To air on GMA Oct 12th and 13th.

"All you can do is take another step, keep breathing," he says, according to a partial transcript of the interview released by ABC.

Clean shaven and casually dressed in jeans and a blue checkered shirt, Gibson tells Sawyer he began drinking two months before sheriff's deputies arrested him in Malibu on July 28.

"Years go by, you're fine," he says. "And then all of a sudden in a heartbeat, in an instant, on an impulse, somebody shoves a glass of Mescal in front of your nose and says, `It's from Oaxaca.' And it's burning its way through your esophagus and you go, `Oh man, what did I do that for? I can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.'"

The interview with Sawyer is the first time Gibson has spoken to the media since sparking a scandal by unleashing what he later called "vitriolic and harmful words" during his arrest. Gibson told the arresting officer: "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world," and asked him, "Are you a Jew?"

"The last thing I want to be is that kind of monster," he tells Sawyer in the interview.