Alice Cooper Beat Alcoholism by Getting Addicted to Golf

Alice Cooper is famous for two things that seem to have nothing to do with each other: shock-rock stage horror and an obsessive, decades-long love of golf. It turns out the second one saved him from the first version of himself.

A Quart of Whiskey a Day

By the late 1970s, Cooper's drinking had become severe enough that he barely remembers recording some of his own albums. He went through rehab, relapsed, and went through it again. In 1983, after a personal crisis pushed him back into treatment, he finally got sober for good. He has stayed sober ever since.

Trading One Addiction for Another

Cooper has said he needed a replacement habit, something to fill the hours he used to spend drinking. A friend introduced him to golf during his recovery, and it hit immediately. According to accounts from his own memoir and multiple golf publications, Cooper played 36 holes a day, every single day, for a year, working with club professionals to learn the game from nothing. He had barely swung a club before that year started.

Six Days a Week, 5:30am Tee Times

The habit never faded. Decades later, Cooper still plays golf six days a week, often booking the earliest tee time available so he can be finished before the rest of his day starts. At his best, he played to a 2 handicap, good enough that Senior Tour players reportedly told him a year working with a swing coach could get him competing without embarrassing himself. He has carried closer to a 4 handicap for years since, still remarkably sharp for a touring musician in his seventies.

He Wanted to Play in the Makeup

Cooper wrote about the whole journey in his 2007 memoir "Alice Cooper, Golf Monster." He has also admitted to a more theatrical fantasy: actually entering a professional tournament in full Alice Cooper stage makeup. "There was a time when I really considered it," he has said, adding that the idea only works if the golf backs it up. Playing alongside pros who can still shoot par in their sixties and seventies, he decided he would need to match their scores to pull it off in character.

The Trade That Worked

Cooper still tours, still performs the same theatrical show that made him famous, and still treats golf as the thing that gets him out of bed. What started as a way to survive rehab turned into a genuine second obsession, one that, by his own account, was a lot easier on his body than the first one.