Talk Nation Spring 2017 Featuring Dr. Kamal Woods

10
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dear friend, to the point where I
used to hide bottles in my golf bag,
in the trunk of my car, and God forbid
half of the bottle was gone. I’d have
to run to the liquor store to have a
fresh bottle of booze and I became
an alcoholic. The funny thing about
it, or the odd thing about it, was that
even though I drank that much, I was
always fine on stage.
I would kind of like cool it
before I had to do a show, then after
the show I would go back to having,
I don’t know, eight or ten vodkas on
the rocks, go to bed, sleep it off, and
get ready to do the show the next
day. As the years went on, it became
really, really bad.
Even Frankie ... You know,
we do the show together. We do a
show called The Golden Boys. It’s
Frankie Avalon, Fabian and myself.
Frankie was just beside himself
because there were times on stage
where Frank would just look at me
and I could see basically what he was
saying through his eyes. He never
came out and said it verbally, but
through his eyes I could feel what
he felt, because we go back ... I was
10 years old when I first met Frank,
when he played trumpet and I played
drums.
It was just a thing, Frank,
where it controlled me. It just took
over. Everything that was in my body
was controlled by alcohol. That’s of
course what led to the double transplant.
Like I said earlier, you have to
be on a list to be able to get a liver.
The thing that I was so lucky about
was that not only did I need a liver,
but I was going into renal failure as
well, which kind of like boosted me
up on the list.
I remember ... It was July the
8th. I’m with my new wife, Linda.
We’re laying in bed and I said to her,
“Honey,” I said, “You better get everything
together because I ain’t going
to make it.” Linda was a nurse for 36
years and she said, “Oh, don’t worry,
sweetheart. You’re going to be fine.”
As luck would have it, she
said to me a couple of days before,
“If you ever are going to get a liver,
it’s going to be around the 4th of
July weekend.” Unfortunately, that
weekend there are a lot of accidents.
There are hit-and-runs. There
are DWIs, and so on and so forth.
The next morning Jefferson Hospital
called and said, “Get your body over
here,” and that’s when I received the
new liver and a new kidney. It was
like a miracle the way it happened
Frank.
Frank: Bobby, going back to alcoholism,
did you experience or did
you battle with any kind of substances
growing up? Again, pardon
TALK NATION |ISSUE VIII