Robin Williams was sober for 20 years... then one thought in a small Alaskan town undid it all. In this interview, the comedian traces the full arc of his history with addiction: how it started, how he quit the first time, why he relapsed after two decades, and what finally broke the grip for good. It began early in his career, with cocaine. People asked why a man that fast ever needed it. His answer flips the assumption on its head: "I think I did it because it would actually allow me not to talk. It was like, you know, reverse medication... It just kind of shuts you down, which is a, you know, word: self-medication." The first turning point came in the early 1980s. Two things changed his thinking: the death of his friend John Belushi from an overdose, and the news that he was about to become a father. "I remember stopping it on my own because I was about to have a son... You don't want to be like that." On Belushi's death, he says it was the beginning of "thinking outside the box of 'you've got a responsibility and it's more than you'." He quit alone, without help. And it held for 20 years. Then came the relapse. "I was in a little town in Alaska. It wasn't the end of the world, but you can see it from there, and it was like all of a sudden I thought I could drink. It's also that same thought you have if you look off a large building and go, 'I can fly'. And within a week it was like gone." He calls the aftermath a gift: "Now, you know, I realize I can't." The second recovery looked nothing like the first. This time he went to rehab, and he learned why doing it alone had been the harder road. Surrounded by doctors and psychiatrists in treatment, he noticed a pattern: "The more intelligent you think you are, the harder it is to let go. Everything: 'I've got a solution, I'll just drink a little bit'." The lesson he lands on is surrender: "You gotta just say, 'I can't do it'... And then you have to go, 'Nope, you lose, you can't do it. You need help'. And at that point, that's the beginning."