My struggle with drugs and alcohol didn’t start in earnest until 1999. I was in rehab in 1988 because I hit the wall with cocaine, but I didn’t realize I had a problem. I just thought I needed a break. After that I would clean up every few years for a bit and then start up again. But 1999 was the year that it stuck. Things had gotten to the point where I realized that if I didn’t stop, I would die, somehow, either from the drugs and drinking or being in a situation where shit got out of hand because of drugs and drinking.
Everyone’s journey to the bottom is different. Rob Delaney told me how his alcoholism led to his arrest after a horrible car crash. Norm Macdonald found his bottom after gambling away his life savings. Artie Lange and Natasha Lyonne thought they hit their bottoms when they got hooked on hard drugs, but both found out that they had even farther to fall. Sadly, you have to get there to realize you have to change. For me it came after years of knowing I had a problem and not really dealing with it. I found myself bitter, in complete career stagnation, in a marriage I didn’t want to be in anymore, and lying in bed blasted on coke with my heart pounding out of my chest, hoping it would stop beating. Fortunately, I was intercepted by an angel of recovery in the form of a beautiful woman who reached out and got me going to meetings. It was also fortunate that I wanted to be with her. So I completely turned my life upside down, destroyed it as I knew it to get sober, and more important at the time, got with her. That ultimately didn’t work out, but I did get sober and I’ve stayed sober since. I’m grateful to her for that. Not for leaving me. Though I’m not sure I would’ve ended up where I am now if she hadn’t destroyed my life when she left.
Talking to other addicts is part of the way I stay sober. When I have conversations with people who have struggled with addiction, the connection is deep. When the emotions of the struggle are shared it is relieving, moving, and helpful. I get e-mails all the time from people who are either sober or trying to get sober telling me that hearing people they only knew from TV or music or movies talking to me about addiction made them feel less alone in their fight. I count this as one of the most important reactions to the show. I’m very grateful to provide this help and solace.
PATTON OSWALT—COMEDIAN, WRITER, ACTOR
I wish there was a way to program my head to look at certain foods as if they were crack or like poison.
TOM ARNOLD—COMEDIAN, ACTOR
My mom would come and visit once in a while. When she came, she gave me a dollar. You could go to Kent’s grocery and buy ten giant candy bars for a dollar. In the old days, the big ones. Sometimes she wouldn’t show up or whatever, but I wanted that dollar because that was my candy bars, it was my sugar. I would put up with that. Whatever, I want to see her. I wanted that dollar.
I’d go right to the store, I’d buy them, I’d come home, I’d line them up on my bed. I’d say, I’m not going to eat them all. I’m going to hide it from my brother and sister, whatever, but I ended up eating them all. That sugar high.
And then my grandmothers were wonderful. They would feed me and watch me eat. I became that guy in the family people liked to watch eat because I ate so much. You feel so loved. That’s absolutely my first addiction.
LOUIE ANDERSON—COMEDIAN, WRITER, ACTOR
I could eat twelve pieces of toast, buttered. If you do that slowly, that doesn’t seem like a big deal.
You know what I’m talking about. You make four. I have a four-slice toaster. You make four slices and then you butter them, and then you put four more pieces of bread in so you can cut out that time.
Marc
Is there a moment where you’re like, I’m not going to have four more?
Louie
Yeah, there’s always a moment. This is a whole switch. There’s a switch in your brain where you’re either in your addiction or you’re not. Right now I’m not in my addiction.
MARIA BAMFORD—COMEDIAN, ACTOR
I called a suicide hotline after I could not stop eating, because that’s how I stayed in my dorm room by myself. And it was not pleasurable at all, like, it’s not fun. I called a suicide hotline, they gave me a number for the Overeaters Anonymous, which is a thing. Just the idea that there were people out there helped me immediately. I stopped doing it.
JEFF GARLIN—COMEDIAN, WRITER, ACTOR
I’m an addict, man. I’m an addict. That’s how I approach it. I even go to AA meetings sometimes. Here’s the problem with Overeaters Anonymous: A lot of people at OA are very casual. They haven’t hit bottom. Whereas you go to an AA meeting, nobody there is not taking it seriously.
What’s bottom? Eating until I can’t stop throwing up. Not that I’m making myself throw up. Eating a box of Little Debbie cakes and the same night having a half-gallon of ice cream and maybe a bowl of Cap’n Crunch and three or four Pop-Tarts. I used to go to the 7-Eleven by Wrigley Field, buy a bunch of crap, and sit on the hood of my car by the left field wall and just down it. No joy. And the feelings the food was stuffing down, they were stuffed down temporarily, and then, of course, you feel worse. It’s any feeling, man. Any feeling. Anything you feel, you want to shove down.
PATTON OSWALT
Let’s say you go do an audition or go do a show. The stuff just doesn’t go the way you want it to. You go, “Oh fuck, I’m going to go eat.” Let’s say you go do a show, or do something and it goes spectacular, then you want to go eat as well. You want to go celebrate.
Marc
It’s the same with drugs.
Patton
“I deserve it!”
Marc
“I suck, I’m going to drink!”
“I’m the best. Yay, drink!”
ANDY RICHTER—COMEDIAN, WRITER, ACTOR
I have a food thing. I mean I’ve always been kind of the fat boy. I’m active, but I certainly could lose thirty or forty pounds. That’s the main thing for me, is I would love to lose weight, but a lot of that is just stuff like not drinking.
Whenever I’ve had occasion, for whatever, like a health reason, to not drink, weight just flies off. I had this health thing a few years ago, so I didn’t drink for a couple of months. I lost like ten pounds in a week and a half. I don’t even really drink that much. I probably have like a glass of vodka four nights a week. That in itself, that’s like an extra meal.
The only thing I ever felt out of control with was weed. That was prior to when I actually had health care and could afford antidepressants, and I was kind of self-medicating.
RAY ROMANO—COMEDIAN, WRITER, PRODUCER, ACTOR
I actually have a little history with gambling, back before I had money. I tried to lose money I didn’t have. I got close to being bad. It was bad, at one time. But I had no money to lose, thank God. Thank God I got a handle on it before I made money.
NORM MACDONALD—COMEDIAN, WRITER, ACTOR
I went broke a few times when I actually had lots of money. With gambling. And I mean broke. Dead broke.