A vacuum filled with food and drink
John Goodman has said that for years he used eating and drinking to fill an emotional emptiness. Speaking to The New Yorker, the Roseanne actor described overeating as a source of comfort and said alcohol served the same purpose, an attempt to fill a vacuum with stimulation. He was close to 400 pounds when he began to confront the pattern.[S1]
Goodman traced part of the problem to his early years in New York City, where he arrived in 1975 with little direction. Commercial work for soft drinks, beer, toothpaste and deodorant eventually gave him steady income, and he recalled that the money later worked against him because it allowed him to start drinking. Broadway bars became a gathering place for him and other actors, and he came to think of that world as home.[S1]
His weight climbed quickly, and he argued that Hollywood then typecast him as a heavy man who took pratfalls. The role of Dan Conner on Roseanne changed his career, but the sudden recognition unsettled him. By the final season of the show's original run he had tried to leave, and he later characterized that stretch as a miserable period dominated by alcohol. He described himself at 38 as a depressive alcoholic.[S1]
Guilt and anxiety compounded the pressure, Goodman said. He was afraid of strangers judging him and of his private life becoming public, and he also carried the secret of how dependent he had become on drinking.[S1]
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Sobriety first, then surgery
Goodman said he finally grew weary of feeling unwell, and he addressed alcohol before anything else. He described the trap of instant gratification, in which the consequences arrive later as worse hangovers or tremors that demanded another drink. When he quit, he said, his condition was serious enough that hospitalization was unavoidable either way. Medical guidance holds that heavy long-term drinkers face dangerous withdrawal, including seizures and irregular heart rhythms, so supervised detox is advised.[S1]
He reached sobriety in 2007, at age 55. Food, however, remained difficult. His attempts at weight loss had begun before he stopped drinking and followed a frustrating pattern in which he would drop 60 pounds over a summer and regain it, sometimes 70 or 80 pounds. Even after quitting alcohol he said he ate in an alcoholic manner, and his weight approached 400 pounds again.[S1]
Goodman said he took steps so he would no longer have to live that way, including an operation on his stomach, though he did not name the procedure. He also became anemic and lost a layer of fat beneath his skin, and he now feels cold much of the time. Bariatric surgery can impair iron absorption and lead to deficiency anemia in a large share of patients, and reduced fat leaves the body less insulated while anemia limits oxygen delivery and heat production.[S1]
Reports from other outlets focused on the same transformation, describing a 200-pound weight loss and an unexpected health complication that followed it.[S2][S3]
