Celebrity News

Why Artie snubs TV ‘rehab’

Even though he made jokes about taking ecstasy on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon,” comic Artie Lange says he’s never been clean this long — eight months — having kicked a four-year heroin addiction. Still, he’s terrified of doing a reality show. “They offered me 200 grand to do ‘Celebrity Rehab,’ ” he told The Post’s Mandy Stadtmiller as he prepared for his New York Comedy Festival show. “I love Dr. Drew . . . but I don’t think that’s helping Jeff Conaway . . . They said it was about me getting better, but if I relapsed, they’re not going to air that? . . . My mother knows I’ve done coke, but she’s never seen me do it.” Lange says he hasn’t done cocaine since June 14, 1997: “I just got tired of it. I got to a point where this is killing me . . . so I think I’ve got to that point with heroin . . . My thought on heroin is: It doesn’t make you forget your problems, it does something even better. It makes you not care about them at all.”