Alcoholism. That's what this article's supposed to be about. How Warren Zevon, after some heartwarming and colorful misadventures, licked the Big A and lived happily ever after. Zevon: a drinking-man's drinking man, someone who can talk about booze the way Pete Townshend talks about rock & roll. Starring Richard Dreyfuss as our wild and crazy hero, Diane Keaton as ex-wife Crystal, Warren Beatty as Jackson Browne, Gregory Peck as private-eye novelist Ross Macdonald (real name: Kenneth Millar), actress-girlfriend Kim Lankford as herself, with a special guest appearance by Jack Klugman as 'the Doc."

You could write it that way, I suppose. Most of it happened, some of it still might. There was even a laugh or two here and there: the protagonist buys a Christmas quart for his in-laws, discovers its the only liquor in the house and drinks it all himself before they can sample a drop. But you'd write it that way only if you didn't realize that alcoholism is a disease, and that your true alcoholic is about as colorful and heartwarning as a pale white body on a concrete slab. Eventually a dedicated drunk will maim or kill every thing he touches, often putting himself at the bottom of the list. Warren Zevon knows this. And, since I was around for a few key incidents, I hope I do, too.

We are sitting up late at night in Warren and Kim's rented home in the Hollywood Hills. ("This stupid, pretentious, screenwriter's idea of a screenwriter's idea of a screenwriter's house" is how Zevon describes it. He is particularly chagrined by four-foot-high red bathtub. "Very California," he smiles, with a certain amount of grim satisfaction.) Lankford, who's currently starring in Knots Landing has gone to bed tours ago.

Since Warren and I are both night people, we've decided to do our tapings from one or two in the morning until dawn, then laze around in the backyard and watch the planes, magnificently framed against a faraway mountain range, make their long, slow descent across the San Fernando Valley toward the Burbank airport. It's a beautiful sight, somewhat unreal. I'm reminded of Hitchcock's movies, where the horror happens in broad daylight.

"From what I know about alcoholism," Zevon is saying, "I'd say there's nothing romantic, nothing grand, nothing heroic, nothing brave -- nothing like that about drinking. It's a real coward's death.

"The last time I detoxed, I really thought I was going to die. I had my hand on the phone, I was afraid that I was going to start hallucinating and shooting guns - I didn't know what was going to happen."

(Zevon had a recurring dream: that he'd grabbed his .44 Magnum, stumbled up the driveway to Mulholland, taken dead aim at a passing car and pulled the trigger. Each time he woke up, he'd scramble for the pistol and count the bullets, terrified there'd be one missing.)

"This time I really felt that way morally about life. I said, God, just give me one more chance, man, don't let me die a fucking coward, not this way! Shit! Anything but this! I'm dying from having avoided the pain of living. This is suicide, the same as the gun barrel in the mouth, except that it's infinitely more cowardly. It's just the worst death - a chickenshit, shivering, quaking, whiny death. There's no keel over, make a young and pretty corpse. I was fifty pounds heavier then. I weigh the same now as I did in high school."