We’re Sober, Not Boring

Back in 2015, almost a solid decade ago, Kristee Ono had been a performing comedian for seven years, two of them sober. Journalist Katie MacBride characterized Ono as one of many comedians who “are using their demons not just for laughs, but also to shed a little light on their very personal experiences of addiction and day-to-day recovery.” Ono expressed a welcome sensation of comfort in being more present in her own self, and additional happiness about her increasing opportunities to get up on stage and reflect aloud on both substance abuse and mental health issues.
Why? Because miserable struggling people need to know there are alternatives to self-destruction. To bring these formerly shunned topics into the world of public hilarity is a bold but logical move, and most mental health professionals are on board with the notion that dark closets are unhealthful places.
The ability to entertain others is one of the gifts we forget to be thankful for. In rough times, to entertain people is a form of service to humankind. This is a topic for another day, but a convincing argument could be made that the most enduring recoveries from addiction are accomplished among the people who engage in service.
Many standup comedians will affirm that authenticity is essential. This isn’t the movies, where looks generally count the most. What an audience wants to hear from the stage is truth. The audience craves the gut-level certainty that honesty is the key that unlocks this particular door in life.
This is why Ono will tell the people how she “went cold turkey after a solo cocaine bender.“
In 2016 she said to interviewer Chris O’Connell something reminiscent of confessions from other recovering addicts in the standup comedy world, who painfully recall their lack of professionalism, and in particular the effects of their behavior on their fellow comics:
I’ve been coked out too much, completely insane, to the point where I shouldn’t have been performing. There have been smaller bar shows where I was pulled as a host because I was too drunk… They would sometimes put me on earlier in a show because it was a risk if I went on too late.
Addicts don’t care if they mess up everybody’s schedule. In fact, they can convince themselves that disrupting the plan is a gesture of spontaneity and liberation for which their victims should be grateful. On the contrary, it can really make things awful for the others on the bill. Then they are nervous or angry and, to get over it, take a drink or whatever, and the curse it puts on everyone’s evening can grow exponentially.
For example, in the entire profession, only a handful of megastars can get away with barging into a show unannounced and holding the stage for a couple of hours. It’s the behavior of someone with either a huge ego or an addiction or both. In special cases, the move is doable, because management has several interested parties to appease. Sometimes with one of these oafish attention-hogging wannabe legends, even other comics will pretend to have so much respect that they don’t even mind. But they do.
Back to Kristee Ono. Despite a 2009 diagnosis of bipolar disorder, she still partook of drugs and alcohol until 2012. In 2015, the bipolar diagnosis was revoked, causing her to remark sardonically “I’m only depressed now.” She has also said, “My mental health improved greatly with sobriety… Go figure…”
Among other accomplishments, Ono has hosted a weekly standup night known as the Mermaid Show. Heavier on the mental health side, she co-produced the web series Terror Management Theory.
She credits sobriety for giving her “time and energy to explore new spaces she used to fill with illicit substances and recovering from partaking in those substances.” This suggests once more that a wise choice of displacement activity can make a profound difference. She defined the substance-driven chapter of her life as “fun and terrible, and something that is definitely closed.”
“If there’s a lack of creativity, if you think that happens, it’s not true,” Ono says. “It’s giving yourself the space to be 100% yourself and not augmented by drugs or alcohol. It provides a unique perspective experiencing everything for real. Creativity is not in a bottle.”
Sources:
“Five Sober Comedians You Should Know,” KatieMacBride.com, May 29, 2015.
“Staying Sober in the Booze-Fueled Comedy World,” Vulture.com, August 4, 2016.
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