“Saturday Night Live” comic Darrell Hammond — famed for his spot-on impressions of Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Dick Cheney — reveals in a new book how he drank and did cocaine while with the show and was once taken from NBC “in a straitjacket.”
To escape memories of a traumatic childhood, Hammond heavily indulged in alcohol and drugs as he rose to fame on the show, where he worked with guests Sarah Palin, Donald Trump, Mick Jagger and Sting.
“I kept a pint of Remy in my desk at work,” Hammond recalls in “God, If You’re Not Up There, I’m F*cked,” out Nov. 8 from HarperCollins. “The drinking calmed my nerves and quieted the disturbing images that sprang into my head … when drinking didn’t work, I cut myself.”
In 1998, cops took Hammond from the NBC infirmary to New York Hospital in a straitjacket. “My wife came but I didn’t recognize her,” he writes.
In 2002, Hammond recalls, “I’d started adding an obscene amount of cocaine to my binges … 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.”
In 2009, during his 14th “SNL” season, and having gone to rehab once, Hammond relapsed. “I had the brilliant idea I should try crack,” he writes — and he spent time in a Harlem crack house.
After months of treatment, Hammond broke free of drugs and earned raves doing the one-man play “Tru” in Sag Harbor this summer. But a car crash cut the show short. A lawsuit is pending over the accident, and Hammond, who wasn’t able to stand at first, has begun getting back on stage. He’s also working with Will Ferrell’s “Funny or Die” Web site.
Copies of Hammond’s new book were sent over to “SNL” Thursday, and he’s waiting for reaction. “I don’t have anything bad to say about anyone there,” he told us. “They all really went above and beyond the call for me.”