Spin City star Michael J Fox has revealed that his struggle with Parkinson’s disease nearly put an end to his marriage after it drove him to drink. In his new autobiography, Lucky Man: A Memoir, the 40-year-old actor says that he turned to his wife Tracy for strength, and that her love and support helped him fight the disorder and overcome his drinking.
The Back To The Future actor was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 1991, at the height of his career. After he discovered he was stricken with the disease, he writes: “It was as if I was entering a whole new world.” He was just 30 years old.
Keeping his illness secret from the public, and distancing himself from his wife and family, Michael immediately turned to drink to cope with the stress and physical pain of the disorder. “I craved alcohol as a direct response to the need I felt to escape my situtation,” he writes. “Joyless and secretive, I drank to disassociate.”
Cutting his family off from his struggle created a rift in his marriage and between him and his young son, Sam. “It was bad enough that I had allowed Parkinson’s disease to own me, but my silence… had made them slaves to it as well.” In 1992, Michael realised he had to change his ways. “In a moment of clarity, something I can now attribute only to grace, I decided to put a stop to it.”
Michael sought help from a psychiatrist to put his life back together and now lives happily with his wife and their children Sam, 12, seven-year-old twin daughters Aquinnah and Schuyler, and baby Esmé, who is five months old. Says Michael: “This life, this love make me a lucky man indeed.”
Photo: © Alphapress.com
