Realizing he had an “addictive personality”
Van Dyke said it took him time to understand his relationship with excess.
“I smoked a lot, actually! I think I was probably in my 50s before it dawned on me that I had an addictive personality. If I liked something, I was going to overdo it.”
That realization made the next step pretty obvious: remove the triggers entirely.
“So I got rid of booze and cigarettes and all that stuff, which is probably why I’m still here,” he added.
His long road to sobriety
Van Dyke’s decision wasn’t hypothetical. Back in 1972, he checked into hospital for alcoholism and later became sober.
He also managed to quit smoking — though he has said that was the harder of the two battles.
Speaking on the Real No Really podcast, he explained that quitting cigarettes felt “much worse than the alcohol.”
Even now, he says his mood remains steady: “Sometimes I have more energy than others — but I never wake up in a bad mood.”
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