John Mulaney checks into rehab after relapsing, here's when his struggle with addiction started
As per reports on Monday, December 21, actor and comic John Mulaney has checked into rehab. The 38-year-old former ‘Saturday Night Live’ writer is reportedly seeking treatment after relapsing following a decades-long battle with addiction.
The source, who tipped Page Six about him checking into rehab this past weekend, said, “John’s friends and family are happy that he’s finally getting some help and focusing on his health. His fans know he’s struggled in the past with sobriety, he has talked about it openly. Unfortunately, he has struggled again during the pandemic.”
History of addiction
In the 2012 stand-up comedy special ‘John Mulaney: New in Town’, the comic had joked: “I don’t drink. I used to drink, then I drank too much and I had to stop. That surprises a lot of audiences because I don’t look like someone who used to do anything.”
Mulaney has long struggled with addiction. He started drinking at the age of 13. He spent the entirety of his teens and the early part of his twenties as an addict, often spiraling out of control. Last year, in a cover story for Esquire magazine, Mulaney opened up about his history of addiction.
“I drank for attention,” he told the magazine. “I was really outgoing, and then at twelve, I wasn’t. I didn’t know how to act. And then I was drinking, and I was hilarious again.”
Narcotics was the next step. “I never liked smoking pot. Then I tried cocaine, and I loved it. I wasn’t a good athlete, so maybe it was some young male thing of ‘This is the physical feat I can do. Three Vicodin and a tequila and I’m still standing. Who’s the athlete now?’” he said. When Mulaney was a teenager, his parents sent him to a psychiatrist, who told him that he was one part nice kid, one part “gorilla that wants to kill the other half.”
Recovery before relapse
Mulaney first became sober at the age of 23 without the help of a treatment program. In August 2005, he said that he “finally” stopped doing coke, and the following month he gave up alcohol.
“I went on a bender that weekend that was just, like, fading in and out of a movie,” he told Esquire magazine. “It was just crazy. A weekend that was... there were... I’m never going to tell you. That’s mine. I didn’t kill anyone or assault anyone. But yeah, I was like, You’re f***ing out of control. And I thought to myself, I don’t like this guy anymore. I’m not rooting for him.” He was able to “flip a switch”, he said about going sober cold turkey. That was the beginning of his sobriety.
After cleaning up his act, he has also tried to help ‘Saturday Night Live’ star Pete Davidson, who has discussed his various substance use and mental health struggles in the past. He explained to Davidson, “You can have a life in comedy that is not insane -- a sober, domestic life.”