[0:00]It's a great day for America, everybody. Happy President's Day, everyone. Happy President's Day. It's a great day to celebrate this, uh, this great country, and the freedom of speech, for which we are so rightly famous. Because I'm going to talk about something tonight, a little bit different tonight. I'm going to do something a little bit different tonight. I, uh, I want to talk about something tonight that's been bothering me for, for a little, a little while now. Now, you know if you've ever seen this show before, I know that's not everybody, but I know that if you've ever seen this show before, you know that I make fun of people on the show. I make fun of a lot of people on the show. Now, a couple of months ago, uh, Kevin Costner got himself into some kind of bother, and I made fun of him in the monologue. And then, a couple of weeks later, I meet him at this event, and I could tell he was, he was angry at me. I could tell that. But he also, I was talking to him, he's, he's a very polite man and a gentleman, and I could see him in his eyes, I he made a decision to not go after me, just to be polite and nice and stuff, and it and it kind of freaked me out, because it kind of personalized it for me. Up until then, I go, this guy was there with his wife and his kids and stuff, and I was like kinda ragging on him on television, I'm like, oh, I don't know if I feel good about this. And, uh, it was it was the look in his eye that bothered me, and I began to think, at what price am I doing this stuff? And, uh, and I started to think about the effect it was having on real people, and it's been needling at me a little bit ever since. Uh, now, I'm as guilty as any, I'm as guilty as as sin about this. I mean, I I I made fun of the lady astronaut wearing the diapers when she was driving, which that is clearly funny. That is a clearly a funny thing, but at the same time, then you the mug shot comes out and I go, this woman's in trouble. She needs help. And then I'm thinking, I don't know how good I feel about this. Uh, and I need to do stuff that I feel comfortable with. I I want to be able to be funny, but I want to be able to get some sleep. So, and I don't just do this job for the money, I assure you, which is handy, because there ain't much in it, but Now, I remember, I what's happen it's been happening in the press and the media recently, and particularly in the so-called news outlets, I I the the the way the media is looking at the world. I I kind of had similar feelings when I when I used to watch America's funniest home videos. You know, you'd be laughing at the kid falling over, and then you go, wait a minute, put down the damn camera and help your kid. What the hell is wrong with you? And I, and I, and I think we're kind of holding the camp. people are falling apart. People are people are dying. That and Nicole Smith women, she died. Not, it's not a joke. You know, it's it's stops being funny. That, she's got a six week old kid or six month old kid. What the hell is that? You know, and I I and I I'm starting to feel uncomfortable about making fun of these people. And for me comedy should have a certain amount of joy in it. It should be about about us attacking the powerful people, attacking the politicians and the, and the Trumps and the, and the blowhards of the world. Go after them. We shouldn't be attacking the vulnerable people. And I think I I'm going to this is totally a mirror call, but this is just for me. I think my aim's been off a bit recently. I I I want to change it a bit. So tonight, no Britney Spears jokes, and here's why. It's exactly why. Britney Spears. No, no, no, wait, wait, wait, wait. I'm not doing it. Britney, listen, when she was the kind of weekend she had, she was checking in and out of rehab, she was shaving her head, getting tattoos. That's what she was doing this weekend. This Sunday, I was 15 years sober. So I looked at her weekend and I looked at my own weekend, and I thought, you know, I, I'm I'd rather have my weekend. But what she's going through reminds me of what I was doing and an anniversary you start to think about it. It reminds me of where I was 15 years ago, when I was living like that. Now, I'm not saying Britney Spears is an alcoholic. I I don't know if she's an alcoholic or not. I but she clearly needs help. And now, what I do here is I I I speak for myself. There's speculation, there's always speculation if you're on television about somebody's behind it, the corporation, the production people, there's no this is me, all right? It's me, me and you, right? I I I'm trying to be honest with you. I'm not an expert on alcoholism or anything else, but I am an expert on my own story. I was there when it happened. Well, I was present. The the, uh, the tape recorder wasn't running until until February the 18th, 1992. And it made me think about the last Christmas that I had when I was a drinking man. Hopefully the last one as a drinking man. I was in a terrible mess. Uh, I wasn't shaving my head and getting tattoos. I I saved that for later for, I I I got that from my mid-life crisis, but when I get sober, I I was a bit older than Britney. I was 29. And Christmas morning, before I get sober, I I had been in an all night bender. Uh, I woke up in a room above a bar. I'd been in that pub the night before, it was Christmas Eve. I was going to have a drink and then go home. I was in London. I was going to go to Scotland, but, you know, the one thing led to another, I stayed in the room above a pub, you know, and I woke up in Christmas morning, and I was, you know, I was soaked in my own urine and, at least I think it was mine, I can't be certain.
[5:06]I couldn't say with with total honesty that it was mine. I didn't have it tested, is what I'm saying. I hope to this day it was mine. Anyway, I woke up that morning. Now, this is, this is the mind of an alcoholic. I woke up that morning, Christmas morning, and I thought, you know what, I can't do this anymore. I'm going to kill myself today. I'm going to do it today. And what I did was, I thought I I I I made a plan as I'm getting myself together, I thought I'll go down to Tower Bridge in London, which is the one that goes, you know, that one. And I'll swan dive to my death. I don't know how to swan dive, but I, you know, I was going to. And I thought, by show, you know, by doing this, I'll show them. I didn't even know who they were, but I was going to show them. I was desperate. I was desperately confused and desperately twisted and turned upside down by whatever the hell was going on in my head. You know, and on the on the way out, uh, of the bar, you know, Tommy the barman that I'd been drinking with, uh, I I, you know, he was kind of playing around at the bar, getting drinks together at the bar in the morning. Now, he had slept behind the bar, uh, all night. I'm not saying he's an alcoholic, but he slept behind the bar all night. He was an Irish fella, Tommy, and he said to me, where are you going? I didn't want to cause a fuss and say, well, I, you know, I'm going to go to Tower Bridge and swan dive and kill myself. So I said, I'm going home. He said, to Scotland. I said, yeah, he said, well, there's no transport, it's Christmas, you can't get a bus, the planes aren't running, there's you can't go anywhere. I said, just let me go, Tommy, will you? And he said, well, before you go, have a glass of sherry for Christmas morning. And I said, oh, all right, all right. So he poured me the type of glass of sherry that only an alcoholic would pour you that, a Venti Sherry, they would call it in Starbucks. And I, you know, I I had my glass of sherry, and, uh, you know, it one thing led to another and I forgot to kill myself that day. Here's the important point. The alcohol saved my life. I was self-medicating. I'm an alcoholic. I needed alcohol. I needed something. You know, and from that point on, uh, until February the 18th of the following year, uh, it's all a bit foggy, you know, I would wake up and play. I was on a wild bender. I was doing stand-up gigs apparently. I I wish we had tapes of that. I'm sure they were hilarious. Anyway, on the day, I finally decided to stop. I called a friend of mine who had disappeared out of the pub world and gotten sober, you know, there was scuttlebutt about him in the bars. And I called him up and I said, I I I need help. And he said, yeah, I've been expecting this call. And he got me into a rehab, and and it wasn't like the the way the rehab is or portrayed in in the news outlets at the moment, where all the kind of, you know, Lindsay Lohans and fabulous people all getting My roommate in rehab was a 60-year-old, 65-year-old vicar, a priest from the Church of England, who he was getting, he said, yes, well, the thing is, Craig, the paritioners were complaining that all the communion wine was going missing. It's true. He said, and our lady said that there was a hobo sleeping in the church graveyard. I had to pretend to go and look for him, but it was me. And so what happened is, I I I I stuck with it. I was in there. Now there is a myth that goes around, uh, popular culture, I think right now as well, which is that alcoholism can be cured by a 28-stint in rehab. I'm sorry to annoy the censors, but that is horse That is hor That is horse. It is not my experience. For me, there are two types of rehab clinics. There's the good ones that say to you, uh, you know, you've done your 28 days. This is the beginning. You now have a lifetime of vigilance. This is a, this is a chronic condition that you're going to have to manage for the rest deal with the rest of your life. And the bad ones, you know, the bad rehab centers will say, you're good, off you go. You know, the, uh, Reverend Ted Haggard, for example, when he gets out of the rehab and is cured of his gayness, this is clearly an unscrupulous bunch of people running that rehab. The point I'm trying to make to you is this. Now I have been sober 15 years. There is absolutely no way I have a drinking problem. I don't have a drinking problem. I can get one fast, but I don't I don't have a drinking problem. I have a thinking problem. I'm 15 years sober. Last week, right? I find out that Guinness has 125 calories a pint, and I'm without a word of a lie. I'm thinking, maybe I should go on a diet. That's clearly insane. What what Guinness did to me, and I'm thinking, well, it's only 125 calories. What can possibly go wrong? I want to I want to make something clear to you. I'm not advocating temperance. I'm not. I'm not advocating that. I'm saying this is this is for me. You know, if I could drink, I would drink, but I can't. You can't You can't say, you know, to kids, drink responsibly. You can say to me, drink responsibly, and I'll say, I'll try. But I can't. Certain types of people can't drink. I'm one of them. I threw in the towel with alcoholism 15 years ago, and I've been trying for the last 15 years to get little bits of it back. And it looks to me a little bit that Britney Spears has a similar problem going on with alcohol. This woman has two kids. She's 25 years old. She's a baby herself. She's a baby. You know, and the thing is, you can embarrass somebody to death. It's embarrassing to admit you're an alcoholic. It's embarrassing to wake up in your pee or someone else's pee, it doesn't really matter. It's embarrassing. Now, I'm not absolving this women of her behavior. I'm not. You have to be responsible for your actions, sick or well. You have to be responsible for your actions. You just have to be. All of us are accountable. You have to be. If you have, if God forbid you have a kidney problem, you do go into dialysis. It's your responsibility to somehow get yourself to dialysis. It's your responsibility to deal with the condition that you have in whatever way you can. Now, all of us in America, and and in Scotland, and and anywhere I've ever been in my life, everybody knows an alcoholic. They're either they've worked for one, or they have one work for them, they have a parent, or a sibling, or a child, everybody. There's not one of us that does a friend, God forbid some some of you poor people are married to them. You know what it's like. Now I have found this. You can't beat it with money. If you could beat this wrap with money, rich people wouldn't die. You can't. For me, only for me, and I only speak for myself. I've got to stress this to you. I have found that the only way I could deal with it is find other people who had similar experiences and talk to them. It doesn't cost anything. It doesn't cost a thing. And they're very, very easy to find. They're very near the front of the telephone book. Good luck.
