Content Warning: This article contains discussion of drug abuse.
John Mulaney has talked openly about his past addiction to alcohol, cocaine, and prescription drugs. And after relapsing in 2020, the comedian entered a rehab facility for two months.
The rehab stint came after John’s loved ones staged an intervention during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the past, John has said he was “mad” at his friends for staging the intervention, which was attended by a ton of high-profile comic friends, but he later understood how necessary it was. “I didn’t want an intervention,” he told Seth Meyers in 2021. “At that moment in time, I wanted to continue using drugs. Sitting here tonight, I’m so grateful to you and to everyone there for saving my life, OK? That night, I was not grateful.”
A number of well-known folks were also in attendance at the now-infamous intervention, and among them was Nick Kroll. Now, while recently appearing on the Armchair Expert podcast with Dax Shepard, Nick gave his recollection of events, both before and after the intervention took place.
“It was so scary and brutal to go through,” Nick recalled. “He was in New York. I was in LA. It was at the height of the pandemic. So it was incredibly stressful to be in the midst of that, trying to literally coordinate and produce an intervention, bringing a bunch of people together — friends from college, other close friends… John was running around New York City like a true madman. And I was so deeply scared that he was gonna die.”
John was lured into the intervention under the belief that he was going for dinner with a friend from college. Just days before it took place, Nick said he had an emotional phone conversation with John, during which he expressed concerns for his life. “I just sat on the ground, on the phone with him, both of us crying,” Nick remembered. “I said, ‘I’m so scared you’re going to die.’ And I could feel him feeling the same way, but also like — ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah…Anyway, I gotta go. I’m at a new Airbnb.’”
John went to rehab straight from the intervention, although Nick said that it still took a while for them to smooth things over as his friend processed the emotions of the whole thing. “When he started doing stand-up again, and all of it was about the intervention, he was still pretty fucking pissed,” Nick remembered. “He came back clean, but he was mad at us. And I was like, ‘Oh…I don’t know if I love that joke about me.’”
Interestingly, Nick noted that, while we often hear about these scenarios from the perspective of the person who is facing the addiction, it’s less common to hear “from the folks who are terrified during these things.” “Addicts talk about their experiences, often in brilliant, stand-up-ready ways. But there are also people in their lives who are just trying to keep them alive. That’s part of the story, too,” he said.
If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, you can call SAMHSA’s National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357) and find more resources here.
