Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Welcome to my podcast Drunkish. I'm Stephanie Wilder
Taylor and last year I published a book called Drunkish,
where I told my story about quitting drinking, and now
I have a podcast where I talk to other people
about quitting drinking. So, whether you're sober, sober, curious, or
just like hearing stories about why knows, you're welcome here today.
I couldn't be more excited. I have a friend of mine,
someone I've known for a really long time, podcaster Greg
Fitzsimmons of Fitsdog Radio and Childish with his co host
Alison Rosen. Today, he joins Drunkish to talk about his
thirty five year journey without alcohol, why he doesn't call
himself sober, and that one time he drank again, and
how comedy, therapy and psychedelics all played a big part
in his recovery. I think you are going to love
this interview, so let's get to it. Hello everybody, and
welcome to Drunkish. It's me your host, Stephanie Wilder Taylor,
and I'm here with my guest, Greg Fitzsimmons. He is
a comedian, he's a podcaster, he's a I mean Fitstog radio.
I'm gonna say it's a radio show. I don't care.
I'm gonna say that.
Speaker 2: What else? What else? He's a he's a touring comedian.
He's very busy. How are you.
Speaker 3: Thank you well? First of all, are we on video
or is this your audio? I might use a clip, okay, great?
Oh yeah, that's right, or I won't.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: I don't know whether to smile. Do I have to
smile for the next hour? Do I have to worry about,
you know, my dog jumping on my lap? I mean,
I want to want this to be professional. I got
my South African rugby hat on.
Speaker 2: Oh I like it.
Speaker 3: We're just over there for three weeks, the whole family
for Christmas.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was fun. And that was speaking of sobriety.
That was like I was a twenty people my wife's
side of the family, and everybody is pounding drinks and
you can't escape, you know, it's like you're staying in
the house with everybody, and so you know, you go like,
and I find that non alcoholic beer really helps me
at times like that.
Speaker 1: That's interesting that you would say that I have never
had a non alcoholic beer since I got sober, and
not for any kind of reasons, like I feel like
I just because my thing is, what's the point. I'm
always like, I didn't drink beer for the taste, but
that's just me.
Speaker 3: So well, ask your dog who's been neutered why he's
dry humping your leg. It just feels familiar, it's comforting.
Speaker 1: Right right, Yeah, I would just be waiting for the
buzz to kick in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know. I mean, look, people in the program
will tell you that you shouldn't have non alcoholic beers,
that it's it's it's a gateway, but I don't. I'm fine.
Speaker 1: Well, people in the program will tell you, like, don't
do math, you know, but what do they know?
Speaker 3: They don't know anything. I know. They's a prick. It's
like Jesus, can I live a little bit here? No?
And like and I should say also I am. I
have on occasion smoked pot over the years, and I
do take mushrooms sometimes, but it's very purposeful. It's not
I always thinking about it as like am I am
I running from something? Or am I going towards something
with a substance? And I feel like with mushrooms, sit down,
I meditate, I journal, I come up with a goal,
I do it with people I love in nature, and
then I usually come out of it with like a
couple of good epiphanies and I have my depression lifts
for like a week. So you know, I'm not I'm not.
I would I never refer to myself as sober. Oh,
I haven't had a drink, and I've had a drink
in thirty five years except for one night. Wow.
Speaker 1: That is a long time. Yeah, right, that is a
long time. I think that there are a lot of
ways to well. I don't I don't want to say
a lot of ways to be sober. Maybe there aren't
a lot of ways to be sober. I think there
are a lot of ways to do recovery, and I'm
interested in hearing about all the ways I have thought
about the idea of you know, ayahuasca or I never
did mushrooms and I never did acid before I got sober,
so it wasn't something It wasn't something I was looking
to do that and it's definitely not something I'm looking
to do now. For all kinds of reasons. I would
be the person who would, you know, take LSD and
never be normal again.
Speaker 3: I just know it.
Speaker 2: I was not even a good plot smoker.
Speaker 1: I would I don't know what first of all, Okay,
just full disclosure about me. I think if I was
to be doing anything, it would be pain pills. That
would be That would be my favorite thing if I could.
I'm saying, if I could do something, it would be.
Speaker 3: Oh, let me tell you something, opey, it's feel real nice.
I mean, does the reason why so many people get
addicted to them? They go in there. I feel like
when I've taken them, and I had a little I
had a little run in with those. I had shoulder
surgery and I got over prescribed for about four or
five months, and I was taking I realized at the
end I wasn't taking them for pain anymore, and getting
off them was actually even though I wasn't taking that many.
It's what happens is your your you're uh, what's the
what's the drug in your the chemical that makes you
feel good in your body?
Speaker 1: Your serotonin, your serotonin receptors in your in your brain,
dominet clogged up by dopamine receptors, So dopey receptors get
clawged up by opiates, and so when you go off
of them, you don't feel anything good for however long
it takes.
Speaker 3: For me, it was about a day and a half
and you go into a very dark, hard place and uh,
but when you're on them, I would feel no fear,
no social anxiety. I just felt at peace. I could
talk to anybody without wanting to. Usually I talked to
somebody I don't like, and I'm just all I'm doing
is trying to figure out how to get out of
the conversation, you know. And I just found myself at
Christmas being able to talk to like, you know, that
crazy Maga cousin or whatever, and just being like, all right,
I'm good, I'm good.
Speaker 2: Right right, yeah.
Speaker 1: I I always was surprised at the same exact reaction
that I had with pain pills.
Speaker 2: It was like it didn't totally alter me.
Speaker 1: And at a point before I got sober, when I
was taking a but what, I would get a prescription
for them for breakthrough mi grain pain, and then I
would just continue. I remember one time getting a prescription
for one hundred from my doctor and taking them all
in a week, And honestly, nobody was the wiser because
I could act, I can act.
Speaker 2: I don't I don't.
Speaker 1: Act like Anna Nicole Smith. I'm not like falling over
you know, yeah, let's go. I'm like, I think I
could talk pretty normally. But it makes me in my
brain feel so much better, like, Wow, people are not
as annoying as they were. My god, you know, I
have the problem where it's I want to get out
of the conversation. I got to make my face not
look like I want to get out of the conversation,
you know.
Speaker 3: Right right, yeah, no, I think somebody should write a
book about that, how to get out of especially when
you're at a party and in the corner you see
two people you haven't scene in years that you love
and you want to get to them, but there's land
mines through the party, and as you walk it's always
like some guy that walks up to me and he's
like hey man, and I'll look at him and they'll
be like, you don't remember me, and I'll go like, yeah, no,
I'm sorry. I don't have a good memory. I did
a guest spot on your show in Cleveland like nine
years ago. It's like, hey, you know what, fuck you
don't come at me with that, you don't remember me,
don't gaslight me. You said, if I don't remember you,
there's one reason you were not memorable. You did not
make an impression. You're boring and dulgent. And I've said
I haven't said it that strongly, but I've said something
to that extent of me. I don't put up with
passive aggression anymore. I can't. I can't do it. I'm
too old for that.
Speaker 2: You're here, cheers. I'll drink to that now yours.
Speaker 3: Tell me about it?
Speaker 1: Can you tell me about uh? Tell me about the
first time you drank. I feel like everybody that's developed
a problem with alcohol has a story about like the
very first time.
Speaker 3: Well, my family, I'm an Irish Catholic, and it really is.
I mean, it's a disease of the Irish for sure.
I mean, just based on my own family, so many
of my relatives were in recovery or actively drinking their
whole lives. My father was an alcoholic. My uncle was
a bad album. He was skid row. He lived in
the Bowery in New York in a well Stare hotel.
Speaker 1: When you were so, this is your dad's brother.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my whole life, Yeah, my whole life he lived
like that.
Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah, and what did my dad say about that.
Speaker 3: He took care of him. You know, he took care
of his brother, and there's only so much he could do.
He just was had the disease. And then my father
was an alcoholic as well, but he was high functioning.
But he died at fifty three. You know, wow, he
smoked three and a half packs a day and he
drank a ton. And uh So, anyway, so family get
together is like you know, the holidays, there was always
a lot of alcohol around, and me and my cousins
would take like half empty drinks, half empty glasses of
wine and we'd take them down to the basement and
my grandfather's house in the Bronx and we would drink them.
And that was the first time I got buzzed, was
with my cousins and my one cousin, so I was
probably about thirteen or something. And then my younger cousin, Danny,
he was he was only like eleven, and so he
was trying to keep up with us, and he went
into my grandparents' bedroom and it was winter, it was Christmas,
so everybody had their coats on the bed, and he
vomited all over everybody's coats. Like red wine, vomit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, did you get it?
Speaker 3: No, we fucking sold him out. It was Danny. Danny
did it. It was pretty obvious. He was like he
was a mess.
Speaker 2: Mm hmmm. So then what happened? Where did it go
from there?
Speaker 3: Well? And then when I was a teenager, like when
I was probably like yeah, it was in the like
seventh grade, So I was, you know, twelve, thirteen years old,
and I ran with a bunch of crazy kids. Everybody
had older brothers, everybody had parents that were checked out.
Like I looked back on it, and I realized, like
most of my friend's parents were alcoholics or drug addicts
and they just were not paying attention. And so we
didn't have curfews, and we had access to oldest siblings
pot and they would buy drinks for us. They buy
beer for us. We would get mescalin and mushrooms and acid.
When we were like really like thirteen, fourteen years old,
and so I can remember like being behind the bleachers
at a high school football game and we found a
six pack somebody had like left it back there, and
I remember drinking like like I remember drinking like I said,
slug of it, and my whole body got warm and
it tingled, and it made me feel like, oh I
like this, Like I almost had a feeling like this
is going to be a big part of my life,
you know, And I just always I just love drinking,
you know, Which is I think I I think I
had undiagnosed social answery. I'm a comedians, so nobody thinks
I have it, But it's really when I when I
do comedy or podcast, like I get up for it,
like I'm ready for it, and I do it. But
when I'm not ready for it, it's very overwhelming to me.
And I think drinking took the edge off. It made
me funnier, less inhibited, more emotional, and so it was
kind of a perfect fit until it wasn't.
Speaker 2: And how did that go? I mean, how did it?
Speaker 1: Did you have any consequences of your drinking in high
school or was it just all fun? Because all because
my experience in high school was that all of my
friends drank the way I drank, but my I couldn't
understand why I seemed to get the drunkest or why
I had horrible hangovers, and why everybody else was like
fine the next day and I was throwing up the
entire next day, And it was kind of an internal
battle of like why, like why does it affect me
this way? It never occurred to me like, oh, I
shouldn't be drinking I'm an alcoholic, because I didn't see
it in any of my family Jewish family, very controlled
people too. Yeah, And so I felt I was definitely
already the odd one out. So I was doing a
lot of hiding. And but all my friends drank.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think when all your friends are drinking, especially
like at the time when we grew up, like you
were a little younger than me, but like it's it
was a time where alcoholism wasn't discussed as a disease.
It was just like kind of a it was just like,
like you said, the context of it was everybody's drinking,
So who's going to think that they alone have a problem, right,
And so I didn't know what an alcoholism was till
I was in college, and then I started going to
alan On meetings when I realized, you know, how bad
my my father's drinking was and how it affected me,
and then that that led me to quit drinking myself.
But I had, Yeah, I got arrested a lot. I
spent three different weekends in jail for fighting in bars.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: And I got a lot of j D cards as
a kid for vandalism and breaking into a car and uh,
just a lot of drunken behavior. And I got into
a lot of fights. That was my thing. I would
lose my temper and I was not a big guy,
so uh it didn't always end well. And uh but
I think I the time that when I finally quit,
I wanted to quit all. You know, all through college
I knew I had a problem, and like you said,
like I was the one with the bigger hangover. I
was the one that was throwing up and making a
scene and getting us all kicked out of a bar.
But it wasn't until I started doing stand up comedy,
which was in college, and when I graduated college, I
really was going at it full on. It was all
I was doing. And I got drunk on stage one
night and I bombed and I got off stage and
I felt like such a loser. And I was so
ashamed because I had been mediocre my whole life. I
was a bad student, I wasn't a great I played sports,
but I was never a great athlete. I was not
great with girls, and then stand up. I felt like, wow,
I'm really good at this, Like I think this is
something that I can pursue, you know. And then when
I found my drinking was interfering with that, I felt like, oh, well,
this that's not going to happen. Like I kind of
had what they call a shallow bottom, like I didn't
you know, I did. I did total a car drunk,
but I never you know, and I never like things
didn't get that bad for me to want to quit.
I didn't want to end up like my dad pretty much.
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting that, you know, we're all so obsessed.
I'll speak for myself. I was very obsessed when I
stopped drinking with how high my bottom was, you know,
I'm so functional for me. I drove drunk with my
kids in the car.
Speaker 2: And oh but nothing happened. I came home, I pulled
into my driveway.
Speaker 1: I didn't think I was drunk, because that was my thing,
was just I never thought I was drunk. So if
anybody was like, are you okay? Are you okay to drive?
I'd be like, yeah, obviously, or why would I be driving?
I feel I always felt I always felt fine the night,
and it wasn't until the next day, and and that
this was the same case for me. The next day,
I woke up with a brutal hangover, and my husband
had had accused me of being drunk the night before.
And when I woke up, knowing that he'd been right,
even though in the moment I'd been defensive about it,
I was like, yeah, oh, and I quit drinking.
Speaker 2: That was the last time I drank.
Speaker 3: That was long ago.
Speaker 2: That was almost sixteen years ago. I was damn but
I was forty two.
Speaker 1: I'd done a lot of drinking in my day. So
but my point is I really thought of myself as
very functioning, very high bottom for a long time. I
was like, but my life was fine. I was very functional.
But it's funny when you think about it and to
hear you say shallow bottom. But I totalled a car. Well, like,
you could have killed somebody totally a car drunk, right,
then would you have said, oh, I had a really
high bottom. No, then you would have been like, walk
like this is what happened. But it's interesting because I
feel like that's our brains trying to go.
Speaker 2: It wasn't that bad, Like.
Speaker 1: Right, we're doing hero shit by being sober when like
it it probably wasn't that bad.
Speaker 3: You weren't.
Speaker 1: You didn't get like years in jail that you were arrested.
I guess what I'm saying is you still did the
right thing. I think we did the right thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think we did. Yet it's not about.
Speaker 2: Probably wasn't going in a good direction, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know. It was like like I was with
the craziest kids, but I was the least crazy of
the crazy kids. I got caught less, I think had
I had much more awareness of not failing, you know,
Like and I did fail on some degrees, Like I
did really bad in school, but I managed to get
into college, you know. And I took a year off
after high school and I backpacked around Europe by myself,
and I did a lot of things that really pushed
the boundaries of what a kid would normally do at
my age. And I did stand up in high school
a little bit. And I wrote a novel when I
was about eighteen years old, and I read there was
something inside of me that drove me to want to
have a special life. And I think that drinking was
becoming a cycle of failure for me. It was like
waking up with the hangovers, wasting a day, ruining a
relationship with somebody. I don't know that I ever lost
a job drinking necessarily, but you know, it felt like
when when it affected stand up comedy, that was when
I said, well, I just can't have this. I can't.
I saw my dad's isolation and sadness and shame from drinking,
and I thought, that's what's going to happen, that's what's
gonna end up being. And so I think I had
the presence in that moment too. And I and I'm
not a program guy, like I did go to Alan
and I did go to a for a while, but
I wish I had the grace of somebody that really
worked the steps and the piece of it and the
you know and the and I think for me it's
a little bit more white knuckle. It was a little
bit more like, you know, you tough it out, just
turn off the switch, don't do it. And I think
that that's made me a little more of a wound
up person in life than I would be if I had.
I mean, the steps are incredible. It's just like it's
like every Eastern philosophy and all mixed up into one
about letting go and higher powers and stuff that can
really free you in your life and and make your
motivation and life more about more aspirational and less fear based.
Speaker 2: But you don't want to do that. You don't want
to do it, though, I.
Speaker 3: Know, why did I do it?
Speaker 1: Do you feel like because do you feel like, well,
first of all, I think you're a comedian and we're
all a bit rebellious, right, And do you feel like
there's something about program that's all or nothing, that's like
you got to do it this way, you have to
have a sponsor, you have to do work, and you're
not interested.
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, I guess I feel like I like to
live life on my own terms. And you're right, it's
a lot of turning over your cognitive process to an
outside paradigm, you know, And I don't. I don't know
that i'd fit into that. Alan On was such a
good fit. The first time I went to an alan
On meeting, I sat down, somebody brought me and a
woman got up and she was a you know, older woman.
I was, you know, twenty one, she was probably sixty,
and she was overweight, and she was into arts and
crafts and she spoke about alcoholism with her parents and
I started bawling. I just like it made me feel
like I could understand so many of my feelings about
myself and that it was universal and that I was
in a place where you could be safe to talk
about these things. And I just went all the ties
to go to three meetings a week for years, and
so I really was exposed to the steps and and
they're the exact same twelve steps as for you know,
whether it's narcotics, anonymous or you know, over readers or not,
Like it's all the same twelve steps. And I went
to a lot of therapy. I sort of feel like
I used therapy to get sober more so than the program.
Speaker 1: I want to hear more about that because I feel
like for myself, I've been to a lot of therapy
as well, but I always found that therapists do a
lot of gassing you up and you know, it's not
your fault and all that. And for me, the difference
with the program was, oh, it's so interesting that I
do have a part in things, and a lot of
the ways that I behave are not conducive to like
good relationships with people, and a lot of you know,
and I'm just speaking for myself. I do not like
to be criticized. I don't like constructive criticism. Even I
don't like to be told any there's any room for improvement.
If I could have my way, I would just it
would be all validation all the time. And obviously that's
not the real world. But when you go to therapy,
I feel like my therapist would always be like, you're
absolutely right, you were traumatized this and in the program
people would say, okay, yeah, that sounds hard, but like,
what have what could you have done different? Or was
your ego involved in this? And the first time a
person who cared for me and was a nice person
and wasn't you know, a boss trying to talk to
me told me about some of my character problems was
really eye opening and great.
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, you.
Speaker 1: Mean I could change the way I behave and feel
better and I don't have to always figure out a
way to deflect. So I want to hear, but I
would love to hear about how therapy helped you in
that way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I had. I think probably my first
therapist was much more that I think he was supportive,
would be a nice way to say it, but not
not very confrontational. And I think for me, it was
just the ability to talk, you know, coming from a
family where we just didn't talk about emotions, We didn't
acknowledge my father's drinking. We we were you know, there
was physical abuse in the house. And so I talked
about this stuff at first, and the therapist would be like,
like he couldn't believe some of the stuff I was
telling him, Like he just was like, right, this is serious,
like this is these are things that you you know,
need to deal with and uh. And so I think
that that's what I needed at that stage. And then
later on I found therapists that were more into cognitive
behavioral therapy, which was just more about checking your thoughts
and challenging the reality of your thoughts and not accepting
that your thoughts are the truth. And so that really
worked for me because that was something you could pull
out a pen and paper and you know, there's a
book that that has a list of twelve different cognitive
distortions and you can check your thoughts against each one
of those and and it allows you to step back
and go like, oh, yeah, this is you know, this
is this is a clouded thinking. But I think you're right.
I think the program is much more about taking your inventory,
making amends, you know, doing things that put the onus
on you, and uh, you know, I think that some
people talk about the Christianity or I think specifically Catholicism
with AA and how there's that of shame and guilt
that's wrapped into it a little bit more like the
religion is, and that some people have a hard time
with that because that's how they that's how they experience it.
Speaker 1: I mean my beginnings with the program with twelve steps,
it was hard. It was a hard pill to swallow,
and I felt really uncomfortable hearing. I grew up my
mother was an atheist, you know. I would ask her
about God and she would just say, there's no such
thing and kind of felt embarrassed to even want to
believe in something bigger than ourselves. And I would say, like,
how did this all get created?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: And she'd say, it's just science, you know, whatever Big
Bang theory, you know, and that was it. She did
not want to engage in any conversation. The whole thing
was silly to her. And I had a lot of
trouble going to meetings where people were like, well, just
give give it over to God. I was like, well,
if there isn't a God, then that's kind of silly.
Speaker 2: To just give it.
Speaker 3: What did God become to you? What did you have
to create? Well?
Speaker 1: I had a similar experience to you where I just
really liked meetings because I, for the very first time ever,
I was hearing people say thoughts that I'd had in
my head that I always thought, I'm the only person
who thinks this way. I'm the only person who's engaging
in this behavior that I can't stop doing that I
rationalize that is dark, and I feel awful about myself.
I mean, the first time I talked about driving drunk
with my kids in the car, somebody came up and
they were like.
Speaker 2: Oh, honey, we've all done it. You know I did.
Speaker 1: I had somebody tell me I breastfed drunk and had
to take my baby to the hospital.
Speaker 2: It was but it was hearing that kind of.
Speaker 1: Thing from a really normal looking person that made me go, oh,
that's this, this is here. It was very very comforting,
and it gave me a lot of hoe hope and
I and they say in this program, you know, take
what you need and leave the rest so I and
all you need is a desire to stop drinking. So
for me, I was like, well, I want to stop drinking.
And I always wanted to not drink more than I
wanted to drink a little, even if it was just
a little bit. So I was willing to go like, Okay,
there's a lot of things about this that suck and
are ridiculous and I don't agree with yeah, but I don't.
Speaker 2: Have to do any of them, right right, that's.
Speaker 3: The thing you could take. If you could take seventy
percent out of it, You've got a lot of really
like deconstructing your life and having the seeing the universality
of it and understanding it's not just you that's so
powerful that weight that comes up. So wait, you did
tell me about your higher power then, So for.
Speaker 2: Me, it was just it was connection to me.
Speaker 1: It was like, oh, sometimes I feel it and sometimes
I don't. It wasn't really a higher power that I
could define. It was the group. It was honestly, kind
of this sounds so corny and you can tell that
I'm not this person, but it was kind of love.
It was like, oh, in this group, they don't want
your money. They don't want anything you from you, They
just want to help you. And I found such a
power in that and such I just embraced it and
I was like, that's my higher power is being able
to just what because I was suffering at the beginning.
I hear a lot of people they quit drinking, and
I want to hear how it was for you. But
a lot of people quit drinking and they're like, I
feel great, no desire, it's been lifted.
Speaker 2: And I was like, fuck that.
Speaker 1: I want to drink every single night, put the kids
to bed. All I want to do is like have
four glasses of wine and shut off the noise in
my head.
Speaker 2: And when that was taken away from me, it was
really hard. And what helped me I was.
Speaker 1: Calling people and having somebody go, I totally get it,
It's going to be.
Speaker 3: Okay, right, right right. And also I think it is difficult.
I mean for some people, like for me, my instinct,
my default setting when I feel like that is to
go inward and to disconnect, and that changing that dynamic
to where you actually pick up the phone and engage
in a conversation you don't want to have, like because
you do feel like nobody's going to get how I
feel right now, and I'm not in my mindset to share.
I don't want to do too much energy. But when
you can change that and realize that every time you
do it, you feel better, there's never a time where
you reach out and you have a conversation that you
don't walk away from it going like, wow, I all
my problems are a lot smaller than they were before
I picked up the phone.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you this. You quit drinking. You
did it a little bit with the program at the beginning.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then a lot with the literature. Okay, Yeah,
I read the One Day at a Time book every day,
you know, and uh and that always helped me. It
always he always seemed to be a thought that I
needed at that time, and that was very helpful. But yeah,
I think it was a lot of therapy. But you
must have.
Speaker 1: Felt like at some point you weren't white knuckling it anymore,
that you just got used to not drinking.
Speaker 3: No, I wanted I wanted to have a drink. Last night,
everybody in my family was drinking bottles of wine. We
had people over, and uh no, it never went away.
I still feel it.
Speaker 1: So when that the night you told me that you
besides one night when you drank, What was that like?
Speaker 3: What was the one night like? Yeah, well it was
a very dear friend of mine. Do you remember Kevin Meani,
the comedian. Of course, So Kevin was one of my
dearest friends. We grew up next to each other, and
he was like a ment He was about ten years older,
and he was a real mentor to me. And then
he became like one of my closest friends and so
and I went through everything in his life with him.
You know. He he married my next door neighbor who
was my babysitter, and I was in his wedding party.
He was in my wedding party. He talked to me
about how to tell his wife that he was coming
out of the closet, and I helped walk him through
that before he did it. And then in the aftermath,
and his daughter is my god daughter. And so he
died and I spoke, I gave the eulogy at the funeral,
and then every it was all these comedians and family,
very irish, and everybody was getting bombed. And I stayed
at my sister's house in New York and they had
me staying in the Bonus room, which has a bar
in it, and I just went over and I got
a bottle of Shivas off the shelf and I had
like three big swigs of Shivas and I got buzzed,
and then I went to sleep. And I woke up
the next day and I was like, what, Like, I
couldn't even understand how it happened. It wasn't even like
it wasn't even like I battled with should I shouldn't.
I I just picked it up and started drinking. It
just felt just felt like normal, and uh, and I
never did again. I woke up and I was like
a little hungover. I was very scared that people were
gonna smell the alcohol, and because you know how when
somebody was drinking you can smell it in the room.
And I didn't tell anybody about it for years. It
just was this thing that happened one night, you know.
Speaker 1: And I'm just surprised that you didn't just go back
to drinking, because like, what was stopping you?
Speaker 3: Well, especially as a comedian, I go on the road
and it's you know, I'm staying at night alone in
a hotel, I'm working in a place that serves alcohol.
I'm in a hotel that has a mini bar. I
usually when I check into a hotel, I asked him
to take the alcohol out of the room. Really, send
somebody up and take it out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and do they? Yeah, And that helps you.
Speaker 3: I Mean, all I know is the one time I drank,
I was alone in the room with booze, and that's
what happened. And that's maybe how tentative it is. You know.
It's not like you know, my Sometimes my wife goes
away and the kids are away and I'm alone in
the house and there is booze in the house, and
I think somehow, because it's my own house, maybe I
feel more comfortable and I feel a little bit more vulnerable.
When I'm on the road, I feel lonely, I feel sad.
I don't like being on the road that much. And
so I think that, yeah, I'm more comfortable without having
it in the room.
Speaker 1: I think that's so great that you know that about
yourself and you take those steps to protect yourself.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, it's really hard.
Speaker 1: I mean, we live in a society. There's just so
much alcohol around and it means a lot of things
to a lot of people. It's not just something we
do just to self medicate, you know, I think that's
a fallacy. Thing we do to celebrate, it's something we
do to socialize. It's something we do, you know, when
we wake up in the morning. No, I'm just kidding,
but you know, I.
Speaker 3: Mean it's something that lets us feel feelings and express
love for people. I mean a lot of people only
express love to each other when they're buzzed, you know,
and you don't, and you hug your friends and you
hold your friend's hand, and you know, you do things
that that you're afraid to do without you know, being lubricated. Right.
Speaker 1: I'm also curious just you know, I don't want to
keep you forever in this in this interview, but.
Speaker 2: How old are your kids? They're old, they're in.
Speaker 3: College, twenty four and twenty one.
Speaker 1: Okay, So is your older one out of college already?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, I'm so interested as a parent of teenagers,
I have two seventeen year olds and then my older
one is twenty. How did you deal with the high
school years, the drinking years? Like, what did you tell
your kids about Were you sober before you had your Yeah,
you obviously were already.
Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, yeah, my wife never knew me when
I was drinking. I don't know that I handled the great.
You know, I think we kinda kept them, maybe on
a little bit of a loose leash in some ways.
I think we accepted that, you know, we live in Venice.
They're going to a public public schools and there's alcohol around,
and I think we tried to take the stigma out
of it by letting them once they turned like sixteen,
they could have a glass of wine once in a while.
Neither one of them was a drunk in high school.
They partied, you know, I think my son more so
than my daughter, but I think the issue was more
marijuana with both of them. And my daughter stopped completely
and my son still he has an addiction to this day.
And you know, it's it's something that I don't know
how you deal with because kids today, they have vap pens,
they have edibles. Every single kid has got it. They're
doing it in school, and it's become so normalized that
you can't even talk to them about it and say,
this is an issue. You know, this is affecting your brain,
this is affecting your emotional development, and you know, you
try to tell them to stop, and you really just
realize like they're going to stop when they when they're
ready to. You know, you keep giving them the information,
you keep you know, offering to support them in stopping
or whatever. But you know, my daughter found it. My
son is still he doesn't think there's anything wrong with it.
Speaker 1: Your son is the older one. Yeah, it's really hard.
I wonder why you think you didn't handle it well.
Do you feel like keeping them on a shorter leash
would have prevented that. I'm the same as you. Yeah,
I keep I don't want to be controlling of them.
I feel like if I am controlling of it, it'll
be worse or they won't talk to me right right,
you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know what I would have done better.
I really don't. I mean, I think that having a
father like I did, I was very vigilant to you know,
their their behavior.
Speaker 2: Overly vigilant. Do you feel like you pay too much
attention to it?
Speaker 3: No, I just think that, Like, I don't know, I
just I feel like it's I think it's just really
hard these days. I just don't know. I don't know
what the answer is, you know, I mean, your I
think that if you if you give them motivation for
a direction in their life, I think it takes away that.
I mean, for me, I because I found a direction,
I found a passion, and the drinking was getting in
the way of that. And I think in the absence
of a goal, that stuff can uh become their whole life.
You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how open were you with them about your struggle
with alcohol?
Speaker 3: Oh? Very very yeah, And about and about my grandfather,
about their grandfather who they never met obviously, and and
other people in the family, and you know, and friends.
We talked about friends that have issues, and so no,
they're I think they're very aware of it. But I
think there's this certain amount of you know, there's this
anti establishment stance that teenagers all have about well, good
pot is actually good for you in this way, in
this way because they listen to podcasters talk about and
you know, legalizing pot to me was like, I don't
know that that was a great thing. I think it
made it more accessible. I think you see a lot
of the marketing on billboards and o there ways really
towards kids. You know, all these vape pens and stuff
they're you know, they're they're they're easily sold teenagers, And
I think the whole mindset of legalizing it says there's
nothing wrong with this, but there really is. And I think,
you know, look, do we want prohibition against it? I
don't know. I don't know. I just think, you know,
when you look at it, alcohol is probably physically worse
for you. I think there's more traffic accidents. I think
there's more domestic violence. I think there's a lot of
reasons why alcohol is worse for you than pot. So
do we do we you know, have prohibition again. I mean,
if you're gonna if you're gonna keep booze legal, you
kind of have to keep pot legal. But I just
saw the effect it had on youth in this country.
I mean, if you look at the statistics, there is
so much more hot use among teenagers now than there
was five ten years ago before it was legal. And
I think it's there's studies about what it does. The
prefrontal cortex stops developing, and it can have long term effects. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I've also always heard that sort of the younger
you start with any of these substances, the more likely
it is that you become dependent.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean I also started drinking pretty young. Fourteen, and yeah,
seemed normal to me freshman in high school. And I
was a young young freshman, so and I definitely think that,
you know, I was much older. I was already sober
when I found out that blacking out because of alcohol
is not normal.
Speaker 2: Like I just thought, that's just what happens.
Speaker 1: It's it's chemistry, right, like alcohol, your brain, like memories erased.
Speaker 2: I did not think anything of it.
Speaker 1: I was a pretty regular blackout drinker, like where I
just like, no clue what happened the night before, have
to piece it together, call a friend, what did I do?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: And I didn't know that was your friend's look after you.
Speaker 2: I yeah, I guess.
Speaker 1: So I felt like we were all kind of doing that.
But I was always surprised when my friends remembered. I
don't think I ever did anything crazy when I was drunk.
So it wasn't like it wasn't like they were like,
oh my god, Stephanie, you were dancing on the bar,
you took off all your clothes. It wasn't like that.
It was like I was still acting like me. So
I don't think anybody thought, oh God, there's Stephanie blackout
drunk again.
Speaker 3: It's just I wouldn't.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have memories, right, not every time.
Speaker 1: I drank, but but not not that infrequently. I have
like one more question, which is, so you didn't totally
change your personality. You just learned to live without alcohol.
And I'm so curious because I think you and I
have maybe this in common. But how did you deal
without having something to like take the edge off when
you were working in jobs like writing jobs, I know
you did quite a few, like TV writing jobs, producer jobs.
How did you deal with stuff like shitty bosses or
situations or like workplace stuff or just people telling you
what to do and keep your temper under controller not
self sabotage.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well I didn't know he's doing good. I mean
I was fired a few times with jobs because I
had problems with authority, you know. I mean like literally
one job day one the first day of the job,
the head writer said something stupid and I called him
on it, and he fucking he kept me. I mean
it's a thirteen week contract, but he tortured me for
thirteen weeks. And you know, I think it was like
I learned as I went how to deal with that better.
I worked for Allen degenerous, and she was a very domineering, controlling,
angry person and I had to deal with that. Yeah,
so I had to deal with that on a daily basis,
and I think that was humbling for me, maybe in
an unhealthy way. I think I put up with more
shit than I should have, just to almost prove it
to myself that I could. I thought of it as like,
you know, you got a man up, you got to
be a pro, you got to handle this bad book.
Not had bad bosses before, but this was another level
because it was a daily show. And when you have
a daily show, you show up to the blank slate
in the morning and by five o'clock you have written, produced, cast, costume, directed,
you know, an hour of TV. It's a lot of
work and you've got one hundred people that are coordinating.
So it's a lot of pressure for you know, five
days a week.
Speaker 1: So what would you do in the evening? How did
you unwind? How did you how did you knock get
fired from that one?
Speaker 3: You know what's funny is the drive to and from work.
I would listen Howard Stern and I would roll some
phone calls on the way home, and it was kind
of like an hour where I had kids at the time,
so I had an hour before I had to go
back into the insanity of having young kids as well.
And I think I really decompressed driving. I've always liked
to drive, and I and I needed that time. I
don't know what I would have done without that time,
but it helped me. And I've always been good about
reaching out when I'm stressed. Not when I'm sad, but
when I'm stressed. I reach out to friends and I
talk and it lets off a lot of steam.
Speaker 2: It's almost like you're working a program.
Speaker 3: I know, and you know.
Speaker 2: I end you're reading literature.
Speaker 3: Right, I mean for your listeners that are programmed people,
I probably they're probably shaking their heads about how many
things I do wrong. Not I guess your show is
sort of looking at different people's versions of sobriety.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm trying to do here. Yeah, there's no judgment.
I don't think I do. I am a program person.
I do not do it perfectly, and I am not
some like big book thumper that thinks that there are
I have so many friends that I have friends that
don't drink because they just decided one day to never
do it again, and they run marathons, and they different
people do it different ways.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Stand up comedy has been a huge reason why
I don't drink. It's my it's a burst of energy.
It's a burst of mostly good feelings coming in and
positive reinforcement and creativity. It's very vulnerable. You make yourself
vulnerable every night, and I think that probably I can
that's as much to blame for me staying sober all
these years.
Speaker 1: You did that show, the Would You Bang Him? Right
in Hollywood for Bonnie Bonnie and Rich Oh right, right right,
you are so funny. Oh my god, my stomach hurt
laughing at that at the Kuckoo Burrow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, right, right, remember shitting on Rich a lot.
Speaker 1: Ah, You're so funny on stage. Yeah, I'm so glad.
I'm glad you quit drinking if it was going to
interfere with stand.
Speaker 3: Up Yeah, well, thank you.
Speaker 2: Do you still.
Speaker 1: Remember the show that you bombed before you got sober?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah. It was December sixth, nineteen eighty nine, and
it was a show at Nick's Comedy Stop in Boston,
and it was for it was raising money for the
Children's Hospital, and it was a you know, around Christmas time.
So they did a stand up comedy show at noon.
This club that was it was owned by the Mob.
It was all Mob guys running it, and it was
all these guys would come in and they were construction
workers from Southee and union guys. Was a very tough,
blue collar crowd. And so they did a nude time
show and the comedians would go on stage and in
the audience they had strippers and hookers walking around topless
with hats, collecting money. And they called the show Tits
for Tots. And I went up on stage and I
was drunk and I bombed, and I was sitting with
a bunch of guys I knew that were from Sauthie
that I played on a hockey team with. And I
came back to the table and none of them would
look at me, and I felt like the biggest failure.
I was so ashamed. And that was it. That's the
last time I drank.
Speaker 1: How did you make the connection to you being drunk
and not just go well, these people are a tough crowd.
Speaker 3: Because the other comedians were killing.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, wow, okay, Well good for you.
Speaker 2: I'm so glad you left it behind. I thank you
so much for.
Speaker 1: Doing this and being vulnerable and telling me your story
and thank you and where Okay, so tell me all
your things, plug all your stuff.
Speaker 3: Oh well, I have a special at on YouTube that's
called you Know Me that's got like a half a
million views. Now I want to build on that. Yeah.
And then we got fits Dog Radio podcast which I
interviewed guests. I just had Kevin Neil and on last
week I have Joey McIntyre from New Kids on the
Block is on this week. And then and then Sunday
Papers I do with Mike Gibbons, who is my best
friend from college, and we go through the Sunday newspaper Entertainment, Sports, Business,
and we do jokes from each section. Fun and then
Childish with Alison Rose, where we talk about raising kids.
Speaker 2: Love it, love it.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, you guys, do yourself a favor and pick
up look at all of Greg's stuff. Listen to all
of Greg's stuff. He's really funny and obviously a nice guy.
And thank you again.
Speaker 3: Oh thank you, bye bye you m