Four-time Indianapolis 500 winner Rick Mears was never scared in a race car. Alcohol is a different story.

''I'm a guy who's always liked his beer,'' Mears said Saturday in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. ''A while back, I just felt like it was catching up with me, that I was starting to drink too much.

	Rick Mears is a four-time Indy 500 champ.

Mears, 50, revealed that he checked himself into a treatment program twice -- in mid-April and in late May.

''I got to a point where I felt it could become a problem, and I didn't want that to happen. I wanted to try to get sorted out and be ahead of the deal instead of behind it. That's what I did.''

Mears retired from driving after the 1992 season and currently is an adviser and driving coach with Marlboro Team Penske.

Mears' story recalls that of Al Unser Jr., another champion driver who sought treatment for alcohol abuse earlier this month. Like Mears, Unser is a former CART series champion and a two-time Indy 500 winner.

Unser, who still is competing in the Indy Racing League, was arrested after an incident in Indianapolis on July 8 in which he hit his girlfriend and left her stranded on a highway. He was not charged, but he admitted he has an alcohol problem and spent three weeks in rehab.

There was no such catalyst for the quiet, highly respected Mears.

''It never did really affect my work, but I felt it would if I let it go. It's kind of like you can see the writing on the wall. I look back now at how things were progressing, and it's not too hard to project down the road to what it could be. I wanted to stop it before it got to that point.''

Mears said intense pain in his feet contributed to his drinking. He shuffles when he walks, and his feet were rebuilt after being crushed during a race-car accident in 1984. He said he tried to avoid using pain pills for fear of getting hooked on them.

''I've taken the pain killers off and on over the years, but it wasn't really that, it was the alcohol,'' he said.

Mears, who recently became divorced from his second wife, Chris, took some time off before the Nazareth race on April 21. He went back to his Florida home to spend some quiet time deciding what to do about the problem.

''I wanted to take a break and kind of get my act together,'' he said. ''So, I checked myself into a program for the drinking. I went through the program and got out just before Indy (in May) and felt pretty good.

''I went to Indy and was there for most of the month, and I still wasn't right. I basically decided just to turn around and come back and check myself back into a program until I got myself sorted out. That's where I've been until just a little while ago.''

Mears was back at work for the first time this weekend at Gateway International Raceway in Madison, Ill., where the Penske team is competing in an Indy Racing League event.

Tim Cindric, president of the Penske team, said, ''You just do what you can to help people get through their problems, whatever they are.

''I've talked to Rick and I've talked to people who've been around these situations on what you do in my position, or how do I advise the guys on the team to handle it. The advice has all been 'Hey, just be yourself. He's the same guy you knew before. Just be there to support him and just go on with business as usual.'''

Mears, who won three CART championships and is considered one of the all-time greats in open-wheel oval racing, said he is determined keep the problem at bay.

''I'm going on and work with it, see what I need and what works for me,'' he said. ''I am going to some programs, some meetings. How long, how many or what, I have no idea at this point. Right now, I'm just trying to take it a day at a time and do what's necessary to get it done.''