Looking For A Saint In A Room Full of Sinners: On Addiction & John Mulaney

My senior year of college I was hospitalized, twice in January of 2014, within three weeks of each other. Brought to the emergency room by roommates, following parties at our house. 

I remember laying in the carpeted hallway outside the bathroom, starting at seven in the morning. Dave, Jackie, and I lived upstairs. Dave and Jackie would tip toe over my body throughout the day. They brought me pillows and blankets and I’d vomit in the toilet, sleep, watched whatever was playing on the laptop propped up beside me, occasionally even attempted to sip water or gatorade. Finally, come dusk, someone suggested that maybe I should go to the emergency room. There I’d get an IV for fluids and a stern talking to.

A few weeks later I was being woken up by roommate Peter. Peter and I worked at the same bagel shop, and with a phone in his hand Peter asked, “Devin, are you okay? It’s our boss, you didn’t show up to work this morning.” And sure enough, I didn’t. I was covered in vomit. I looked at Peter and shook my head, “I can’t go to work like this.” I don’t remember how that hungover played out, but I do remember the ER doctor shaking his head. “Well, the only thing I can tell you is to take it easy, okay?” 

The next day I signed a contract with my boss that if I showed up late again I was fired. I had already gone home in the middle of shifts, vomiting in the bathroom or even a trash can, because the smell of the cream cheese made my inside’s whirl. I spent the next three or so months not drinking, and instead heavily supplemented my drinking by smoking weed. It worked alright. I graduated. I made my mom proud. And then I came back to alcohol, a few months off teaching me my lesson of moderation. 

These hospitalizations were just two of the worst hangovers in those four years. Others would bring me into class, with my head on the desk by the end of attendance. Even my sweet therapist, a Polish woman named Mira, once said to me, “I think you drink too much.”

My Jesuit college was full of partying, even though I chose it self-righteously and pompously over the state schools with fraternities and sororities. I’d done my fair share of partying in high school, so for the first couple months of college, I stuck to my guns but by October I was begging to be let into Halloween parties, vodka slicked mouth and glitter coated eyelids. 

I even lived on the “sober living” dorm floor. We had to apply to live there. My friends and I would go to the all freshman dorm next door like it was some sort of dungeon of depravity. Kids puking in the dorm showers. Making out in the stairwells. Literal shit rubbed into the carpet. Running through the admin building higher than a kite, giggling as I knocked on the door of a pitch black classroom - where I took English 105. Even sitting outside the the student chapel, my legs bare and a boy’s hand coiled around my ankle.

I won the Ke$ha costume contest y’all. This really should be all the context you need. Me, willingly following the boy who played Romeo back to his dorm room like some sort of trophy. The next morning he’d crawl out of his bunk, crack open a 4Loko and offered me a sip. His roommates, he, and I played Super Smash Brothers until our stomachs had settled and then I ate breakfast with them in the dining hall. Truly the most polite and strangest morning after of my college days.

I took pride in the parties I got invited to as a freshman, and more pride bringing the wide-eyed eighteen year olds into my home as an upperclassman and handing them a brimming red cup poured from the infamous Gatorade Cooler. A rickety bookcase in our unfinished basement housed all the empty handle bottles like trophies. 

Once, a boyfriend and I fought late at night after a party we threw at his house. He screamed about wanting to die. He sobbed naked in the bathtub. And so, my naked ass walked down the stairs and out of the house and into the street. Thankfully, his roommate saw this happen and chased me down with a blanket and corralled me back inside. The next morning, my boyfriend and I only had faint recollections of our squabble but his roommate attempted to delicately piece it together for us.

I say all this to tell you that quitting drinking, even for those few months, had been a long time coming. I had already seen John Mulaney’s New In Town on Netflix. I was quoting the Ice-T bit to my friend Nick all the time. And so I knew people could get sober. He’s got a joke that goes, "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."

But that’s the thing. I drank because I wanted to look like the person who did everything. I drank because I was desperate to well-liked, lustful for attention, and inside my own skin I felt like awkward or silly or stupid. I drank myself into a characterization of Woman. Writhing, dancing, tequila, whiskey, vodka, slutty, funny, loud, adventurous. In reality, I peed in my backyard and alleys, ate a lot of salty food, yelled at my friends, cried over boys, and fucked a lot of people within the very murky gray area of “consent.”  But if you stick around we’ll have plenty of time to discuss more about how my drinking only got worse. 

I want to focus on John. My love for John Mulanely is deep and ridiculous. I once brought a Tinder date home post-college and put on New In Town and ten minutes in “trying his best” this dude is sucking my nipple before even kissing me and I’m in my mother’s house and I am regretting bringing this fireman here but he’ll spend the night and I’ll drive him forty five minutes home at dawn.
There is a mortifying moment too, when last year, I was corrected by somebody on how many years John Mulanely had worked for SNL. I’d rattled off that I’d love a comedy career like his - and who wouldn’t. SNL, stand up, writing, and producing. A big fan or not, I gotta be honest I’ve personally never been one to memorize a Wikipedia page. But I’m a Taurus, so maybe I’m just used to being confident and wrong. 

I write this post in part reverence, one part thank you, and of course, one part attempting to make meaning out of a pain I do not yet understand. 

Last week, John Mulaney’s relapse was paraded across Twitter. A source leaking the information that he was going to rehab for alcohol and cocaine use. Sober since 2005, fifteen years, I gotta say, I am glad to know that he got those fifteen years, and I’m glad that he’s getting the help that he needs. It has to fucking suck, in a way I hope to never experience, for the addict that is famous. The attention, the scrutiny, the gossip. “Is he getting divorce?! His wife deleted her instagram! Look at this interview he did!”

And then of course, hundreds of heartfelt and well-meaning messages of support, even amongst the shithead jokes about his relapse, multitudes of people were wishing John Mulaney, beloved comedian and comedy writer and boyman in a nice tuxedo with the funny words, a “swift” recovery.
I cried reading the news. I cried because relapse so frequently feels inevitable in the mind of an addict. It feels like the only sure thing I know - that if I do not actively try to do everything I can to not drink or use drugs - that it will happen.

I cringed even writing this. I want to tell you, friends and loved ones and strangers, that a little over 13 months sober that I feel confident when I wake up in the morning that I will not drink. But I don’t. I’m 13 months sober and still find myself weak to the physical and mental cravings. (I’m reading a WILDLY helpful book to understand this, Never Enough by Judith Grisel. It lays out the neuroscience of addiction and is offering some much sought after insight to the how and why of my addict brain.)

I got so upset seeing John Mulaney’s relapse because it felt like seeing my future play out. The story writes itself. And also because his material holds such a dear spot in my already grieving heart. I’d listen to New In Town every few months on Spotify. I’d watch the special after a particularly heinous day. And then, once, I finally showed up to a comedy open mic with jokes I had written. I had a crush on a guy there and showed up to try to woo him. And you know how this plays out, I did. And a week into our courting, I’m at his house on his bed, talking about music and comedy, and we lay side by side and listen to the New In Town album, stopping occasionally to riff and add tags and talk about our favorite moments. “You know, like a LIAR.” And then this guy and I keep dating and we drink a lot of whiskey and we do just enough cocaine and then we get married and then the drinking and the coke are more than I can keep up and then there are suicide attempts. Hospitals. Emergency rooms. Blood alcohol levels. Inpatient. Rehab. Outpatient. Recycling bin full of wine bottles. Beer cans in the night stand. This is still somehow never the worst of it. John Mulanely is someone I loved because I felt as if I shared him with someone I loved. Even the man I loved after I left Tony loved John Mulanely. This association feels intrinsic. If you’re gonna love me, you’ve gotta love John Mulanely. Or rather, if you love John Mulanely, fuck’s sake I’m probably going to love you. Quack, quack.

And we sober comics, or want-to-be comics, or we’ve-been-paid-but-don’t-headline comics, we are sitting at home these days, bored. Missing open mics but not missing the bars they were in. Or how funny our friends look with a PBR in their hand. But then again, it was a comic who once told me, deep into my last relapse and a week before I quit drinking again, “I don’t shots anymore. I don’t want a drinking problem.” 

A few months ago, I was a little manic and swiping, found myself agreeing to a date in a pandemic. I picked him up at his house. (Red flag.) We went to a fucking CASINO. (Red flag.) We ate a nice dinner paid for by his rewards points. (Red flag.) We played craps for four hours. (Very fun.) We smoked cigarettes in a large outside tent. (A pandemic finally eradicating smoking from inside casinos may make this the last time I go to a casino.) And then I drove him home.

I made out with a man who had Budweiser cans on his bookshelves. And an actual dirty burnt cookie sheet on the ground beside his bed. I remember openly and loudly mocking him, “You live here? This is your ROOM.” I sucked his dick and left. I described it as a nice night. I’d see him a few more times. The sex was fine - he ate my pussy and truly said it had been the first time he’d done it in YEARS (RED FLAG) and then finally I sat him down to watch New in Town. He’d never seen it. Within minutes, I am not exaggerating, this fucker is asleep. But by the next morning the pieces were coming together. He was an addict. An alcoholic active in his addiction. I’ve got a type y’all. Since I attempted to gracefully duck out of that sinkhole that was so very clearly marked with MILES of caution tape, I have downloaded and deleted a myriad of dating apps three times, until finally I deleted them for what I hope is the last time. 

Not because I found someone, got the perfect match, somebody that knows Mulanely line by line, but because I’m tired of searching for someone to fucking love me when most days it is a labor to love myself. I watched the support for John Mulanely pour out for folks and instantly am in a half-haze daydream what my friends will text each other, if I end up back in an institution, maybe next time it’ll be rehab. Addiction is so frequently a game of escalation. It is also this fucking demon goat voice, something less handsome than Stanley Tucci but with the same amount of charisma, whispering in your god damn ear, “Burn it down.” 

I stand in the grocery store buying eggnog, worried my subconscious would drag my feet to the whiskey. I see the white wine listed in the risotto recipe and my body tenses. I watch a teen drama with more bumps of cocaine than my nightmares allow me. I stay sober through the holidays, during a pandemic, while living alone. I call my friends. I eat. I pet my dumb little dog and fret over her sensitive stomach.  I turn on a John Mulanely special again. Watch this saltine-looking man tell us a good story. I hope John Mulanely’s treatment is successful, as one of my idols becomes less of a monument and more of a mirror.