Question: Comedy and Chronic Illness

Whither The Great American Diarrhea Novel?

“Can Mike or others help with the chronic health issues aspect of writing or comedy? I have read some discussions of mental illness, but haven't heard anyone discuss severe body issues like Mike mentioned on Scott Dikkers’ podcast. People often dismiss it by saying, “Just push through.”—A.B.

Thank you for the question, A.B. I hope that your interest is purely theoretical…but if it isn’t, please accept a gentle hug from me. Chronic illness is a war of attrition and every day that you stay alive is a triumph. I salute you, with trumpets and banners. Our faces are painted red like Caesar and there is a lil’ guy whispering to us, “Do not forget you are mortal.”

No chance of that, with chronic illness.

For those of you who haven’t listened to my interview with Scott Dikkers, the short version is that as a Senior in college, I got a flu which, thanks to the misapplication of strong antibiotics, deteriorated into a major immune system issue. My hair thinned, my eyebrows fell out, and I had food poisoning every day for 21 years. This mysterious malady—still unnamed—nearly killed me in my early 40s, but is now in remission thanks to a rare type of acupuncture and daily qigong.

This set is the first one I learned. Called “18 Movements” or “Shibashi,” it is gentle but effective set and WILL NOT MAKE YOU GO BLIND (!!!!). Link is above.

So: chronic illness and the creative arts. As a very unwilling expert, I have good news and bad news. We’ll start with the bad news first, but keep reading, because I think the good news balances it out.

THE BAD NEWS

Showbiz, or any other luck-based profession, is not very well suited to a person with chronic illness. In America, land of shitty health insurance, maybe no business is suited to a person with chronic illness, but any creative field is a particularly dangerous choice. If I had known I was going to get sick, I never would’ve gone into comedy. By the time I was truly ill, around 30, I was too frail to switch professions. I could only push forward. And push forward I did, writing a bestseller…only to have it demonstrate that there was not going to be any lasting security for me in conventional book or magazine publishing. I would have to win the lottery again and again, just to have a reasonable income. The shock of this realization was what caused my health to collapse in 2010-11.

Avoid this. :-)

Chronic illness eats up the artistic life’s already-slim margin for error. If you see an opportunity for a more stable situation, consider taking it until you are well. When you are chronically ill, caring for yourself must be your only priority. HEAL FIRST—your preferred branch of showbiz will be there when you get back.

America’s a spectacularly bad place to be chronically ill, because many of us have some pretty eugenicist beliefs about productivity (see: COVID, U.S. response to) and will say without a trace of shame that those who cannot work do not deserve to eat. But there is simply no reason a society as rich as ours should be so savage, and if you’re chronically ill, you should always be on your own side. Do not blame yourself or be ashamed, but don’t expect anyone to understand, either. They cannot. It is too frightening. You know a truth they do not wish to know: that every one of us is one piece of bad luck away from everything collapsing.

Chronic illness is politically clarifying.

In addition to your symptoms, and the predations of an insane society that doesn’t acknowledge the inevitability of illness, there is depression from three factors: lower productivity; the inability to participate in the social aspects of your career; and shunning.

PRODUCTIVITY—To do good work, you must have energy—a period of sustained concentration. You must have enough extra vitality to pour into your creation, whether it’s a mural or a TV pilot or a bunch of fisting jokes for “Weekend Update.” But if you are chronically ill, the Protestant Work Ethic does not apply to you. Try not to “push through,” especially if you don’t know why you’re sick or with what; I drove myself relentlessly in my 20s and 30s, and it definitely made me worse. So downshift your ideas of productivity, “a good day’s work,” and even success. For the chronically ill person, success is no longer an EGOT; it’s staying alive ‘til you can see Mom again.

These guys all died. Don’t take work/life balance advice from Pilgrims.

SOCIAL ISOLATION—Showbiz is an inherently subjective career, which is why having people know and like you is tremendously important. If you’ve ever watched a TV show and thought, “I could write jokes as funny as that”, you’re probably right. The difference is that those people know Rian Johnson and you don’t. When you’re chronically ill, it may be impossible for you to do the social legwork necessary to be known within your chosen field. In 1997, one of the reasons I wasn’t hired full-time on SNL was that I could never accept any of the invitations to staff afterparties my old writing partner Jon Schwarz and I received. I was simply too sick, and my digestive system too unpredictable from moment to moment. It would not have helped my career to throw up on Will Ferrell, or be known as “that guy who pooped in a broom closet.”

SHUNNING—If you’re sick, people will also shun you, especially in industries where beauty or coolness is prized. You suddenly become the weak member of the herd, and though nobody talks about it, it’s very uncomfortable. I lost many friends, not least because a sick person’s life can be pretty small and, consequently, boring. Older people are, in general, more likely to be kind, because they have much more experience with physical frailty. But old or young, people will not hire you if they feel they will have to make excuses for you, and someone who is absent a lot or visibly unwell will not inspire confidence.

All these things are likely to make you depressed; and that depression, in addition to less physical vitality, means that you a chronically ill person is highly unlikely to be successful in a high-gloss, highly paid, very competitive field like comedy. Family or personal money can change this calculus, but… Do not set yourself up for failure; pick a similar field where you can have some success—or better yet, pause things, find out how to get better, and take another run at The Big Dream when you’re well again.

By the way, whenever you’re pissed off, that’s a good sign: self-laceration takes energy. When I was really sick, all I wanted was to live another day; sunshine on my face felt like an orgasm. So if you wake up angry that chronic illness has disfigured your life, this means 1) you still have a life and 2) you want a better one.

And now, the Good News (I told you I’d get to it).

THE GOOD NEWS

In world where everybody is trying to attract attention, your illness can be your advantage. It is an intense, often funny experience that is both widely relatable and utterly unique to you. As you fight it, and curse it, and succumb to it when you must, remember that your experience of illness is perfect raw material for any kind of art. I would give anything for a diary from my 20s. “Dear Diary—Today I gave motorists on the I-5 a sight they will never forget.”

I’m still a legend in Seattle.

My illness was very embarrassing—constant nausea and stomach pain, some vomiting, and explosive diarrhea. So I did what most people would do: I hid it all as best I could. Since I was gifted with a tremendous amount of physical strength and vitality, I was able to hide it for far longer than you would believe. If you saw me anytime between 1995-2013, chances are I hadn’t eaten in 18 hours. But it eventually became too big to hide, and I was flat on my back for about a year. When I acknowledged my illness, surrendered to it, and began talking about it, the soil was made ready for healing to sprout.

Remember: illness is not a personal failing, just a consequence of having a body. Accept your body; it is yours. Accept your experience of life through it; that is your raw material. Build a bulletproof self-acceptance. The more self-acceptance you can muster, the more courage you’ll be able to show—and the more courage you show, the better art you will create on those days when you have enough oomph to create it.

And there really is a usefulness to illness. I remember one improv class a very handsome professional actor buttonholed me during a break. “What’s your deal?” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, like”—he was embarrassed—"what’s the deal with your legs?”

“Oh, I have cerebral palsy,” I said. (This is unrelated to my chronic illness.)

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I wish I had something like that,” he said. “On stage, I couldn’t take my eyes off you.”

Sometimes the awkward compliments are the ones you remember.

In a world of “2 girls 1 cup” (look it up), illness is one of the last genuine taboos. For 20 years, I wrote jokes to distract myself, when my comedy should’ve turned towards it. Pay attention; take notes; don’t obsess, but do observe.

Illness also shows us profound truths, truths which help us make better art. One truth is: our lot in life really isn’t up to us. Another: life is still a miracle, even with withering stomach cramps. And another: if you’re alive, lots of things are actually working pretty well.

If it doesn’t kill you, chronic illness is actually a very good place for the artist to stand. It is deeply, intrinsically human; it slows you down and makes you pay attention; it takes you places other creators don’t go. Once you stop running and acknowledge it all sucks, really really sucks, then there is an opportunity to empathize with the multitudinous others for whom things suck, the majority of humans who have ever lived, are living, or will ever live. Suckage is normal, and The Great American Diarrhea Novel is still to be written.

The internet makes connection easier than ever. Unlike in the 90s, you don’t have to go to SNL afterparties or packed showcases at Luna Lounge to get noticed in the comedy business. You can knock ‘em dead on TikTok or Instagram. Make a video when you feel well, upload it, and people can interact with it as if you’re not stuck in the bathroom. For all they know, you’re in St. Tropez with all the other famous cat burglars.

Illness adds a level of difficulty no one else can see. When I left the interview for SNL, I wasn’t worried about not getting the job; I thought my chances were pretty good and, to be honest, if they didn’t hire Jon and I after we’d sold all those jokes, fuck ‘em. I was worried I might get it. Would I be able to take the subway up to 30 Rock every day? What if I had to constantly step out of meetings? Would I be able to pull the long hours? My illness made all of that really scary. My fears weren’t “What if Lorne doesn’t think I’m funny?” it was “What if Lorne thinks I’m hilarious and I have to go out to see him and I shit myself on the Hampton Jitney?”

You, person of the 2020’s, don’t have to worry about the Hampton Jitney. You can shit yourself at home, and get famous via social media, Substack, or whatever comes next.

Which brings me back to my main point: if you are ill, your first and only job should be to get well. In my case, they didn’t know why I was sick, and as I grew sicker, I used comedy writing to distract myself from a situation that was terrifying. I also felt my time was running out, so I worked furiously to try to leave whatever mark I could in the years I had left. If you’re in a similar spot, I understand. Do what you gotta do.

But I think that if I’d taken a break from my youthful dream, just for a few years in my twenties, I might have been able to arrest the condition earlier, and not had to plummet so close to death. Or maybe not—the best anybody can tell, I caught something like Long COVID, but for another virus. Maybe nothing I did would’ve arrested it before I, at the very last minute, stumbled on Worsley acupuncture. But these days, I baby myself in every way I know how, and only surround myself with people who support me 100%. People, places and things that help me stay well—in. People, places and things that don’t—sayonara. This isn’t personal, but it’s also utterly non-negotiable.

Finally, I want to say that my brush with death fundamentally changed how I write and what I write about. I have come to believe that the way I used to make jokes—the place my mind had to go, in order to come up with funny ideas—made me sicker. So investigate your creative process and ask, “Is doing my art making me better, or worse?” The answer might surprise you.

I remember the week I had to choose between writing comedy, and staying alive. The choice was that stark. Fortunately I have found new methods, new platforms, a new voice, which eventually allowed me to continue writing. And I notice that because I had the experience of chronic illness—which occasionally still does recur, though nothing like the bad old days—I can now connect with readers in the way I always longed to. Allow your process to change; allow yourself to change; if you are meant to write/perform/create, you will. Your illness is changing you; if you can stay alive, there are great riches ahead.

Hope this answers your question, A.B. Best of luck to you, and best of health.—M.G.