Aaron Sorkin reveals he had a stroke that prompted him to quit smoking

‘Mostly it was a loud wake-up call,’ the director says

Aaron Sorkin has revealed he suffered from a stroke last November, which motivated him to give up smoking cigarettes for good.

The 61-year-old filmmaker detailed his health scare in an interview with The New York Times published on 22 March, in which Sorkin described the stroke as a “loud wake-up call”.

While discussing the opening of his first Broadway musical adaptation, Camelot, the West Wing creator revealed that he experienced the stroke just two months before rehearsals were set to begin for the play, which opens on 13 April at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theatre.

He began experiencing symptoms of his stroke in the middle of the night, while “crashing into walls and corners” as he tried to walk to the kitchen. The next day, he continued to spill the orange juice he was carrying to his home office. Sorkin decided to call his doctor, who informed him that he suffered a stroke as a result of high blood pressure.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” Sorkin recalled his doctor saying.

For about a month after the stroke, the Social Network screenwriter was slurring his words, had trouble typing, and couldn’t sign his name. While Sorkin has regained most of his abilities since then, he did share that he still “can’t really taste food.”

In high school, the New York native began smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. “It was just part of it, the way a pen was part of it,” he said about his smoking habit. “I don’t want to talk about it too much, because I’ll start to salivate.”

Following the stroke, Sorkin quit smoking cold turkey and began working out twice a day. “Mostly it was a loud wake-up call,” he told the publication. “I thought I was one of those people who could eat whatever he wanted, smoke as much as he wanted, and it’s not going to affect me. Boy, was I wrong.”

He added that his return to work has been quite slow, having found it physically difficult to put pen to paper. At one point, he worried that he was “never going to be able to write again”.

According to the Mayo Clinic, one of the several side effects of suffering from a stroke includes paralysis or loss of muscle movement.

Although Sorkin was reportedly hesitant to speak publicly about his stroke, he ultimately decided to reveal his health scare as a cautionary tale for others. “If it’ll get one person to stop smoking, then it’ll be helpful,” he said.

Each year, more than 795,000 people in the United States experience a stroke, according to the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control. High blood pressure is one of the leading causes of strokes, while tobacco use increases the chance of experiencing one.

To reduce the risk of a stroke, frequent smokers should quit smoking. Meanwhile, medications or healthy lifestyle changes are often used to treat high blood pressure.