KAREN KILGARIFF—COMEDIAN, MUSICIAN, WRITER, ACTOR
I don’t drink anymore. In 1997, I started having seizures from drinking and, also, I was on speed for a while. Trying to get down to a nice Hollywood fighting weight. After speed and booze, there’s no time for eating after all that. These diet pills are like prescription pills, but they were on par with the best cocaine you’ve ever had. It was like a cocaine high and it lasted for twelve hours.
I was having seizures at night and I didn’t know it. I would wake up with a really bitten tongue or I would wake up on the floor and I’d be like, “That’s so weird.” I once had a dream I was a spinner dolphin and I was just having a seizure basically.
The big climax of that story came when I woke up one morning and I immediately got on the phone and was talking to somebody and I was like, “I keep biting my tongue and my tongue is so bitten.” I turned and looked back and the wall of my bedroom had just a huge spray of blood on it. I looked at it and I was just like, “I can’t deal with that. There’s no way.” It looked like a minimurder and I had no capacity to deal. This was literally when I was getting up in the morning and walking into my kitchen and grabbing a bottle of Jameson and taking a huge swig. In my mind, I knew things were getting really bad.
But, at the same time, when you’re a comedian and you go out every night and drink there’s this weird kind of normal, it kind of normalizes it. Anyway, eventually my friend Kristin came and stayed with me and she woke up one morning and I was having a seizure, like my lips were blue and I was totally out. I woke up one morning to a couple LA firemen sitting on my bed saying, “Do you know your name? Do you know what day it is?”
I’m just wearing a Dodgers T-shirt and no pants and I was just like, “You guys.” They were amazing-looking, of course. It was very surreal.
Marc
Who called them?
Karen
Kristin.
Marc
She buzz-killed your seizure party with the firemen?
Karen
Yeah, I was having such a great time and she called The Man. I mean, I think it was one of the worst ones I’d had because I was actually out for a really long time and whatever. That could have been happening for a while and I just didn’t know. Anyway, I went to the hospital. It was crazy. There was no liquid in my body. A doctor said to me, “The seizures are just from alcohol withdrawal.” I said, “But I’ve never stopped drinking.” Which is really one of the saddest things I’ve ever said.
I still have seizures to this day. I am on medicine that controls them. I still have them. I personally think the diet pills screwed something up in my system. But it’s just all theory. Like, I’ve gone to a ton of neurologists and all they can say is, “There’s no reason that you should be having seizures.” But I do.
RACHAEL HARRIS—COMEDIAN, ACTOR
I love alcoholics. They’re my favorite people. Everyone that’s smoking in the back? I don’t smoke, but that’s where I want to be.
Maybe Jimmy Carter had some blatant substance abuse problems, and that’s why I was so attracted to him. He had humility. Anyone who’s really humble, that is exactly the person that I’m the most attracted to. Usually people in recovery that are like, “This is my deal, I’m not perfect, I’m going to make mistakes,” and I’m so empathetic to that, and I think it’s because of my dad. He was very misunderstood, and I felt like he was always the bad guy with my mother and my stepdad, and rightly so. I understand, but as I got older I realized people aren’t all bad.
CRAIG FERGUSON—COMEDIAN, WRITER, ACTOR, TALK SHOW HOST
I was drinking all through high school. I mean, we all kind of did. I think it’s ingrained in the Scottish culture. Not for everyone. I hate to give the idea that all Scottish people are as fucked-up as I am. That’s not true. There are some fabulously gifted, talented people. I just wasn’t. Or maybe I was in an unusual way for someone of my socioeconomic group at that time to be. I had a talent which was completely fucking worthless. There were no comedy clubs. There was no outlet for it, other than as a survival technique. It wasn’t really a career choice.
DAVE ANTHONY—COMEDIAN, WRITER, ACTOR
I don’t know a good comic who has a father that’s not crazy, an alcoholic, or gone. A good comic.
Marc
That is true, though, now that you mention it. I think about the guys I know, their dads are crazy, alcoholic, or gone. The ones whose dads are gone, I think actually if they survive that, do better, because they have a lot more to prove. Children of alcoholics and crazy people have spent a life managing chaos.
Dave
Exactly, and it’s not just that. If your father’s an alcoholic, or your dad was bipolar, what you did, and what I did, is to use humor to try and make sure that your dad or my dad wouldn’t go to that bad place. We thought that we could control it by trying to be funny, we were just trying to make the whole place lighter and happier when we didn’t want the dark thing to come in.
And the bad thing is my dad was always shut off when he was sober, and nicer when he was drunk, until he got really drunk. When he was drunk he was the happy drunk, so then how confusing is that? “Oh, you like me when you’re drunk, but when you’re sober you don’t?” Jesus.
Although a few drinks beyond that, he became the Really Drunk Guy who’s embarrassing. Just so drunk that we used to drive home from baseball games, we lived in the Bay Area, and so we’d go to a Giants game, and he’d drive on the highway home to Marin, and I would have to tap him to stay awake because he was so hammered.
KURT METZGER—COMEDIAN, WRITER, ACTOR
My dad’s dead. I was the last one talking to him of my family. He just drank himself to death in a fucking trailer at the end. He really got sad-alcoholic at the end, man. He wanted to die. I didn’t see him when he was yellow or however the fuck they found him, but I was still talking to him. He had gotten so dark with my brother and sister that they stopped talking to him.
I remember telling my brother, “You really should call him, because I don’t know what’s going on with him, but if he drops dead, you’re going to feel bad that you did this thing where you’re like, ‘I’m not speaking to you.’” I remember my brother weeping when he died. He never called him. So I was the last one to talk to him.
The other thing is my old man, who was always my buddy growing up, for the most part, more than my mom, he felt bad for himself too much. He really did. My mom just ate him from the inside out like fucking wasp larva, basically. He was trained to be like, “You get married. You never get divorced. You’re supposed to have kids. You’re not supposed to fuck until you’re married.” All this shit that I’m sure he didn’t want to do. I’m sure he never even wanted kids. But the rules were the rules.
LOUIE ANDERSON