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Alcoholism & Comedy
"I thought I needed a double vodka to be funny." - Fiona O'Loughlin QuoteComedy and alcoholism a likely mix
- by Tracey Spicer
Let's raise a glass to comedian Fiona O'Loughlin for coming out as an alcoholic.
Since the 5th century BC, her fellow comedians have been looking to the bottom of the bottle for their best material.
At the ancient Greek comedy festivals - in honour of Bacchus, the god of wine - Aristophanes performed the world's first bum joke, a fine tradition continued more recently by Monty Python's Incontinentia Buttocks.
The symbiotic relationship between comedy and grog goes from the ancient time of Homer to the modern time of - well - Homer.
Simpson, that is.
"To alcohol - the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems," the wise philosopher once said.
O'Loughlin, who appears to take these words seriously, describes herself as "the female Homer Simpson".
The mother-of-five's schtick revolves around drinking and bad parenting.
"I left a baby at Liquorland," she says. "I went back for him eventually."
The 45-year-old started drinking heavily seven years ago to calm her nerves before stand-up routines.
It's a common coping mechanism. After all, what could be more terrifying than getting up on stage and trying to make people laugh?
(Well - except for a giant, hairy, venomous spider landing directly on your face, but I digress.)
The most famous alcoholic comedian was Dean Martin. Except, he wasn't.
Despite his snappy, slurred, remarks and vanity licence plates reading DRUNKY, he was always the first of the Rat Pack to call it a night.
Shirley MacLaine, in her autobiography, confirmed that Martin was sipping apple juice, not whiskey, for most of his time onstage. The drinky Dean was a comedy routine.
The same can't be said for Robin Williams, whose battles with alcohol and drugs are legendary.
After two decades of sobriety, he went into rehab in 2007 after drinking during the filming of The Big White (terrible film, by the way. Almost drove me to drink).
The comedy genius, who once spoke of his hangovers as being "like the Elephant Man walking through a car wash", now has a new punch line.
"The hardest thing of all is admitting that I have a problem," he said at a comedy awards ceremony sponsored, ironically, by a vodka company.
Another recovering alcoholic, US comedian Dennis Leary, draws the line at crack, for a sensible enough reason.
"I would never do a drug named after a part of my own arse, okay?" he drawls.
That didn't stop Greg Fleet, the Aussie comedian and former Neighbours star who finally went into rehab after 23 years of heroin and alcohol addiction.
"I'd be walking down the street, flat broke and at my lowest ebb and people would wave and say 'Mate, you're a legend'. Meanwhile, I'm looking for cigarettes in the gutter," he says.
It's easy to blame undiagnosed depression or a general inability to cope for these ongoing battles with the booze.
But the real reasons are more complex, according to a recent dissertation by a doctor of psychology at Yale University.
In The Tears of a Clown, Scott Barry Kaufman PhD reveals that humour in professional comedians serves as a coping mechanism in dealing with their early family experiences. Many, he says, come from "distant" families and suffer low self-esteem.
"This motivates the comic to make people laugh in order to gain their acceptance, and to reveal the absurdity of life to make sense of their own lives," Kaufman writes. (After reading this, my head hurt, so I had to go and get a drink.)
A classic example of Kaufman's theory is Billy Connolly, who turned to the bottle to erase memories of being sexually abused by his father.
Fiona O'Loughlin admits to using her dysfunctional family as material, describing her parents as "a pair of pissheads" and her brother as an "obsessive compulsive".
Nobody knows whether O'Loughlin's alcoholism stems from her upbringing, the stress of child-rearing or other factors (God knows, if I had five kids I'd be hitting the bottle too).
But the first step in any recovery is acknowledging the addiction.
"I hope it will help me cope with it. I won't be able to fool myself any more," she said, after her embarrassing onstage collapse last week.
As a consequence, she may become funnier. Alcohol's role as "conversational KY Jelly" doesn't guarantee an orgasmic performance.
Brendon Burns, a Perth-born comedian who's big in the UK, is receiving rave reviews since he decided to enter rehab.
At his lowest point, he was drinking in the morning then taking cocaine at night, waking up covered in his own excrement.
There are sites that promote performers who've confronted their demons; sharing laughter after the pain.
In the words of UK funnyman Dean Burnett, "People addicted to comedy laugh a lot, whereas alcoholics rarely ever do."
- via The Daily Telegraph (www.telegraph.co.uk)
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Alcohol or Drug Abuse Got You Down?
Keep your chin up! Free help is available. See here:
AA: Help with Alcoholism
NA: Help with Drug Abuse
Al-Anon: For Family & Friends of alcoholics
Nar-Anon: Family & Friends of drug addicts
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