book really should be renewed. Our history’s being renewed as we speak as well. But the thing is that I always say, “Mother Earth is my higher power”, because Mother Earth is one badass woman. She could do whatever she wants, and we just got to play by her rules. She and the universe decided that I was going to go to the light if something didn’t change, and I knew it, deep down inside. But again, the shame just kneecapped me. And I felt like a failure, because I didn’t know how to stop. And I saw this 800 number that said, “Anonymous call, we can help you.” And I wrote it down, but I still couldn’t get the courage to call, because I felt like “Dedee Pfeiffer has to call an 800 number for help because I don’t know what else to do?” And meanwhile, while my family went, “Okay. We need to do an intervention.” So one of them came up to me and said, “We’d like to do an intervention” on Tuesday. “On Thursday we’d like you to meet us.” And I looked at this person and I said, “You don’t have to do that. If just take care of my kids and my animals. I’ll go.” And this person went, “Oh wait. We thought you were going to fight us.” I said, “You’re not going to pull up with that car, are you? And everyone’s going to write me a letter, and it’s going to be on TV.” And they’re like, “No.” I went, “Please don’t do that to me. That show ‘Intervention.'” Which I think is very helpful, but that scared me. But I said, “I was already looking for 800 numbers.” My family didn’t know that I was going to respond like that. They expected pushback. They expected a royal, “F you, get out of my face. You have issues too.” You know, the addict being defensive. So two days later off to rehab, I went.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Where did you go?

Dedee Pfeiffer:

I went to Breathe Healing Center in Los Angeles. At that point, Kathleen Murphy was head of the clinic, and she’s an amazing trauma and addiction specialist. Because there is often the two love to tango: addiction and trauma. And if we don’t tease them apart and address them separately, one will continue. The other one’s growth. And you’re looking at a relapse really if you don’t really look at the whole thing. But they do need to be teased apart, the way I feel it. There’s trauma over here, addiction over here. So she was amazing. Kathleen, I owe my life to her and everyone there at the clinic and my family for having the courage to say, “Okay. She may never talk to us again, but we need to do something.” And then also I’d like to thank Mother Earth giving me the courage to say I can’t do this. Okay? Because everyone’s, what’s your bottom? And you know what it is, girl? You know what my answer is? “Which bottom? Which bottom?” I had so many at 54. Are you kidding me? Oh my God, I had so many. I don’t know, pick one. So it was a cumulative, it was time. And I always call the day that I went… Oh God, I’m about to cry… was the day of the beginning of my rebirth as a person, as a human being. Literally it’s a rebirth. And I said that on Page Six, in a magazine I did. I can’t remember. And Betty Ford, everywhere I speak, I try to explain it as a rebirth because that’s what it is.

Elizabeth Vargas:

And was that it? You stayed sober after that?

Dedee Pfeiffer:

Yeah. I’ve been really fortunate-

Elizabeth Vargas:

Wow.

Dedee Pfeiffer:

… I went into it like I’ve been-

Elizabeth Vargas:

But what was it, because you said you had tried on your own many times to get sober before that, and were feeling very ashamed of yourself, because you weren’t able to do it. What was it that happened to you at treatment that helped, made that happen?

Dedee Pfeiffer:

Well first of all, they addressed my trauma.

Elizabeth Vargas:

What trauma did you have?

Dedee Pfeiffer:

Actually, believe it or not, I’ve had a lot of things happen that are very traumatic. But I would’ve said they were things that happened to me, say in my twenties or thirties, or all my divorces here, all the breakups, or what have you. Or I had DV, domestic violence. I was sexually assaulted. There’s a lot of them, right? But then actually when we really dug into it started as a child.

Elizabeth Vargas:

How so?

Dedee Pfeiffer:

Oddly enough things that I had no idea really traumatized me. First of all, my family didn’t talk about feelings. This is not that generation. We got smacked in a store and no one called social services. People walked by and said, “What’s that kid do to deserve that smack in the middle of Alpha Beta?” I mean, they’d walk right over us and we’re laying on the floor crying. Because my mom would just sit there, beat us after we did something wrong. So it was such a different generation to grow up in. And again, we didn’t talk about feelings. We didn’t talk about anything. I grew up in a generation that if something happened to you, no matter what it was, no matter how traumatic it was, you got back up, and you continued on with your day. You got back up and you brushed yourself off. Didn’t hurt, keep going. And that was rewarded, right? That was, “Wow. Look at her. She just kept going. She didn’t miss a beat.” So that’s the family I was raised in. So anything that happened to me as a child, to sit and feel those feelings was weak. So I learned quickly to skip back up, brush yourself off and go.

Elizabeth Vargas:

And suppress those feelings down?

Dedee Pfeiffer:

In my mid-fifties and rehab. Oh that onion, peeling that onion back. Oh my, I realized there was stuff that I almost would as embarrassed to say, traumatizing. Because I was such a sensitive child that maybe didn’t affect my brothers and sisters, really affected me. And I just kept bearing it. So of course, as an adult, I continued on with behavior that was familiar, hurt, pain, trauma, and kept burying it. It didn’t hurt, keep going on. So it was just layers and layers of stuff. Like watching my little sister go over the handlebars with this sharp piece of candy that just tore out the upper part of her mouth when she went over the handlebars. And I looked over and there was just blood squirting all over the sidewalk. I was really little, and me just standing there paralyzed. But I guess I ran in and told my parents they threw her in a car, and took her to the ER. But I’ll never forget that. I had forgotten about that. But for some reason that really, that went in and that was something I had to deal with. And a lot of other things. My whole opinion about our stories is that they’re all very individual, and what affects you may not affect me. PTSD is very real. There’s two soldiers that can go experience the same battle and come back and one will have PTSD, and the other one won’t.

Elizabeth Vargas:

No. It’s funny. Most people would say, for example, seeing your sister go over the handlebars and separate traumatic injury like that, “Well, why is that trauma to you? It’s just trauma to her.” But I have a similar story. I have a little sister who also fell, and had a terrible injury to her mouth and blood was everywhere, and I turned and ran to get my mom, and that memory is very, very powerful for me. I obviously feel guilt that I didn’t help. But in other words, it’s hard to identify the traumas, but they’re there and they’re there in those memories that are so powerful and so seared that they’re, that you know, you can remember it like it was yesterday. If I can remember it like it was yesterday, and I’m the age I am now, there was something traumatic about that memory.

Dedee Pfeiffer:

There was a lot of feeling around that, and all that. So unless we learned, just first of all just uncover it.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Right.

Dedee Pfeiffer:

Right? I was in a club in Hollywood, and I was sexually assaulted in the bathroom, and afterwards I immediately was so riddled with guilt, because I felt it was my fault. I deserved it. I was dancing sexy, I had sexy clothes on, and I should have been smarter. And I asked for it. Well, that buried in there because I thought, and then when we finally uncovered that one, and by the way, there’s a whole bunch. Back in the day when I was acting in ’82, there was a lot of stuff going on in the eighties and the nineties, that as a woman you dealt with. I mean, you have the Me Too, and all that. I mean, I understand, I know what they’re talking about. But my issue is that I completely blame myself because I remember as a child, my little sister got attacked on the street. When she came home to tell my dad, he said, “What did you do for him to do that to you?” He immediately went there. I remember hearing that.
All I did was hear that. And that planted the everlasting seed. So after that, considering what was going on in the seventies, eighties, and nineties with boundaries, and women and men in the industry and what have you, and out in clubs, I just immediately just chalked them all off as that, “They’re my fault.”

Elizabeth Vargas:

I take it you have a lot of Me Too stories being in Hollywood, and when you were a young woman in the eighties and nineties.

Dedee Pfeiffer:

That’s where a lot of my sense of humor came from. See, even now when people come at me and they start shit, I just go, I just joke it up. I go, “I bet your wife would love to hear you say that to me.” You want to really make them run away. You don’t have to do call HR. Just throw in there that, “How do you know that these glasses aren’t recording you right now, Johnny?” I mean, right. And they go, “Oh. Oh.” And they run. I humor to set boundaries down. And if they really continue, which generally they don’t, because that’s a huge way of saying, “Johnny. You need to back away honey. Or someone’s going to get into a lot of trouble. Let’s not go there. Let’s not make this noisy. Just if you need to do that, go do that with somebody who’ll put up with that shit because I’m not. Because I had to in the seventies, eighties and nineties, now I’m a little smarter than you, because if you’re stupid enough to try it in the millennium, you’re just dumb.”

Elizabeth Vargas:

Your family is unusual in that there are not one, there’s not one successful actress. There are two. Your sister is Michelle Pfeiffer. And did you ask her sometime? Did you tell her like, “Oh my god. This guy just hit on me.” Or, “Oh my God. This person just tried to assault me.” Were you able to draw on each other for advice and help?

Dedee Pfeiffer:

I’m sure I did. I have another sister as well. The three of us are really tight, we’re like the Three Stooges. I’m sure I probably did. I never told her about the assault in the bathroom in the club, because I was riddled with such shame and blame. Again, here we go. And again, I was drinking so it was like, “Well, there you go.” Just constantly blaming myself. I actually told her when I got sober that happened. She goes, “You never told me that.” I said, “Yeah. Well, because it was my fault.” And she just shook her head like, “Wow. Wow.” And she just felt so bad. It was a generation that we grew up in, and that was protocol. That was what we did.

Elizabeth Vargas:

But sometimes it’s funny, you need someone else to say to you, “That was wrong. That was terrible.” You need that validation. And I know I get that in the rooms of recovery, and from my sponsor who will acknowledge how difficult, or how awful something was, because sometimes left on our own, as you just said, we think it’s all our fault. “It’s my fault that I got jumped in a nightclub. It’s my fault that this director hit on me, because maybe I was dressed too sexy, or it’s my fault because I was drinking.” We tend to blame ourselves a lot.

Dedee Pfeiffer:

Absolutely. Oh. Don’t get me wrong. Both my sisters were not happy when they heard that, at all. But I’m a big believer that there’s no healing back there. There’s no healing back there. So the healing is in the now. They are so grateful and so happy that I sought help. I keep telling them, “Thank you for having the balls to come to me.” They were like, “Thank you for not telling us to F off, and never talking to us again, because we know that that happens.” My family doesn’t understand my alcoholism or my addiction because they’re all, “normies”, is what we call them. But let me tell you, they support me in any way that they can. They just say, let me know what that looks like and I’ll be there for you.

Elizabeth Vargas:

I was interested to read that your sister Michelle was playing Betty Ford I believe in, in a movie or some sort of show. You offered to her, “Hey. If you’ve got any questions about what it’s like to be a woman struggling with this disease”, and she came to you. What did she ask you and what did you tell her that helped her play that role?

Dedee Pfeiffer:

When I found out that she was going to play Betty Ford, I lost my flipping mind. First of all, I had to find out from Brian Geraghty on the set of Big Sky, Wednesday nights, Hulu, ABC, that second flag keep me employed. So he said, “Oh. Congratulations.” He said “Your sister is playing Betty Ford, that’s so cool.” I go, “What?” I go, “Why am I always the last to know?” So I call her and I go, “What the fuck is going on? You’re playing Betty Ford?” She’s like, “Oh yeah.” I go, “What do you mean, ‘Oh yeah.’?” And she goes, “Yes. It’s really great, Hulu movie playing the First Lady”, and she’s with these other amazing actresses. And I just got really quiet, and I just said, “I could not be more proud that you’re playing one of us. There’s no one else in the world that I would rather have play one of us than you.” She got real quiet and she was like, “Thanks Sal.” We call each other. And I said, “I love you and I don’t even know how to respond to this other than joy. My heart is just so full with joy and by the way, if you need anything, I’m over here.” And she goes, “I will. I love you.” And then she did. I thought, “There’s no way.” Right? My sister’s a really smart woman, she’s an amazing actress. And I was like, “She’s never asked me for advice.” And she did. She called and she said, “I have a couple of questions.” And I was a little tongue-tied. All of a sudden my answers were really important. They’re always important. The dynamics in the sisterhood of us changed. I went from the identified problem in the family, to the identified possibility. That one I ripped off from Katherine Murphy. When you’re active in your disease, you’re the identified problem in your circle. When the day you decide to change, and take that leap into recovery, you go from that to the identified possibility, because the possibilities are endless. And I really felt it in that moment. “Oh. I really am living the identified possibilities.” So I gave her all the knowledge I knew all my passion, anything I can give her that-

Elizabeth Vargas:

What did you tell her though? I’m curious specifically about how to play one of us authentically.

Dedee Pfeiffer:

I kind of can’t tell another actor how to play anything, but what you do with internal work. I said, “Chelle, that the shame, if you don’t really embrace that shame, which is something you can’t write. You can’t write that, you can’t have to play that.” I never walked around saying how shameful I felt, it was something that just was. So I talked at length about the shame that we carry, about the self-loathing that we carry, that we feel like failures, because we just can’t stop. And that’s the difference between a “normie” and somebody who has an addiction. If we could stop, you wouldn’t go to rehab. You wouldn’t be in recovery, right? So I said, “These are small things, but they’re huge that happens throughout.” Usually you’re drinking, or you’re using as you go from whiskey to vodka, vodka to wine, wine to beer. And those are all mini relapses, because you’re trying to shift. Those are all ways to manage something that’s unmanageable. But I think it’s really those private moments where you keep trying to tell yourself, “It’s not a problem. I’m okay. I got this.” I was giving more. Well, I was trying to give her an internal conversation to have with herself, that I knew only my sister would connect from the heart to the brain. Because playing this character, you can’t play from your head, you can’t play us from your head. It comes from your heart, and it comes from childhood stuff. She also knew our childhood. She knew about my trauma. She had no extent of my trauma. By the way, not all people trauma have addictions and vice versa.

Elizabeth Vargas:

…Something that they’re not numbing and not wanting to feel.

Dedee Pfeiffer:

Right, yeah. And again, it can be something that you thought was trivial as a child, but somebody else can say, “No honey. For you, that was traumatizing.” So I gave her just a lot of what it feels like to be one of us, and on any given day.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Has the movie come out?

Dedee Pfeiffer:

Yeah. It already came out.

Elizabeth Vargas:

And when you watch it, do you see that shame that you were telling her about in the way she portrays the First Lady?

Dedee Pfeiffer:

That’ll be transparent. I have not seen it, and it’s too close to home.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Really?

Dedee Pfeiffer:

I’m going to see it. But I wanted to be done with Big Sky, which I just finished show wrap last week, because I kind of feel like I’m going to watch it, and I’m not sure how I’m going to respond. So I needed some time to maybe have a reaction to it. And I didn’t want to be actively working on the show playing Denise, because although my character’s in recovery on the show, she’s different than I am. So I’m going to see it, I just want to kind of take care of my environment first. But I got asked to speak at, like I mentioned, at the 40th anniversary of the Betty Ford Clinic. And I did not get sober there. And I was a keynote speaker. And when I did my speech, I mentioned my sister playing Betty Ford, one of us. And how proud I was that she, out of everybody, played one of us, and how important and impactful that is. And in our Pfeiffer family, you have two, not one of us, advocating for Recovering Out Loud, or just having the conversation. For me it’s about, “Let’s just have the conversation, take the sting out of it.” And my sister playing Betty and me out here doing these podcasts, we’re doing what we can. And I feel my father who went to the light with his disease is very proud of me and my sister for sure. And my mom, who had mental health issues.

Elizabeth Vargas:

You amazingly, I mean, you had a whole career resurgence. After you got sober, you took a break from Hollywood for a bit. And really, I mean, talk about lightning striking twice. I mean, you’re in a really tough business. It’s hard. It’s hard for women our age. You and I are just a few years apart in age. It’s hard for women our age period on television and in a business that isn’t kind to women aging. You got a fantastic role in a fantastic show called Big Sky. We’ll give it a third plug on ABC/Hulu.

Dedee Pfeiffer:

Hi, Hulu.

Elizabeth Vargas:

And you got this role. I mean, how did that happen? I mean, how did that all come about?

Dedee Pfeiffer:

What happened was my family watched me work my ass off in recovery. They saw me take leaps and bounds, not knowing what was going to happen in my future. But I knew if I just kept sober, something good was going to come out of it, I didn’t know. I had to have faith, which by the way, works best in the dark. In the process, which you can’t see the process, you can’t feel the process. So it was really hard to have faith in the process, and trust people like you who have years ahead of me to say, “Just have faith in the process. Put one foot in front of the other. If you don’t have a God, don’t worry about it. You can borrow mine for a minute until you can discover who your higher power was”, which was my story. I’m not a big God person, but I love spirituality, I love that, right? So I had to continue every day, just taking the next indicated action in the right direction. Not knowing where I was going to go, not having a clue of I was going to make it. And then out of nowhere, a year into sobriety, my brother-in-law, David Kelley, texted me and I was like, “Wait a minute, why is David texting me?” I was finishing my last year in college, mental health, interning, finishing my master’s of social work. I had earned my bachelor’s of psych, and then my A.A., all with my addiction by the way. I took a year off of school, my master’s to get sober. And went back sober my last year in my graduate program. Sober, not smoking. Oh my God, that was hard. And I didn’t relapse. I was just trusting those around me who kept telling me, “It’s okay. You can do this. You can do this.” And my family was watching. They were just watching. And this is what they meant by the opportunities are endless. Just, you have to trust that. And he texted me and said, “I have a role named Denise in this new show I’m doing, I’d like to offer to you. Are you still interested in acting?” I was like, “That just happened? This is the shit they’re talking about [inaudible]. Where like things just happen.” I was like, “Oh yeah. Yeah.” They were not joking, that my brother-in-law is well aware that I’m an actor, and I’ve been acting for years. Never offered me a role before, ever. And had nothing to do with my alcoholism ever. Because I met him, my drinking was not out of control at that point. But all of a sudden in recovery he went, “I have, out of nowhere, a perfect role for you”, that he just gave me. It’s the first one cast on Big Sky. That’s crazy. That doesn’t happen in Hollywood ever. Even in the Pfeiffer family. So I was like, this is such a result, a direct result of what I mean by being identified possibility, and also showing others that it’s possible, right? That it is a rebirth. You just got to trust it. I know trust is so hard. Having faith in something you can’t see or touch is really hard. But you just got to keep listening to people like me and you and everybody else who says, “Shockingly, these things happen.” But if it wasn’t without work though, it’s not just sitting there twiddling your thumbs, not doing anything. It’s work every day, it’s how to save that, and give to others. That’s one thing we do by the way, as people in recovery is give to others. What a beautiful way to live your life, right? Giving to others, that’s your new-

Elizabeth Vargas:

Never in a million years did you imagine that you’d be back on a hit show acting again.

Dedee Pfeiffer:

And sober, not smoking cigarettes, and giving back, and recovering out loud when I couldn’t even say I was an alcoholic. I couldn’t even say those words. By the way, can I say something? I was talking to my girlfriend earlier about this. I said, “You know when people used to say, ‘You’re an alcoholic!’ Well, of course. I’d be like, ‘Well, you’re a stoner!'” You know what the response should be? Which is sad, we’re not there yet. Which is, “Yeah. I am. Yeah. I am. And how sad is that? And I’m an untreated one at that.” But we’re still not there yet. Would you ever go, “You have cancer!” And would you ever do that with somebody who has a disease, throw it in their face? But we do, do it. We do.

Elizabeth Vargas:

We do it all the time. And we know the statistics that so many people, the vast majority of people who need help do not get it. And they don’t get it, because of the stigma and shame-

Dedee Pfeiffer:

Right. That’s what I’m saying.

Elizabeth Vargas:

… because people around them do shame and blame them, “Why are you doing this to yourself? Stop it.”

Dedee Pfeiffer:

“I mean, she lost all of her kids and now she’s on the street. She had it all.” There’s people experiencing homelessness, that was my first year in college. My internship was in the field, in the field, doing field work with those experiencing homelessness. And let me tell you, there’s people out there with masters, PhDs, they had businesses, they had lives. And either the trauma, or their addiction, or maybe both kneecapped them because they never got the help. And now they’re so knee-deep into, it’s really hard to climb out. There are people actively trying very hard to help them get to this place. It’s hard, but it’s doable. But it’s hard. But yet, there’s still that shame. And by the way, when they’re out there, there’s a community, and they are a community out there. Just like people in AA. And by the way, you can also get sober not using AA. I mean I’m a huge fan of whatever floats your boat, whatever gets you to the same result.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Right.

Dedee Pfeiffer:

That’s cool.

Elizabeth Vargas:

And there are plenty of options out there. I mean, that’s one of the things that’s been actually promising on the recovery front and on the journey to destigmatize this disorder, which is the fact that there are lots of sober curious movements. There are lots of ways to get sober now. If AA doesn’t work for you, try one of the other ones.

Dedee Pfeiffer:

Yeah. I’ve always said like, “AA used to scare me, and but the rehab I went to used it. We had to go, but that had the huge issue with the God.” And my sponsor who’s amazing, she said, “Honey. Go in that big book and scratch out all those words, ‘God’, just scratch them out, and put, ‘Mother Earth.'” So I went in there and wrote, “Mother Earth”, all over each word that said, “God.” And it was far more palatable to me. And I went, “Okay. That feels better.” She goes, “Whatever.” She goes, “I don’t care that if that doorknob is your higher power. Write, ‘doorknob. I give it up to the doorknob’, whatever. Just somebody who you think is a little bigger, little more powerful than you.” Because I think that that is hard for some people.

Elizabeth Vargas:

The best thing I ever heard was, take what you want and leave the rest.

Dedee Pfeiffer:

… yeah. I literally, I went to an AA meeting every day for a year straight as part of my recovery. Every day.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Wow.

Dedee Pfeiffer:

There were days I didn’t want to go, “Oh my God. Ooh.” But I was like, there’s days I don’t want to brush my teeth either, but I do it.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Yeah. Finally, I wanted to talk to you about the fact that during the pandemic, and in the last couple of years the demographic where we’re seeing one of the biggest spikes in alcohol consumption is women. Women, older women, women over the age of 40. Why do you think that is? And as a woman in her fifties, you and I are both two women who got sober in our fifties, and we’re both high-functioning alcoholics. And I too, like you had people turn to me and go, “What?”, when I went away to get help. Like, “What? You?”

Dedee Pfeiffer:

Yeah.

Elizabeth Vargas:

People like who sat next to me, George Stephanopoulos said, “I sat next to you for hundreds of hours of live television, and I have never once thought that was an issue for you.” So we were both really good at keeping it really hidden from everybody except the people really close to us. But why do you think we are seeing more women in this time of incredible stress and anxiety turn to alcohol for relief? And what is it about getting sober at that age? I mean, what advice would you give to women who are in that age bracket, who are reexamining their relationship with alcohol? We had Patricia Heaton on the podcast who was talking about the fact that her drinking, and it had just slowly escalated. She had the empty nest syndrome, and then she realized when she was playing a game with one of her kids and her son said, “You’re slurring your words, mom.” And she was mortified, because she’d had too much to drink, and was slurring her words. And that was it for her. She stopped. So we’re seeing a lot of women in this sort of same age demographic who are reexamining their relationship with alcohol, because they’re looking at it and realizing, “I’m doing too much of this, and this is not good for me. And there are starting to be consequences for this.” So what would you say to the women out there who are around that age and who are finding themselves worried about their alcohol consumption?

Dedee Pfeiffer:

I think a lot of that has to do with isolation and being lonely. Empty nest, that’s a big one right there. Relationships, the dynamics change. You’ve been married for a long time, or if you’ve been single for a long time, the pandemic really messed all that up too. I think that that’s probably one of the biggest ones is, “Watch that. Are you isolating? Are you really alone or have you gotten into a habit of something that you don’t feel comfortable?” Bottom line is this, I feel you know in your heart if you are truly with your authentic self, whatever that might look like for you. So you have to ask yourself, “Am I really my authentic self when I’m doing these things?” If the answer is no, there’s hope for you. But here’s the most important thing. Women and men and theys are badass people when you put your mind to something. If you’re putting your mind to something to hide your alcoholism, that is a powerful mind. That’s a clever mind. But think if you put all that towards recovery, there’s no stopping you. It’s the same energy just switching it over here. All the energy and power and stuff I put into keeping my alcoholism alive and hidden and activated is the same energy you’re going to put into recovery. It is the same energy, if not more over here.

Elizabeth Vargas:

It’s amazing how much time it frees up once you’re no longer, you are keeping that secret, and dealing with that monkey on your back.

Dedee Pfeiffer:

Yes. It’s a lot of energy and I think if you just stop and ask yourself how much energy are you using into trying to disguise your drinking into looking like a “normie” when you know inside it’s a little something more than that. But if you’re having troubles managing it, there’s people like us out there who are totally willing to help you. Because part of what we do is to give back. That is what’s so beautiful about recovery, is part of keep my own butt sober is to help you and everyone else discover this same rebirth. But I think that this whole isolation thing, and the pandemic just made it worse. And I think some of us are still kind of hiding a little bit. I know I’m having troubles getting back in the world again. It’s kind of scary now.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Yeah. It’s hard to completely relax right now.

Dedee Pfeiffer:

Completely. Yeah. I mean, people aren’t masking, and they’re going out. But it is a teeny bit scary for me. So I was invited to my doctor’s huge party, and I just got nervous and I said, “I love you. I can’t. Right now I need to get my sober legs a little stronger.” Even four years. And I still went, “I’m not going to do that yet.” It was a big Hollywood party and I was like, “Ah. I need another year to work on my sober legs.” Because that’s what it is, working on those sober legs discovering how to walk again. And that’s okay.

Elizabeth Vargas:

I think that’s one of the misconceptions that people who are not in recovery have, which is that it isn’t like you just go get sober and then it’s like, “Boom, done. Well, whatever.”

Dedee Pfeiffer:

It’s true.

Elizabeth Vargas:

I mean everybody’s different. It doesn’t mean you’re white knuckling through every day, but it also means you respect the fact that you have to take care of yourself, so that you don’t get wobbly. I think the only way I can think of just to describe it.

Dedee Pfeiffer:

Yes, you call it wobbly. I call it itchy. And sometimes when I’m not looking, I’ll think about a happy hour. And I literally have that quick thought, “Oh. I love happy hours.” I love happy hours. Like I love happy hours. I was never more happy than a happy hour, until I wasn’t happy because then it got really bad and really lonely, looking back, and I was really lonely. And I’d go, “Wow. Okay. Woo. What was that thought about?” And I go, “I want you to think back everything that you’ve earned and what you’ve got and all of that will go away, Dedee. Really, how yummy does that sound now?” And I’d go, “I’m okay. I’m just going to go grab a cup of coffee and maybe go get myself some peanut M&Ms.”

Elizabeth Vargas:

I think one of those best things I ever heard was somebody said, “If you are looking at that wine bar or whatever and thinking, oh, how romantic and how fabulous that looks at happy hour, imagine the way that same bar looks the next morning.” Where the counters are sticky and the floors smell and it’s dank and it’s like takes the romanticism right out of it.

Dedee Pfeiffer:

Go back to your last low, or your last bottom, because that’s where you’re going to pick up. It’s like you have to ask yourself, are you willing to gamble that? Because some people do. They go, “Oh, I think it was just a problem in that time of my life, I’m probably fine.” And I ask, “Okay. I’m not willing to gamble that. It could very well have been that, I highly doubt it, and I’m just not going to gamble it.” And sobriety’s pretty awesome and I was afraid I was never going to be funny again. I was never going to be sexy again, or smart again, or interesting again, I was going to be this boring person. Like I said, I’m trying to discover what real life, going out looks like again. That’s a little scary. But I found my sense humor I think is probably better now than it ever has. Because I’m able to be like, “Yeah. I’m in recovery. What are you are you going to do? Divorced three times. Hey. There it is.” I love about being transparent too. I’m tired of hiding. People are like, “Why are you telling me your age?” I’m 58. 58 sounds so much more sexy and fun than 58, but guess what? When I get to 60, I’m going to be sexy. Think about it. Have fun with your life. You can be all like, “I’m 60 or sexy.”
Why not? Right?

Elizabeth Vargas:

Why not? Indeed. Dedee Pfeiffer, it was so incredible to talk to you. Congratulations on the big success with the show, Big Sky. I’m thrilled to see you thriving and doing so well. And thank you for joining us on Heart of the Matter.

Dedee Pfeiffer:

Thank you so much, Elizabeth, for having me, and all y’all on the Zoom call. Have a beautiful day.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Thanks, you too. Take care.