Robin Williams: Alcohol, Cocaine, & Rehab

Robin Williams was an American actor and comedian known for his energetic and improvisational style of comedy. He had a successful career in both stand-up comedy and film, winning numerous awards including an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Williams struggled with substance abuse and depression throughout his life and tragically died by suicide in 2014.

Williams checked himself into a renewal center just a few weeks ago, but his battle with addiction dated back more than 30 years. He struggled with cocaine and alcohol abuse in the early ’80s, after his rise to fame on Mork & Mindy.

“Cocaine for me was a place to hide. Most people get hyper on coke. It slowed me down,” Williams told People in 1988.

Williams was even with John Belushi during the Saturday Night Live star’s all-night cocaine and heroin binge that led to his fatal overdose.

Belushi’s death and Williams’ then-wife Valerie‘s pregnancy with the couple’s son, Zak, forced the comedian to quit cocaine and alcohol cold turkey.

“The Belushi tragedy was frightening,” Williams told People. “His death scared a whole group of show-business people. It caused a big exodus from drugs. And for me, there was the baby coming. I knew I couldn’t be a father and live that sort of life.”

Williams even joked about the dangers of cocaine addiction in his Live at the Met stand-up performance (video below).

After 20 years of sobriety, though, Williams relapsed in 2006.

He later told The New York Times that he hadn’t confronted the underlying issues at the root of his addiction.

“There was still, in the background, this voice, like, ‘Psst,’ ” he told the newspaper. “So when I relapsed, I went back hard. The one thing I hadn’t dealt with was, how honest do you want to live?”

Once again, it was his son, Zak, who was an integral part of Williams’ decision to get sober. Without going into detail, the younger Williams told the Times of his father’s return to rehab, “There was an ultimatum attached to it. I’m pretty confident that if he continued drinking, he would not be alive today.”

Williams checked himself in to Oregon’s Hazelden Springbrook treatment center in August 2006; after two months of treatment, he talked about his battle to stay sober in an interview with Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America.

He said it was a “very gradual” descent back into using.

“It’s the same voice though that … you’re standing at a precipice and you look down, there’s a voice, and it’s a little quiet voice that goes, ‘Jump,’ ” Williams told Sawyer. “The same voice that goes, ‘Just one.’ … And the idea of just one for someone who has no tolerance for it, that’s not the possibility.”

Williams got more specific with Parade magazine in 2013, recounting the moment that he fell off the wagon: “One day I walked into a store and saw a little bottle of Jack Daniel’s. And then that voice — I call it the ‘lower power’ — goes, ‘Hey. Just a taste. Just one.’ I drank it, and there was that brief moment of ‘Oh, I’m okay!’ But it escalated so quickly. Within a week I was buying so many bottles I sounded like a wind chime walking down the street. I knew it was really bad one Thanksgiving when I was so drunk they had to take me upstairs.”

And as with his earlier cocaine crisis, another star’s struggles spurred Williams to seek help. This time, it was Mel Gibson, Williams told GMA, whose DUI arrest served as a “wake-up call” for him; Williams joked that Gibson’s public implosion took the spotlight off him.

Williams also joked about being an alcoholic in his stand-up act.

Just recently, Williams had checked in to a center that is affiliated with a 12-step program to help him focus on his ongoing sobriety.

At the time, the comedian’s rep told The Hollywood Reporter, “He has been working hard and now has a break in his schedule, so wants to come back and be the best that he can be. This is his version of a retreat.”