SNL Star Darrell Hammond: I Did Crack, Cut Myself

Comic recounts his struggles in new book
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 24, 2011 9:29 AM CDT
Updated Oct 24, 2011 10:59 AM CDT

Saturday Night Live star Darrell Hammond, perhaps best known for his dead-on Bill Clinton impression, confesses in a new book that he once had to be taken from work “in a straitjacket” after an alcohol binge in 1998. “I kept a pint of Remy in my desk at work,” Hammond writes. “The drinking calmed my nerves and quieted the disturbing images that sprang into my head” regarding his traumatic childhood. “When drinking didn’t work, I cut myself.”

By 2002, Hammond was also doing cocaine. “I had to be creative about how I did it without other people catching on or letting it interfere with the work. At least too much,” he writes. Then, in 2009, his 14th season on SNL, he decided to try crack. He is now free of drugs and working with Will Ferrell on Funny or Die. As for his former SNL colleagues, “I don’t have anything bad to say about anyone there,” he tells the New York Post. “They all really went above and beyond the call for me.” God, If You’re Not Up There, I’m F*cked is out Nov. 8. (More Darrell Hammond stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X