Patricia Heaton has an interview with Parade that came out a little while ago but I recently saw the insert in my local paper and wanted to talk about it. Patricia is one of those “Mitt Romney” type of anti-choice Republicans who is arguably a selfish a-hole, but who isn’t as awful as Trump lovers, I guess. She tried to talk about it in a roundabout way a couple of years ago, and she did say that Trump wasn’t her candidate back in 2016. The last time we talked about her, her husband was accused of groping a young staffer on the set of her CBS show, Carol’s Second Act, which has since been canceled. The woman her husband groped, and a female writer who spoke up for her, both quit their jobs after the show penalized them for speaking out. That hasn’t affected Patricia’s relationship with her husband of 30 years, judging from this Parade interview. I’m not going to excerpt that part, you can read it at the source, but she said she’s still developing projects with him.
Patricia is promoting her new book, Your Second Act, which just came out now. I liked what she said why she quit drinking. She said there are statistics that women who are moderate drinkers in their 30s and 40s often become alcoholics in their 50s and 60s (the title of this story is a paraphrase for space). While I couldn’t find the statistics she meant, I did find a study about the severe health risks of drinking for older women.
How are you caring for your health right now, compared to years prior?
Lately, I’ve been on a mostly Keto diet (a very low-carb, high-fat diet). I’m also trying to swim 50 laps at least four or five times a week. I fall off the wagon occasionally, but overall, I’ve been trying to not let myself go too much. At my age, it’s hard to get back into shape. It’s much easier to stay in shape.
What’s something that you’ve actively changed over the past decade?
I quit drinking two years ago in July. I miss it terribly, but at the end of the day, I feel better. I noticed that I was looking forward every night to cocktails. And if I happened to go to lunch, I might have a glass of wine or Prosecco. There’s an actual statistic that women who were moderate drinkers in their 30s and 40s often become alcoholics in their 50s and 60s. I think it’s something about your children leaving the house and the things that used to anchor you are no longer there. You’re a little bit at sea, and so you reach for the bottle to dull the uncertainty. I sensed that a bit with myself. And as your hormones change, you can’t really process alcohol the same way you did when you were younger. I’ve stopped, and my life has improved significantly. My kids are in their mid-20s and I’ll probably be in my 70s by the time I have grandchildren. I want to be healthy for them.
I quit drinking about four years ago, in my mid 40s, and it was one of the best things I’ve ever done. I don’t miss it, although I do sometimes get upset when I watch movies in which the leads drink a lot and it’s normalized. (It doesn’t bother me when people drink around me, or when people drink socially on screen though. I could never drink like that, it took so much effort.) So I appreciate the way Patricia framed this, and how she said that it’s easily for older women to slide into alcoholism. I don’t really like her, but that’s relative lately I guess. Her book seems to have a good message. Plus she’s been wearing masks on Instagram, that’s something.
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