I’m not a big fan of Artie Lange’s. Mostly because what I’ve seen and heard is him blaming others for all that’s happened to him. Like Blaming Howard Stern for not keeping him on even though he was so stoned he’d fall asleep at the mic. But Page Six spoke with him via telephone and I was interested to hear him out.
“I’m being covered like the Kardashians — I’m like a D-list celebrity and I’m this much of a f—kup on heroin and drugs. I can’t seem to knock it.”
Just before Artie Lange can continue his train of thought, a faint beep cuts into the call.
“That was a dealer that just texted me,” Lange recently told Page Six via phone.
It’s not unusual. Lange’s drug habits landed him four years of probation for possession after he was arrested outside his Hoboken home in March 2017. Later that month, he was arrested for missing a court date. He was twice hospitalized the same year.
“I have to change my number all the time because I’m trying to stay away from [drugs],” he explained. “That affects my career right there — [‘Crashing’ executive producer] Judd Apatow didn’t have my number for two weeks. I have to find a way to balance my life in a way I never have before. I am a rare junkie in that I can afford my lifestyle. If it weren’t for show business, I’d be no different from a guy on the street. This is the first time in a long time that I’ve actually had to act like an adult,” he told us.
In his new book, “Wanna Bet,” the former Howard Stern sidekick details his experiences with compulsive gambling and how the habit led to several others, including his attempts to get audiences to leave during his stand-up shows (often by using homophobic and racial slurs), but none more than his cocaine and heroin addictions.
While listeners grew accustomed to often hearing Lange, 50, slur, the long-troubled comedian spoke with enthusiasm and clarity, which could be because he’s currently on a court-ordered healthier path, which includes treatment in the form of a rehab stint, a Suboxone prescription to ease withdrawal symptoms, and weekly drug tests.
His current vitality comes after years of drug abuse, multiple trips to rehab, a slew of relapses, several other arrests and a failed suicide attempt.
“[The judge] was very fair,” Lange told us. “I’ll be 54 when I’m off probation! Four years. I could go to college. I could get a marketing degree in the time I’ll be on probation. There was a little screw in the back with 50 hours of community service,” he added, noting that he’s performing his hours at a Hoboken senior citizen center.
“My job is to feed them food and try to amuse them,” he said. “I had one guy keep asking me if I was a congressman. I’d go, ‘No, comedian.’ It took half an hour to tell him I’m a comedian.”
“I was doing a podcast in my kitchen and I was late to my own kitchen. That’s all heroin. Heroin f–ks up scheduling. When you do heroin, everything’s fine because you’re not in withdrawal, so you make plans for four days later. But four days later, you’re going through withdrawal and you’re literally green and you can’t get up.”
Lange speaks about his demons with a candor that would take many by surprise, yet honesty remains his trademark.
“I didn’t plan on being here at 50,” he admitted. “I’m more relevant than I thought I’d be at 50 years old. I’m just genuinely surprised to be alive at 50.”