A way out is possible, they say to the addict or the alcoholic. These are bold, necessary stories for many reasons, not least among them their role as salvation templates. Zendaya’s deadpan Rue Bennett sprinting through a gauntlet of mental health crises and addiction issues before Euphoria’s first title card even hits. Don Draper’s newly sober, bizarre epiphany at the end of Mad Men that soft drinks can unite the world. Denzel Washington’s Whip Whitaker confessing to his alcoholism at a federal testimony in Flight. The triumph of Ewan McGregor’s Mark Renton “choosing life” in Trainspotting. I’ve watched, read, and found solace in volumes of popular chronicles of people getting sober. How when he looks in a mirror, he sees a person whose life was saved by sobriety, but also a person who almost ended that life.Īs an alcoholic eight years into my own day-by-day recovery, I found it thrilling.
How he’s grateful for the star-studded group that led his intervention, but how he also still kinda hates them for it. What’s fascinating isn’t the clear hook of the bit: How does nobody recognize me? It’s the question Mulaney doesn’t ask, and it’s one that Baby J seems to pose at large: “Now that I’m sober, what if I don’t recognize me?” It’s a bleak mission statement, and joke after joke, he digs deeper into it and the messy contradictions of his new, sober life. At a painfully intimate point (“Please don’t repeat this,” he tells a sold-out crowd), Mulaney confesses to leaving a newspaper out in a common area, conspicuously open to a news story about his relapse, quietly begging to be seen. The bit is eight minutes long, kaleidoscopic, and covers a lot: the self-delusion of fame, Pete Davidson’s phone habits, and the absurd knowledge that while half of Twitter is busy chronicling your epic fall, you’re in a Pennsylvania recovery facility, being treated exactly like what you are-an everyday addict. It follows the first weeks of Mulaney’s highly publicized 2021 stint in rehab in, during which he realizes that the staff and everyone alongside him, sharing his recovery journey … have absolutely no clue who he is. There’s a joke in comedian John Mulaney’s recent stand-up special, Baby J, I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.
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