In 2015, he was on Broadway for the first time in a revival of “Spring Awakening,” put on by Deaf West Theater and also starring Marlee Matlin, who became a “sweet” mentor.

His drinking amped up “into hyperdrive," he said. “The cast members are drinking, you know? So I would have a drink. But then after the show every night, I would go hit up a bar. I would meet a bunch of fans. ‘Let me get you a shot! Let me hug you. Let me love you.’ It helps you to feel excited. And then the next day, I wouldn’t feel good. And I do not miss the hangovers.”

That year, he went to Madonna’s Rebel Heart Tour at Madison Square Garden, “which is the best place that you can go and use your deaf card and get access to the very front.”

He went heavy on the Patrón. “I woke up and people were leaving the arena,” he said.

He hit bottom in Austin after a night of drinking in April 2018. “I kneeled down, and I did a very primal scream,” he said. He said that his mom, who is also deaf, couldn’t hear his scream but his dog freaked out and ran out of the room. “It was so worth it, so I could reflect. Knowing I squirmed like a worm. It was the saddest thing I could see.”

He called his agent, who told him to go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. But it took him 48 hours to get an interpreter to go with him to his first meeting. He says he has been sober for a year.

“I have a lot more clarity,” he said. “I never thought that I was an addict. Because my brother is, and I never thought that I was like him. But I really was. I would say I was an alcoholic. And probably a little bit of drugs, too.” He said that he took care of his brother, who is even more profoundly deaf, and then took a break, moving to Alaska to teach preschool deaf and hard-of-hearing kids.