We come into the next town. Cop passes us, sees the smashed-up back end. We pull into a gas station. We’re getting pulled over. I’m looking at myself in the rearview mirror. I’m in a cutoff T-shirt and a cowboy hat. I don’t know anyone in the car. The cops are coming up and I’m like, “I’ve been in Hawaii three days. This is where we’re at.”
So they let this guy go. They make the girl drive, who’s just as drunk as all of us. We continue on to the drug house. It’s not coke. It’s crystal meth. I buy it anyway. So me and my buddies smoke crystal meth for three days. I get to the point where I’m like, “I need to get this out of my body. I’ve been up for three days. I need to go for a jog.” I jog on the beach in front of the Hyatt with the roosters going. I came back to the room and sweat for like four hours.
The night before we fly back, I go out. I get so drunk. I had a layover—because this is a bargain flight—between Kauai and LA in San Francisco. And I’m at a bar in the San Francisco airport because I’m so physically sick, I cannot make the flight unless I get at least four Jack and Diets in me. I’m sitting in this bar, in the corner of the bar because I’m so afraid someone from AA is going to see me. Up to that point I had three months.
Here I was. I was about to start this movie. I had just finished Idiocracy with one of my heroes, Mike Judge. I was in a movie that came out a month before that was a hit. I was sitting in the corner of this bar, literally hiding, and I had accomplished all these goals I dreamed about for ten years, and I was afraid to be in public at this fucking airport. I was like, “You’re doing this wrong. You’re afraid to be you, and you’ve gotten everything you wanted.”
PAUL GILMARTIN—COMEDIAN, ACTOR, TELEVISION HOST
I could see on paper that my life was great. I was making great money. I’m on TV. I’ve got people paying to come see me do stand-up. I got a wife. I got a house. I got my health. On paper, my life is amazing, and I’m thinking about suicide, if not every day, every hour. I had taken the test to get a gun. I had a gun permit. I was starting to hear voices. When I would lay my head down at night, to sleep, I could have sworn I heard people in the backyard saying, “Paul. Paul.” One of the reasons I wanted to get a gun, because I thought, there are people in the backyard.
Then eventually I realized, after I stopped drinking for a little bit, the voices went away. I was like, “I think I’m just drinking too much.” I went to see a psychiatrist because of these feelings of suicide and he suggested that I stop drinking and using drugs. I thought, “No problem.” The psychiatrist said, “I can’t gauge where your depression is until you quit, so I need you to quit.” I tried to quit, and I found out that I had lost the power of choice. That made me more anxious, so I began to drink more.
I remember being out of town, and I said, “I’m just going to have one drink.” Because the usual group of people that would go out drinking couldn’t go out. I don’t know if you know that feeling, when you can’t sit in your hotel room, but you also don’t want to go drink at a bar by yourself and feel like a loser, but that was the better choice. Nothing mocks you more than an empty hotel room.
So I went to the bar and said, “I’m just going to have one.” I stayed until closing time. It was just me and this other person. I said, “Hey, I think we can get a drink across the street.” Because I just didn’t want to be alone. This person said, “No, I got to get up for work in the morning.” I said, “Please don’t leave, I’m so lonely.” To a stranger. I don’t remember what she said. I think I was just in my head at that point, saying, “Oh my God, you fucking loser.”
I’m sure you know this feeling, when you’re loaded and you’re miserable the other twenty-two hours a day, and you get your buzz on, you’re feeling that beautiful sensation of relaxation and excitement. Complete detachment from the world. I want to keep it going.
I couldn’t get help because I was like, it’s the only thing that makes me feel good. How could I give that up? Then I woke up one morning, and it was like every other morning, my first three thoughts were: you slept too late, you’re a lazy piece of shit, your life is passing you by. My stomach would tighten into a knot. I’d think about all the things I had to do that day, dreading them. The only thing I’d look forward to is getting loaded, yet, knowing intellectually that’s what’s making this spiral. I just said the words out loud, I said, “God help me. I can’t do this anymore.” I’m not a religious person at all. I was raised Catholic. If anything, that turned me off to it. For some reason that day, I got help, and I’ve been sober every day since then.
It’s a fucking miracle. But it’s been a lot of work, and a lot of opening up that trapdoor and looking at what a frightened, insecure, self-centered, self-pitying, impatient, competitive, narcissistic, vindictive little boy I can be on any given day.
ROBIN WILLIAMS—COMEDIAN, ACTOR (1951–2014)
I only drove drunk, that I remember, once. One time. I woke up the next morning asking, “Where’s my car?” It turned out the bartender had driven me home. He was a sweet guy and he drove me home. The next day, I couldn’t find the car. I thought oh my God, my car’s been stolen. Actually, no. They parked it for me in a safe parking lot. It’s nice when people take care of you when you’re that loaded.
“Hey! Take Mork home!”
I walked home one time from a bar in Toronto and I woke up the next morning with a mitten. I went, “Oh my God, this is a child’s mitten.” It turned out a waitress had given me her mitten. She had tiny hands and she’d given me her mitten because I’d lost a glove. That’s the worst thing. When you wake up going, “What’s this? There’s a road flare. Is that human? No, it’s rabbit blood. Oh thank God.”
ROB DELANEY—COMEDIAN, WRITER, ACTOR
I was very lucky. It won’t sound lucky at first.
I drove when I was in a blackout. I was over at a friend’s house here in LA. Having a good time. A keg party. It started out normal. Other normal people drinking normal amounts of alcohol. And then we tapped a second keg, or rather finished it, so then we moved onto wine, and then we moved onto whatever else was around, and my final drink that I ever drank was in a Solo cup, like a keg cup. I had a bottle of vodka in one hand and a bottle of bourbon in the other and I poured them both in up to the top, which if you drink you know that isn’t a drink, it’s just gross. That’s a red flag. I drank that all the way down and then I was like, “Hey, that wasn’t bad,” so I made another one and that’s when I can remember my consciousness just stopped recording.