On November 11, 2008, Artie Lange made his final appearance on NBC’s Late Night with Conan O’Brien. The Dirty Work star had been a guest of O’Brien’s at least 15 times before that, but the folks behind the scenes were concerned about him on this particular occasion.
You see, the moment Lange sat down for his interview that evening, he said that he was high. Though he insisted that he was only joking, that clearly wasn’t the way his words were interpreted.
While speaking with the New York Daily News in June of the following year, Lange revealed that, whether he was high or not on O’Brien’s show, everybody believed that he was. For that reason, Lange explained, he wouldn’t be allowed back until he proved that he was sober.
By that time, O’Brien had taken over The Tonight Show, and though his tenure as host lasted less than a year, he never had Lange on as a guest. Lange swore that he’d sobered up, but NBC executives apparently didn’t believe it.
Heroin and Late Night Execs Don’t Mix
By his own admission, Lange had gone on quite the bender the month he’d last appeared on Late Night. As he tells it, he fell asleep at a heroin dealer’s apartment, who thought it would be funny to inject him with heroin. Lange claimed it was his first experience with the drug, and the high caused the recovering addict to fall off the wagon. Because of that, Lange even missed Comedy Central’s roast of his friend, Bob Saget, at which he was scheduled to perform.
Lange wouldn’t be interviewed by O’Brien again until the late-night host was doing his third show, Conan, on TBS in 2012. When the subject of his recovery came up, Lange told O’Brien, “I was doing heroin, which is a bad drug to do. You can’t do that. It takes your soul away, it really does. And it also takes your abs away.”
Lange went on to express his frustration with his personal trainer trying to convince him that the high you get from running is comparable to heroin. You can check out Lange discussing his heroin addiction on Conan below.
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