Waiting for the Punch

by Marc Maron

  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

  I always tell people that growing up in an alcoholic family is one of the weirdest things because it’s like being around nuclear fallout. Later in your life it comes up. It really affects your whole life.

  My dad was a fascinating guy that I didn’t know. His father was a great inventor. He invented fifty things. He invented some sort of deep fryer thing way back. He was an alcoholic.

  He sold all his patents to lawyers. Then him and his wife would go on these cross-country train drunks, and leave the kids.

  During one of the trips, there was a murder in my dad’s house by a Swedish gang. His parents were gone, and there was a murder. They took all the kids away, including my dad. Because the parents weren’t there.

  Then my dad got put up for adoption. You know where that term comes from? They put you up in front of the congregation at the church. And people would pick who they wanted. It was good and bad, you know what I mean? Like the kids didn’t have a place, so the community was trying to be helpful.

  My dad and his sister got split up. He had a sister he was very close to and about his age. He went one place and she went another. It destroyed him. He got adopted by a German family who worked him as a farmhand and he stayed in a different part of the house. He ate different food.

  Then at fifteen he went and made them sign a thing. He goes, “I want to join the army.” He says, “I want you to sign this and say I’m old enough to join the army.” They did, and he became a bugle player in World War I.

  I figured all that out. I think, “Oh my God. My dad had a most miserable thing. He was a better person than his parents were in some grotesque way.”

  Marc

  You’ve got all this resentment at him for being an alcoholic, and you’ve got all this shame. All this stuff that you hold him responsible for, and he’s a monster in your eyes. It sounds to me that the process of working through this and finding more out about him, allowed you to see him as a person and maybe forgive him.

  Louie

  I did forgive him.

  RACHAEL HARRIS

  My stepdad was the type of guy that would come home after work and drink a six-pack of beer, but I would never know he was drunk. That was like a can of Coke. I didn’t see horrible ramifications, and he didn’t become mean. He might have done that with my mom, like the way that he talked to her or whatever, but it was my mom who was the crazy person, because of his drinking. She was the reactor, that was picking up everything, and she was feeling everything, so we were like, “Man, Mom’s the crazy person,” when really she wasn’t.

  The way it trickled down for me was, okay, I’m going to clean the house before any of them get home, make sure everything’s in its perfect place. So Mom doesn’t come home and say, “What the hell, like what the fuck, why are these dishes in here? Didn’t I tell you to clean this up? I work all day!”

  Marc

  Your stepdad’s alcoholism didn’t affect you directly, it affected you through your mom trying to deal with his shit.

  JASON SEGEL—COMEDIAN, ACTOR, WRITER
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  If Me Five Years Ago saw Me Now, I would be unrecognizable. I was drinking quite a bit. I got to the point where I felt like I was going to collapse under the weight of it. I felt very trapped.

  I felt isolated. I also would very simply wake up in the morning and say, “I am not going to drink today,” and by midday I was drinking. It was not a party in any way.

  Marc

  Did it start as a party?

  Jason

  My hunch is it always starts as a party.

  Marc

  Then all of a sudden, “I’d like you to meet the monster. I hope you had a good time at the party, now you’re working for this guy.”

  Jason

  Exactly right. You’ve lost control. I got really lucky in that I had a real moment of clarity where I said to myself, “I want to be the best version of myself.” I got really lucky that that happened.

  It was a dark day. I had something bad happen. I had not been drinking for a little while, for months. I decided, you know what, I’m going to drink. I didn’t have booze in the house for myself at this point. I had a case of rosé for guests. It was summertime. I decided I’ll have a glass of rosé. I don’t even like rosé. Basically, it turned into a weekend where by the end of it I was surrounded by these empty bottles of rosé. I thought to myself, “This is not for pleasure. I don’t like rosé. This is something else going on.”

  The thing I realized about booze is that I am not going to win. They’re not going to stop making booze, I can’t drink it all. You know what I mean? For me, it’s like fighting Mike Tyson. I realized at that point the best strategy for me is not to get in the ring.

  DAX SHEPARD—ACTOR, WRITER, DIRECTOR

  I have so many stories that end with “And then I continued to get fucked-up for a year.” I think that people tend to think of it as a bottom. I have, like, eleven. I tried to get sober a dozen times and I could put together two months here, three months there. I always got sober for movies. I cared about that. And in between movies is where it got really dangerous.

  So, I did this movie Zathura, and I knew I had to get sober to do that movie. And so I thought, “Oh, I’m going to go to Hawaii and have this one last vacation.” And I chose Hawaii specifically because I was like, “There’s no cocaine in Hawaii.” It just seems so far from everywhere. That was my assumption. It was hard to find. But I found it. I didn’t underestimate the amount of coke. I underestimated my willingness to search it out and find it.

  Everyone’s a newlywed except for my buddy and me, who are just there to get fucked-up. So we’re at a bar, we’re drinking with locals. I’ve already done Punk’d, so I’m kind of popular with that crew. The first two days at the bar, it’s kind of cool I’m there. The third day, I realize it’s worn off. They’re going to kill us. But I met a guy who said, “I know where to get coke. Let’s go.” I go with him and his girlfriend. We’re driving. It’s raining. This guy’s driving way too fast. He’s got his shirt off, he’s got a beer between his legs. I’m in the process of telling him, “You’ve got to slow down and turn down the radio,” when we go through a left-hand turn, he loses control, we spin, we hit a guardrail. Cars are fucking flying off the road to avoid us. We somehow end up going straight. We drive out of it. He thinks it’s great. “I fucking drove out of that, bro!”

  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-cent
ered, 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.