Marc Maron Recalls Wild, Cocaine-Fueled Nights with Sam Kinison

If you follow comedian Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast, you’ve likely encountered his re-telling of his drug-fueled adventures. In a 2017 episode of “Never Meet Your Heroes,” host Scott Ian got Maron to talk about some crazy adventures he had with fellow comic Sam Kinison, who died in a car crash in 1992.

One time, the two of them were on the hunt for cocaine when they decided to drive to Kinison’s dealer’s house:

He’s f—ked up ’cause … we’re drinking, we’re doing blow. And he’s like, ‘We’re out of blow. We gotta get more blow.’ And he’s all f—king loopy and going in and out of consciousness. And I’m like, ‘All right, where are we going?’

We get in the car at 3:30, 4 in the morning. It’s right on Crescent Heights. We pull into this driveway of this apartment building. He starts buzzing the intercom, and I hear some sleepy guy go, ‘What?’ And he’s like, ‘It’s Sam, let me up!’

And we go into his room, and he pulls out a bindle of blow; he doesn’t have a lot. Sam does some blow, and then he’s like, ‘You got any booze?’ And the guy’s like, ‘I don’t have any. I just have these miniatures from the plane.’

So Sam’s just all f—ked up, and I’m standing there. I don’t know this guy. And I just see Sam on the floor, big fat Sam, drinking a miniature vodka. It was hilarious. He looked like a giant drinking a miniature vodka, and then he just passes out.

So I look at the guy who I don’t know, and I look at Sam, and I’m like, ‘All right, so I guess I’m gonna split.’ And he’s like, ‘You’re not leaving him here.’ He’s like, ‘I can’t have him pulling a Belushi on me here.’ So there’s that kindness of drug dealers. ‘He can’t die at my house.’

So now I gotta lift the biggest guy in comedy up. And there was a point where we’re driving, and he’s sleeping in the car, it’s only a five-minute drive, and he lurches forward. He goes, ‘I don’t know you! You could kill me.’ And I’m like, ‘All right, just relax.’

I get him back to the house up there, and then I walk him in. He just crashes on the floor, like face down on the floor. But he used to do it all the time.

Maron also told Scott about the sorts of things that he and Kinison would do when they partied together, like “burning money”:

So it’s just me and Sam doing blow, just face to face. He’s like, ‘Look me in the eye, Maron. Can’t trust a man [who] can’t look you in the eye.’

So I’m just sitting there looking at Sam. We’re doing coke. So we do blow, and then like he’s like, ‘You ever burn money?’ And I’m like, ‘No.’ And he’s like, ‘Let’s burn some money.’

So yeah, we’re burning money. It felt like an initiation.

Comedian Sam Kinison at New York’s Hard Rock Cafe June 10, 1988 (AP Photo)Credits:- AP