Comedian John Mulaney reportedly checks into rehab for addiction issues
John Mulaney #JohnMulaney
Comedian John Mulaney reportedly has checked himself into rehab after relapsing.
The 38-year-old stand-up comic, who has long struggled with his sobriety, is said to have checked into a Pennsylvania treatment facility for a 60-day stint to treat his alcohol and cocaine addictions, according to the New York Post’s Page Six, which was first to report the news Monday.
Reps for Mulaney did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment. TMZ, Vulture and People also confirmed the news.
The “Mulaney” and “Big Mouth” star has been candid about his addictions, sharing stories about alcohol and drug abuse and joking in his stand-up routines about why he doesn’t drink. Mulaney has said he started drinking at age 13 and later began taking prescription and illegal drugs. He began his journey to sobriety at 23 just by flipping a switch and without going into treatment, he told Esquire in 2019.
“I drank for attention,” he told the mag. “I was really outgoing, and then at 12, I wasn’t. I didn’t know how to act. And then I was drinking, and I was hilarious again. … 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?’”
In October, the two-time Emmy winner returned to his Studio 8H stomping grounds to host “Saturday Night Live” right before the presidential election. But a poorly worded joke about the ages of Donald Trump and Joe Biden drew criticism that he acknowledged.
“I should have said I very much want one [candidate] to win over the other, and there will be improvements if one wins,” he told Jimmy Kimmel earlier this month. “I deserved backlash. I flat-out just forgot to do it. I ran the joke in a field in Connecticut and was like, ‘All right, let’s rock and roll.’ I never was like, ‘Hey, don’t you mean that one guy is worse than the other?’ And I forgot to make the joke good.”
Mulaney recently joined NBC’s “Late Night With Seth Meyers” as a staff writer and performer, guest starring on the show too. He and Meyers previously worked together when Meyers was a head writer for “SNL.” He told Kimmel that his psychiatrist suggested the new gig because Mulaney needed structure.
“I cannot stress enough how grateful I am for the job,” Mulaney said. “Rather than [Seth Meyers] saying to me, ‘John, you’re clearly going through something, but your jokes are terrible,’ he’s given me a couple segments to come on and do what I wrote, and those have been really, really fun.”
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.