John Mulaney 'Cracked' a Molar Grinding His Teeth During 'Physically Uncomfortable' Drug Detox

John Mulaney is opening up about his difficult road to sobriety.

During a recent appearance on David Letterman's Netflix show, My Next Guest with David Letterman, the stand-up star, 41, got candid about his experience getting clean from his battle with drugs and alcohol.

When the former late-night host, 77, asked Mulaney about his time in rehab, he admitted, "It’s not immediately great nights of sleep and serenity. I had zero gratitude."

"The actual detox from drugs was very physically uncomfortable, and I’d been on a lot of benzodiazepines like Xanax and Klonopin," the funny man added. "Getting off those can be very rough. I was in the detox hospital room, and I was grinding my teeth so much that a molar cracked."

Mulaney revealed after four days in the treatment center, he told a doctor he was going to leave. "He didn't argue or anything. He just went, 'John, we both know how this movie ends.' And that was it," the Big Mouth star explained.

The former Saturday Night Live writer previously opened up about how his friends staged an intervention to convince him to get help. "Do you know what it’s like for 12 people to save your life? It’s too many people," he recalled in his Baby J comedy special. "They could’ve done it with four people — and I know the eight they could’ve cut. Instead, for the rest of my life there are 12 separate people out there who if I’m at dinner with them I have to be like, ‘No, I got that. Come on. You saved my life.'"

Mulaney has completely turned his life around. In 2021 he and his girlfriend, Olivia Munn, welcomed a baby boy named Malcom. Despite loving fatherhood, he admitted having a child was a "big surprise."

"It wasn’t so much that I thought I wouldn’t as. . . it was never a good day to have [a kid]," he told Letterman. "I just wasn’t thinking about it. I was just. . . kind of living one minute to the next. And then this guy came along. I was starstruck when I met him. I went, ‘Oh, there you are.’ I was looking in not good places and then, ‘Oh, there you are.’ That was my first thought."

The comedian revealed what it was like to bring his son into the world while he was hosting SNL in 2022.

"We were in the delivery room. My girlfriend had just given birth to him and he’s crying a little, so they bring him over to this warmer on the other side of the delivery room. [He’s] under this big bright light, and light is just shining in his eyes," he recalled in his opening monologue.

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