“My mother and father used to hang out with their friends at the Beachcomber Bar on Channel Road in Santa Monica. Legend has it that we stopped there on the drive home from the hospital, with my parents proudly placing their newborn son… on the bar and ordering their favorite cocktails. I suppose they thought of it as a sort of hip Malibu neonatal unit. I wonder if this was when the imprint of alcoholism found me. Or did it always run in my blood? There are certain activities and professions in life that, once you are exposed to them, get into your veins and you’re finished. You can’t help but give yourself over to them. Show business and politics are like that…. The fast, boozy beach bar life of my parents in 1955 was like that, too. Once my bassinet found its way onto the Beachcomber Bar I was toast. Yes sirree, we had privilege, power, and wealth, what we didn’t know was that alcoholism ignores all that” (p. 9).