Weighing nearly 400 pounds, John Goodman was faced with a choice: grow up or give up.
Today, the “Roseanne” star sheds light on the deep-seated fears that fueled her unhealthy, self-destructive habits.
By abandoning the “big kid” persona that mirrored his on-screen characters, he finally found the strength to turn his health – and his life – around.
“I was eating too much, because it was comforting. I was trying to fill the hole that was there. Same thing with drinking,” the Golden Globe winner, now 74, told the New Yorker. “This has been said better before by other people, but I’m just trying to fill that void with kicks.
However, in his mid-50s, he decided to finally pay attention to his drinking and his overall physical and mental health.
“I was tired of being sick and tired,” he recalls.
A snowballing addiction
Goodman remembers moving to New York in 1975 without much of a plan. As a young aspiring actor with no prior experience, he survived on odd jobs until a series of commercial gigs for soda, beer, toothpaste and deodorant finally offered him financial stability.
“I received some money, but later it backfired on me, because I had enough money to start drinking,” he said.
Seeking camaraderie, Goodman began frequenting Broadway bars where he connected with other actors, making it “his home.” But his lifestyle is starting to catch up with him.
“I started gaining weight at an alarming rate,” he said, a physical transformation that quickly defined his early career. Hollywood typecast him, Goodman argued, consistently portraying him as “the big guy who fell over a lot.”
His big break came with the role of Dan Conner in the hit sitcom “Roseanne,” a character that changed his life. Yet while the steady income was welcome, the sudden fame and recognition that accompanied it proved “scary.”
By the final season of the original series, the pressure had reached fever pitch. Goodman said he “tried to leave the show” before the final season, describing this period as a “drinking tour of misery”.
He observed how drastically his personality had changed, remembering him as a “38-year-old depressed alcoholic.”
A mixture of “guilt” and anxiety quickly took over, as Goodman found himself paralyzed by the “fear” of being “judged by strangers” and “his private life was out there” – but he also kept his alcohol “addiction” a secret.
Turn the ship around
The first problem Goodman tackled was his drinking, driven by a turning point where he was simply “sick and tired of being sick and tired.”
“The problem with instant gratification is that you don’t really care about what’s going to happen right after, which always leads to more serious hangovers or shakes and having to drink to get rid of it, and this vicious cycle,” he revealed. “When I stopped, I was in a position where I had to be hospitalized one way or another.”
For chronic heavy drinkers, the withdrawal process carries serious medical risks, including life-threatening seizures and abnormal heart rhythms. Therefore, medical professionals strongly recommend supervised medical detoxification to ensure patient safety, according to the American Addiction Centers.
Goodman’s crisis peaked in 2007, when, at age 55, he became sober.
However, his complex relationship with food remained a major obstacle. His weight loss journey had actually begun before he stopped drinking, marked by a cycle of “fatigue”: “I would lose sixty pounds in a summer, I would gain it all back. Seventy pounds, eighty pounds. »
Even after he stopped drinking, Goodman found himself “eating alcoholic,” his weight eventually ballooning to nearly 400 pounds.
“I took steps to not have to do that anymore,” he said. “I had stomach surgery. But I also became anemic and lost a layer of fat under my skin, and I’m cold all the time.”
Although Goodman did not specify which procedure he performed, some weight loss surgeries can cause iron deficiency anemia, which affects up to 49 percent of patients undergoing bariatric surgery.
Bariatric surgeries often reduce stomach acid, making it harder to absorb iron, and procedures such as gastric bypass bypass digestion in the small intestine, where most iron is typically absorbed.
With fat loss, the body has less insulation to retain heat, and anemia reduces oxygen supply, making it more difficult for the body to generate heat.
Goodman said in 2023 that he has lost 200 pounds since then.
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