Hey, it's Vic with a quick note. This episode contains strong language and talk of suicide. Please be advised.

In three, two, one. When I was like 10, I was with my mother on a vacation down to the Caribbean, and they did one of those desserts where they pour like,

you know, two ounces of 151 on top of some ice cream and pineapples and light it on fire.

So there was a ton of alcohol in this thing. And I remember mixing it with my ice cream and

like drinking it like a float. And that was the first time that I ever really remember

getting drunk drunk drunk.

Andrew Zimmern's first encounters with alcohol were innocent enough.

Before he was a celebrity chef and TV host eating stuff like fermented shark and other worldly vegetables,

he was a kid who snuck drinks here and there, often in front of older

family members who thought it was more funny than serious.

There were holidays where, you know, I got a glass of ginger ale and my cousins were

punking me and it was really champagne.

I took a big sip and, you know, as a little kid and like spun around and told stories and felt the

personality change from the alcohol. For Andrew, alcohol was just a part of everyday life in a lot of

ways. You know, I used to sip my dad's drinks when I made them for him because I just loved the

taste of the scotch and soda that I made for him. And I would always put the ice and the

scotch in there and fill it with soda to the top of the glass so that I was forced to sip it

before carrying it in so I wouldn't spill it. And that was my excuse in case I got caught.

But I was addicted to the sneakiness and the line before I was addicted to how the booze made me feel.

That early exposure to alcohol and lying and the thrill it gave Andrew was the beginning of a

decades-long addiction that got worse and worse.

I'm Vic Vela. I'm a journalist, a storyteller, and a recovering drug at it.

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