These days, sobriety is pretty much an established comedic genre, with a whole lot of practitioners, some of whom tend to say things like, “I love who I am. I love the path I’ve taken.” Tim Warner says it. During a decade and a half as a stand-up comic, he has been a frequent guest of the enormously popular Kill Tony podcast, which features a combination of road dogs, showbiz royalty, and complete unknowns (who might even be onstage for the very first time).

Digression: For those unfamiliar with the scene, when an act stirs the audience to mad enthusiasm and leaves it begging for more, that performer is said to have murdered, slaughtered, crushed, annihilated, destroyed, or another synonym for mass murder. This explains the Kill Tony show title, where the contestant’s goal is to impress host Tony Hinchcliffe enough to elevate or even initiate their career.

Anyway, during those approximately 15 years, Warner was an obnoxious, determinedly unglamorous drunk and/or drug addict with plentiful tattoos and an eclectic taste in hair styling. As of spring 2023, he was sleeping in the same car that he delivered food from when awake. At that temporal landmark of a sober half-year, he tended to say things like, “I am (expletive) six months clean today.” Whether drunk, stoned, or sober, he has always cussed a lot.

Over the years, with the public observing his progress and cheering for him, Warner had quit drinking a couple of times before, but this last time was different because he said goodbye to drugs, too.

Recovering addicts tend to pull up a stock anecdote about some accident, tragedy, or revelation that sharply indicated the need to finally stop. For the professional comedian, an origin story behind their sobriety is particularly useful, but Warner points out that, unlike many others, he lacks a single discrete incident that provided impetus or defined the turning point. Also, there is the suspicion that once he got started, the list of accidents, tragedies and revelations would just go on and on. He says:

I’ve had a number of rock bottoms in my life… I was just sick of being a (expletive) loser… It’s always been a struggle and you know what? On some days it still is. I’m alway gonna be an addict, and it’s always going to want to come out.

Warner explains how, for a certain kind of comedian, laughter is a prize they aspire to take from people, like a wallet or briefcase, or their virginity, or the spoils of war. (This might explain why, when bringing a performer onto the stage, the master of ceremonies calls for applause by saying, “Give it up for Johnny Doe” — “Give it up” being the same phraseology used by a mugger or rapist.)

Tim Warner confesses to always having been, in most areas of life, not a giver, but a taker. Still, at some point, it was revealed that basically, even under all the self-absorption, a different drive has always been at work — the desire to give to the audience the gift of laughter. Such an epiphany can be a real game-changer, as in this case. Perhaps the realization that the urge to give had been there all along made the difference, because apparently, when he started to see himself that way, the situation eased up and cleared up.

In “10 Months Sober — I Didn’t Think I’d Make It This Far,” another video made in the same year, Warner took a deep dive into the aspect of gratitude, describing how he concentrates on recognizing not just one, but at least three reasons to appreciate each gift that life presents to him. It is pretty amazing. (To give credit where it is due, it had actually been 10 and a half months, but for an autobiographical work, a round number makes a better title.)

If you give the process a chance, it has a way of prying your head open with a crowbar and inserting thoughts that never visited there before. In English, one of the traditional expressions for the behavior of thinking about something is “entertaining a thought.”

But somehow, we have always taken for granted the proposition that, instead, thoughts are supposed to entertain us. This can help to get rid of that assumption and take responsibility for doing it the other way — by entertaining some thoughts. Open the door to them, invite them in, pour them a glass of lemonade, light the fireplace, and make those new thoughts feel at home.

Remember what Craig Ferguson said,

I don’t have a drinking problem. I have a thinking problem.

That can be cured by evicting old thoughts and clearing off the couch so new thoughts have a place to sit.

Written by Pat Hartman. First published March 27, 2026.

Sources:

“Kill Tony #609,” DeathSquad.TV, May 15, 2023.

“10 Months Sober — I Didn’t Think I’d Make It This Far,” YouTube, September 10, 2023.

Image Copyright: DeathSquad.TV.