The year was 1979. I was onstage at my first Yuk Yuk’s, which had opened a year before, and something was amiss. I was sweating through my jacket; I could hardly put a coherent sentence together; my mind could not keep up with my mouth; or maybe it was the other way around. The audience looked like monstrous vipers, and I was the furthest thing from funny.
Of course; I had snorted six long lines of cocaine just before I stepped onstage.
Now, the conventional narrative would reveal that I had an addiction problem, but this was not the case. Before you finish typing that letter to the editor, let it be known that I was conducting an experiment to see what effect drugs might have upon my performance. The next week I would try performing high on pot, a few weeks later on a handful of uppers, and later drunk.
My findings were that none of the intoxicants helped my performance. I became distracted, my timing was shot, and the voices in my head drowned out the reaction of the crowd.
I rarely used drugs offstage, so why would I do so onstage? I was lured by the romantic notion that a derangement of the senses would lead to a deeper connection with my craft. It might have worked for some, but not for me.
Not so for a lot of legendary comics. Pryor, Williams, Carlin all performed whacked out of their minds. I saw Sam Kinison put a needle in his arm just before going onstage.
The comedy business is populated by comics fuelled by booze and pharmaceuticals. But lately, I’ve noticed that a number of local comics have embraced a new sobriety, with a marked change in their act and career.
Richard Lett is a Canadian comedy pioneer from Vancouver who settled in Toronto a decade ago. He’s been clean and sober for seven years but only after hitting rock bottom.
“I didn’t know if I would be able to do standup comedy again, since my comedy seemed so tightly connected to drinking,” he notes. But Lett bounced back with the one-man show Sober But Never Clean that fused standup, poetry and music.
Marito Lopez is a firecracker of a standup who stole the show last year at Massey Hall’s New Year’s Eve concert. But the first time I saw him, he had to be removed from my club for kissing random strangers in the audience. Turns out he was on ecstacy. Now he’s the clearest mind in the room.
“When I was high, I would self-destruct on and off stage,” he explains. “I wasn’t able to tell the fake from the real or control my emotions.”
The comedy business is never easy. Alex Wood is a Toronto comic who has worked closely with Spencer Rice of Kenny vs. Spenny fame. He’s been drug-free for two years and feels it has turned his life around.
“I’ve paid off my credit card debt, set up my own website, finally got professional head shots, purchased a video camera and a new laptop. My goal of performing in New York City will be a reality this May instead of a hungover promise of next year.”
But Wood has gone a step further. This year, he intends to eliminate 12 of his other vices , including caffeine, dairy, social media and gossip.
“My favourite addiction has always been comedy,” he says.
