John Mulaney, Matthew Perry. Getty Images (2)
John Mulaney found some similarities between his own substance abuse issues and those of the late Matthew Perry.
“Addiction is just a disaster. Life is like a wobbly table at a restaurant and you pile all this s–t on it, and it gets wobblier and wobblier and more unstable,” Mulaney, 41, told Variety during a Monday, November 27, interview. “Then drugs just kick the f–king legs out from under the table.”
Mulaney, who reflected on the effect Perry’s memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, had on him, shared that while he didn’t know Perry personally, he really related to the actor’s struggles. (Perry died at his Los Angeles home after an apparent drowning on October 28. He was 54.)
“I really identified with his story. I’m thinking about him a lot,” the Big Mouth star told the outlet.
Similar to Perry, Mulaney has been candid about his journey to get sober. In September 2019, Mulaney shared that he started drinking at age 13, and later started using cocaine and other prescription drugs.
“I drank for attention. I was really outgoing, and then at 12, I wasn’t,” he told Esquire at the time. “I didn’t know how to act. And then I was drinking, and I was hilarious again. 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?’”
By age 23, Mulaney decided that he wanted to change his life after a “crazy” weekend.
“I went on a bender that weekend that was just, like, fading in and out of a movie,” he explained to Esquire. “It was just crazy. I didn’t kill anyone or assault anyone. But yeah, I was like, ‘You’re f–king out of control.’ And I thought to myself, ‘I don’t like this guy anymore. I’m not rooting for him.’”
After 20 years of sobriety, Mulaney relapsed and sought treatment for alcoholism and cocaine addiction in December 2020.
“I remember I walked into my intervention. I had just been to my drug dealer’s apartment and I finally got the right balance,” the former Saturday Night Live writer recalled during an April appearance on the “This Past Weekend with Theo Von” podcast. “One pocket all coke. One pocket all Xanax and I was like ‘I have done it. I reached equilibrium.’”
When he went back to his house and found a “bunch of people” waiting for him, Mulaney insisted that he “hadn’t used drugs” in “several days.”
In October, Mulaney said that he was a “happy person” after celebrating nearly three years of sobriety after his relapse in 2020.
The perils of fame: struggling with painful pasts, overnight success and other demons, countless A-listers — from former child stars like Lindsay Lohan to Oscar winners like Robert Downey Jr. — have sought help at rehab. Click through to see more celebs who’ve gone to rehab
“I have, for some reason, set up various obstacles in my own way that have left me sometimes … pretty disoriented and pretty unhappy,” he shared during an appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. “But I am, at my core, a happy person. And it’s OK for me to protect that by living the life I want to live. I don’t want to be the reason [my life] gets complicated.”
If you or anyone you know is facing substance abuse issues, call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s National Helpline at 1-800-662-4357 for free and confidential information 24/7.
