Allen: Oh, quite. Personally, though, I haven’t been able to enjoy it much. I’m afraid it will go away if I enjoy it. I don’t know why that is. Maybe if you’re miserable people don’t take things from you.

But every now and then…because it did all come together for me on December 7, 1994. Don’t Stand to Close to a Naked Man went to No. 1 on the bestseller list, and it held there for like four weeks. The Santa Clause came out and quickly climbed to No. 1 And “Home Improvement” was also No. 1 then. I have a poster in my room that Disney [behind all three] made for me.

I said, “To be reasonable, I don’t think that’ll ever happen again.” Boy, how do I top that? If success means better than the last time, then I can’t do that, but if success means a bigger heart and a more glorious expression of me, that I can possibly do now that I’m a nicer guy. Or not a nicer guy, but I’m easier on myself. I’m a much nicer guy to myself.

Allen: You bet. A friend of mine told me he was just sick of taking shots at himself: “Why didn’t I do this? Why didn’t I do that?” And suddenly, a really beautiful little kid in his psyche shows up and yells: “Hey, no one else seems to have a problem with me!”

So if you want to condemn yourself for the mistakes you’ve made, let’s be fair, that means you’ve got to congratulate yourself for all the good things you’ve done. It’s okay to say, “God, I wish I’d done this; yeah, but I did do that.” Then it kind of balances out.

Allen: Well, I’m a slow learner. I’ve had a lot of horrible stuff happen to me because I still had lessons to learn. I’ve been in a lot of trouble, I’ve had deep personal problems, but all of them are a result of me thinking I’d just do it my way… I’d hurry up. I’m not 50 yet, but the closer I get, I don’t think you know anything until then. You shouldn’t be a parent until you’re 50. You shouldn’t hold office until you’re 50. You just don’t know anything. At least I know now to listen more, to accept people more.

Allen: It’s always been my interest, since my father died, to figure out what the hell is going on. When you’re a kid, you’re protected by your parents and your grandma, and you usually don’t get woken up until you’re like 40 years old. Something will wake you up around then—say a spouse gets cancer. Well, it’s as if someone woke me up too early. My dad was dead. Now what was I suppose to do?

No one really had time to explain to an 11-year-old kid what you do with that information. So I woke up early wondering. “Who in the hell are you, God, and why did you do this?” At 11, you understand. You don’t understand why your father was there one minute and is ripped away next. You’re told, “God has a plan.” Well, you know, I’d like to see the plan ‘cause that’s not my plan.

I got by. But there’s a price to pay: You’re eventually going to have an angry 11-year-old running a 40-year-old-man—that’s what I realized. That blindsided me, and I don’t like being blindsided.

So from that. I started reading, looking for a meaning. Now, if at the time I could have read Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning, and understood it, that would have changed everything. Frankl was in a Nazi concentration camp. The people that survived had a plan. They said, “Now, how am I gonna manage?” They didn’t immediately say, “Oh God, they’re gonna kill us. We’re victims!” The book is fabulous about that question. The issue isn’t what life will do to you, or being a victim, it’s “What can I do? How can I add value to this situation?”

Allen: … going to jail, a drunk-driving arrest. What was I doing? Where was I? Now that I’ve been sober for almost four years, it’s such a different perspective. I look at it this way: Now I no longer hit the pause button—all of a sudden at cocktail hour, I was putting everything on pause. But that’s only a fake stop—you’re never facing anything.

And it wasn’t just drinking with me, it was activity and moving and shopping and whatever. So many distractions for fear of the great moment… just sitting still.

I look at it this way: How much of the day are you awake? You think, “I’ve gotta get that dry cleaning, I gotta get this going, and this, and this, and this.” And all of a sudden it’s dinnertime. And then there’s a moment of connection with your spouse or your friends. Then you read and go to bed. Wake up and then it’s the same all over. You’re not awake, you’re not living, you’re not experiencing. We start early medicating ourselves. We start kids early, on TV and video games and so on.

It’s daunting how many possibilities there are in life for every one of us. But rather than face that I might be a failure or a success—I think both of them are terrifying—people find diversions.

So I’m not as comfortable as I’d like now. I get nervous a lot because I don’t have the tools I had.

Allen: Her school chums know I’ve done drugs, been arrested for it, went to jail for it. When they want to take a shot at her, they mention that. I tell her, “They really can’t take a shoe at you, Kate, because I’m not going to deny it.” She says, “I’ll never do drugs.” I tell her, “I hope not. But I hope if you do you can trust me — that you’ll tell me and ask me questions about it.”

I was driving her to school one day and she said, “Dad, slow down.” I wasn’t going really fast but I slowed down to the speed limit and she said, “Boy—is this boring.”

I said, “Speeding is like drugs. It makes everything come at you fast, and when you go back to normal driving, safe driving, prudent driving, it seems boring. That’s the danger of drugs. At first it’s intoxicating, but then the rest of your life you’re trying to find that very first time. It never is the same.”

But when are we going to be honest with our kids and tell them that we didn’t experiment with drugs, we used them? And it felt good. Drugs are very dangerous. But you’re deceiving kids by telling them they’re just poison and death. Because they’ll try them once and say, “What in the hell are they talkin’ about? These are great! Those lying bastards. Oh, so they skipped the little part where a couple of beers feels great?” For some of us, though, if two feels great, then 65 must feel better. There’s the rub.

Allen: It’s such a personal thing that anybody who’s gone through it will understand there’s really nothing to say in public about it that’s going to help anybody. Everybody’s doing the best they can in a horrible situation. My wife and I both worked at this. Marriage is hard and divorce is hard.

Allen: Things are hard if you work hard at them. I’ve seen relationships of all kinds fail because people are working hard they make it very hard work. You know, I think we all dream of having a marriage like the relationship with our best friend. You don’t say to your best friends, “Where’s this relationship going?” Have you ever said that?

You don’t. Your best friend accepts you for who you are. If you’re a 15-minutes late person, they’re mad about that habit for a couple of years but they eventually say, “Ah! You know, we’re gonna go 15-minutes late if Tim shows up.” And they accept you. My best friends, male and female, are able to pull me up short and say, “God, are you a jerk right now!” Two days later I can say, “I’m glad you said I was a jerk and I’m not going to do that anymore. I didn’t know it was bothering you.” Can’t do that in a marriage, for some reason.

Allen: I know what you mean. Two of my best friends were at my 30-year high school reunion—I haven’t seen on guy in 30 years—and it was like no time had passed. And there’s no change. And yet in intimate relationships, a day goes by and somebody asks: “Where were you? What’d you do?” Because you’re working so hard at it.

Allen: I love to. That’s my favorite activity, futzin’ around the house. But these days, cleaning, organizing, that’s really what I’m reduced to now.

Allen: I would if I could. I’ve been to her house—it’s gorgeous. She had me over for brunch, and I swear, she made the plates! Of course, she’s got a staff to finish those projects for her. But she’s something else.