Kelly Marie Carlin-McCall, B.A., M.A. is known for her work in comedy and writing. Here we discuss a wide range of issues in an extensive talk on comedy and life. Here is session 6.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Then you met Andrew Sutton, who was a 29-year-old cocaine-snorting mechanic. More or less, as far as I got from reading that part of the book, you bared your souls to one another. What was like to you to be able to be open with someone who was older? When a lot of the time, you were trying to be the good kid.
Kelly Marie Carlin-McCall: Yes, it was very heady stuff. Andrew was 10 or 11 years older than me. There was looking up to him with a father-figure part of it. The fact of him being a peer. The sexual relationship, the bonding over the drugs, and the illicit part of that.
Then there were the complications that went along with it, which was ridiculous, crazy, and insane. It showed my very poor choice-making skills at that time. I was not prepared for adulthood and those relationships. My lack of self-worth and the inability to have any healthy boundaries in a relationship with a man. I was so vulnerable in that moment.
Being able to finally bare my soul to someone of the opposite sex was very powerful because all of the other boys in my life, even though they were friends or boyfriends, when you’re in high school you’re trying to pretend that you’re a great person and desperately be liked and loved, it was tough to bear who I really was, and my pain around my childhood and upbringing.
Being able to have someone to relate that to who someone had their own pain in adolescence was a profound bonding for me, it created a safe space. That was our connection initially, Andrew and I. It was the sense of safety and intimacy around that stuff. Unfortunately, it was a ridiculously insane, chaotic situation for me to get into. I didn’t have any ways to separate from it.
All I saw was someone who saw me, adored me, and loved me unconditionally. That was more important than all of the things I was saying, “Yes,” to. I was in way over my head.
Jacobsen: With that relationship, the sex and cocaine and orgasms were sufficient reason to keep him around too, but you did quit, eventually. Up to the present, is there any substance use or misuse, if I may ask?
Carlin-McCall: I drink alcohol. I smoke weed. I don’t smoke a lot of weed. I don’t drink a lot of alcohol. I haven’t used cocaine since 1988. I know it’s around at parties, but I don’t use it. It is not part of my scene. I walked away from it. I am very, very cognizant of alcohol in my life because of my mother.
Alcohol was never really my thing. I don’t really like it that much. I do smoke one hit of pot once per week if a friend is around or there is a party. I am lucky. I am one of those people that don’t have a substance abuse problem.
I have a way of being in a relationship with it, in a conscious way. I can quit for a year or two at times because I find it distracts me. However, everyone has their relationship with it. Others need to completely abstain. Others can have a beer with dinner. I am lucky to be one of those people.
I am lucky to be alive too. The cocaine, it is a dangerous drug. Any form of it. Any offspring of it: meth, crystal, and others. It is a scary drug. It completely hijacks your brain, the dopamine loop. It makes you a slave to it.
It is meaningless to me today. It doesn’t define me. I see other people, who have the genetics for it. It is scary to watch people teetering and playing with that dangerous stuff. I am blessed. It has been 30 years next year since I have seen cocaine. [Laughing] That’s crazy.
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Original publication (1, 2, 3, and 4) on www.in-sightjournal.com.
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Part 1 can be read here.
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Photo Credit: Getty Images