KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL –
Oct. 24, 2025 – At one time, Andrew Zimmern, an Emmy and four-time James Beard Award winner, TV/media personality, chef, writer and passionate global citizen, used people, was addicted to heroin and living in an abandoned building in lower Manhattan in New York.
At night when he passed out from drug and alcohol abuse, Zimmern said he poured Ajax around the pile of dirty clothes he slept on to keep the rats and roaches from crawling all over him. “That was me right before I tried to kill myself,” he said. “That didn’t go as planned. And, I really did a good job of it. I don’t want you to think I didn’t try hard enough. “I really tried. I drank two quarts of Vodka and at a fist full of barbiturates. As the doctors said to me when I finally got to a hospital I swallowed enough drugs to kill an elephant.
“And, somehow, I lived. I woke up two days later and I lived. Two days after that, was the beginning of my current sobriety.”
Zimmern, who has been sober for over three decades, was the keynote speaker Oct. 23 during the Riveon Mental Health and Recovery Pearls of Wisdom annual Benefit and Recognition Dinner at Embassy Suites Rockside in Independence.
