John Mulaney has left rehab to continue his recovery at home

Following a 60-day stay at a rehabilitation centre that began in December, comedian John Mulaney has completed his program and returned home to continue his sobriety work. Mulaney checked himself into a facility so that he could deal with his ongoing struggle with drug and alcohol abuse, a problem he says he’s faced since he was a teenager.

“I drank for attention,” he told Esquire in an interview from 2019. “I was really outgoing, and then at 12, I wasn’t. I didn’t know how to act. And then I was drinking, and I was hilarious again.” Mulaney progressed from drinking to experimenting with drugs, eschewing marijuana for harsher chemicals. “I never liked smoking pot,” he said. “Then I tried cocaine, and I loved it. I wasn’t a good athlete, so maybe it was some young male thing of ‘this is the physical feat I can do.’ Three Vicodin and a tequila and I’m still standing. Who’s the athlete now?”

The 38-year-old says that, after a particular inebriated incident, he realized he didn’t like the person he’d become and for a time, he quit both drugs and alcohol. “I went on a bender that weekend that was just, like, fading in and out of a movie. It was just crazy... I didn’t kill anyone or assault anyone,” he said, “But yeah, I was like,’ You’re f#%*ing out of control.’ And I thought to myself, ‘I don’t like this guy anymore. I’m not rooting for him.’”

The first time Mulaney tried sobriety, he did it without the support of a rehab program. In 2020, he realized he needed one in addition to willpower and the support of his friends and family. "He relies on the same small circle of friends he's had for 20 years," a source told People when Mulaney initially entered his program back in late December. 

Before rehab, Mulaney had taken on a writing job with Seth Meyers’ show, saying that the lack of structure in his pandemic-era life was wreaking havoc on his mental health. The move was supported by his psychiatrist. Mulaney told Jimmy Kimmell, “She said to me, ‘Without external structure, I don’t have any confidence in you thriving’ … and she would know, because I told her everything in my brain."

Page Six’s source says that, as an outpatient, the former Saturday Night Live writer and one-time host is “doing well, although he is still not ready to return to work.”

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