“Alcoholics are God’s rodeo clowns. We’re the ones doing the stupid s - - t nobody else will do,” Robin Williams said during a comedy tour titled, ominously in retrospect, “Weapons of Self Destruction.”
“There’s a voice that tells alcoholics we can drink,” he told a guffawing audience. “It’s the same voice you hear if you go up to the top of a very large building and look over the side. There’s a little voice that goes, ‘Jump!’ ”
The bit was funny, because Williams, that otherworldly master of comedy, was nearly always funny. Really funny. But his pain was there alongside it — as it so often is with the most luminescent comic geniuses. That pain was evident in his film roles we prized most: the subversive military DJ in “Good Morning, Vietnam,” the grief-stricken therapist in “Good Will Hunting,” the sensitive teacher in “Dead Poets Society.”
The 63-year-old comedian, who committed suicide on Monday, leaving behind a wife and three children, had a well-known history of substance abuse.
Just two months ago he had checked himself into Minnesota’s Hazelden rehab clinic for what his representative referred to as a “tuneup.” He’d also been there in 2006, following a relapse after 20 years of sobriety from cocaine and alcohol addiction. He spoke often and freely about these things, never pretending he was free from inner demons.
When I was drinking, there was only one time, where even for a moment, I thought: ‘F - - k life.’ But then even my conscious brain went, ‘Did you really just say f - - k life?’
- Williams during a podcast in 2010
But that didn’t lessen the shock of his death, still echoing around the globe. How could a man who seemed to embody the very spirit of funny, known for his kindness and generosity, beloved by the entire world, be pulled under by clinical depression?
It was a longtime battle he hinted at in a 2010 interview with comedian Marc Maron in the “WTF” podcast, where Williams described the voice in his head in a suicidal moment: “When I was drinking, there was only one time, where even for a moment, I thought: ‘F - - k life.’ But then even my conscious brain went, ‘Did you really just say “f - - k life”? You know you have a pretty good life as it is right now . . . OK, let’s put the suicide over here on discussable, let’s leave that over here in the discussion area, we’ll talk about that. First of all, you don’t have the balls to do it . . . Can I ask you what you’re doing right now? You’re sitting naked in a hotel room with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, yes. Is that maybe influencing your decision?’ ”
Williams’ struggles with depression and substance abuse are hardly an anomaly. Many of the now-deceased greats were subject to it — Richard Pryor, Chris Farley, John Belushi, Bill Hicks.
“Creative people in general have a higher instance of mental illness and, specifically, depression,” says Dr. Susan Biali, a medical doctor and author who’s fought depression herself. “It gets romanticized to the point that people see it as being an inherent part of creativity. [And] there’s a genuine fear that if you get treatment, you’ll lose this really unusual edge you have, this rich emotional life.”
Louis C.K.’s brand of humor focuses heavily on life’s sad side. Maria Bamford has made her own mental illness a recurring stand-up theme. Rob Delaney, recently anointed “the funniest man on Twitter,” wrote about the link in Vice in 2010: “There is a popular belief that comedians tell jokes and endeavor to make others laugh as a means of treating the pain they feel inside . . . Is this true? For me, the answer happens to be yes.”
Liam McEneaney, a New York-based comic who hosts a monthly show called “Tell Your Friends!,” says he’s got firsthand experience with depression.
“It causes a certain kind of insecurity,” he says, “and there’s no quicker fix than having a roomful of people laughing and applauding.”
Todd Hanson, a New Yorker and one of the founders of the satirical newspaper the Onion, has spoken publicly about depression and its influence on his writing. In the book “And Here’s the Kicker,” he said comedy had saved him: “If I hadn’t found dark humor as an outlet, I don’t know what the hell I would have done.”
But Williams was always associated primarily with being zany, manic — the type of performance personified in his blue genie in “Aladdin.”
Biali says she saw in Williams the signs of what’s called hypomania, a lower-key version of bipolar disorder.
“Hypomania is exhibited in creative people, and successful entrepreneurs,” she says. “They’re fast talkers, full of energy, funny, don’t need a lot of sleep — and their lives are often functioning very well. But it may alternate with bouts of depression.”
Williams had never admitted to clinical depression or mania, though, once telling Terry Gross on NPR’s “Fresh Air,” “No clinical depression, no. No. I get bummed, like I think a lot of us do at certain times. You look at the world and go, ‘Whoa.’ Other moments you look and go, ‘Oh, things are OK.’ Do I perform sometimes in a manic style? Yes. Am I manic all the time? No. Do I get sad? Oh yeah. Does it hit me hard? Oh yeah.”
And no matter how much laughter and joy Williams had given the world, it wasn’t enough to make him strong enough to hit back.
“Comedy helps get depression out of you,” says McEneaney. “But it’s not a replacement for therapy or medication or professional help.”