By David Weitz

If you’ve been down and out lately, looking endlessly for a smile to pop up on your dreary exterior, just itching for a reason to show those pearly whites, the subject for my winter blues tickled my insides long enough for me to make it all the way back from Pittsburgh in stitches. After our long afternoon together discussing all of his outside issues, I got to see him show off his gift in front of a sold-out crowd. For those who don’t know him personally, it’s quite simple to identify him when his name is mentioned to anyone who has seen his act over the past three decades. It didn’t take me long, though, to reach his darker side. Right from the gate, I was able to flip the switch to the other “Shoe” for a meaningful one-on-one with Craig Shoemaker.

I already knew that he had been recovering for decades and was more than willing to spill his guts to me. I also got the feeling that he was extremely eager to share his life story with us, what it was like for him living through active addiction and what life is like for him today as a sober man.

As an inquiring mind and even more as a recovering journalist whose job it is to report back, I was as curious as many of my readers, recovering addicts themselves, as to how professional stand-up comedians keep sold-out crowds amused using their own pasts and years of remorse as a means of diversion. When I first met Craig Shoemaker, I had no idea what to expect since all I knew about him was that he was a brilliant comedian who has been amusing others for almost as long as I have been alive. When I first sat down with him, the idea of it all just threw me for a loop. However, before I could even pull out my recorder, the lifelong funnyman began to spill what was on his mind, one hot mess to another.

“Craig, it’s nice to finally meet you. I know my readers are really excited that you were willing to tell us your story. I’d like to just start out by asking you what your life was like growing up as Craig Shoemaker,” I began.

“When I was a kid I was just so compelled to change my life because I hated it so much. Growing up, when there were things I couldn’t have, or that I wanted, I would steal or cheat my way to it,” Shoemaker said.

“So your behavior showed signs early in your life that you were heading in the wrong direction?” I asked.

“I would live in these denial mechanisms and try to fix my mom up with different men. Anyway, just a few years ago my mom loaded up a box of old shit of mine from Philadelphia and sent it to me. Everything in the box had different, weird meanings. Anyway, in the box, I found a card that said, ‘to the best son a father could have - happy birthday, son, love dad.’ I think I was five or six years old. Then it dawned on me that I made the card and signed it myself and forged his name to it because I knew he’d never buy me a card. The “d” was even backward. I just laughed my ass off,” Shoemaker said.

If this celebrity is new to you, or you’re just not familiar with his personal profile, a lot of Craig Shoemaker’s stand-up routine includes stories about his completely dysfunctional past, growing up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in a fatherless home with his outrageous family and codependent mother whom he’s more than agitated to blab about. I knew when I saw how relaxed he was by the way he was dressed when I first walked in to interview him, that he was ready to give me exactly what I was looking for for our readers. As he scrunched down in his chair, one leg crossed over the other, I immediately gave myself the green light to enter his personal space.

“Craig, I know you’ve been recovering a long time. Do you believe that through working in a program this long and after having a childhood like you describe that you can honestly admit that you suffer from adult child issues?” I asked.

“Sure, my mom to this day still doesn’t speak to me. It’s painful and it’s horrible to deal with, but I finally had to take a stand with her and she doesn’t like that I will no longer accept or coattail to her needs and make it about her anymore. Her response to how I feel is very much like a child. I’m not saying I’m happy about it or that I am constantly sad about it, but that’s just me living in those unreasonable expectations as I actually think she will tell me she loves me or has some pride that I am her son,” Shoemaker said.

Many in the recovering community carry in their hearts so many unresolved issues from a life before and after they finally enter recovery. Regardless of the toxic subject matter that originally brought an addict to plead for help, we learn through years of abstinence to address our new life from an awareness that hell is just one bad decision away. Through a willingness to change, those in recovery slowly peel away the layers of their onion to get to the core issues that make up the problem. Although this is, without question, a very painful venture, it is the only path to a peaceful existence. Getting back to speaking about his past before he found recovery I got right into a discussion of his alcoholism, the disease that originally brought him to his knees.

“Growing up in this dysfunctional environment of yours, Craig, what was the definition of an alcoholic to you before you got sober?” I asked.

“Well, I was raised to believe that an alcoholic was only a bum; like literally that word, a bum. Before I ever was at a meeting, an alcoholic to me was something like, Mr. Plumbic across the street who had a red bowless nose and drank out of a brown paper bag,” Shoemaker said.

“So, since you weren’t Mr. Plumbic across the street, did you think you were just crazy when your disease progressively worsened over your lifetime?” I asked.

“Like homeless, nuts, and crazy! I really thought I was going to be one of those guys like I saw once in Chestnut Hill who would just walk up to you off of the street in a trench coat and start giving you information out of the blue, like, ‘the Roman numeral twenty-one looks like the inside of an electric generator,’” Shoemaker replied.

“So when along the way did you change your opinion about alcoholism?” I asked.

“I was at a party in Los Angeles once with a woman I was dating, and I asked her if she wanted a beer and she said, ‘no, I don’t drink’ which I thought was so weird. So I said ‘okay’ and got her one anyway. Well, I ended up drinking her beer, drank my beer, and of course everyone else’s beer too! Soon after that, she said, ‘I can’t date you anymore because of the way you drink,’ so eventually we broke up, but she was the one who took me to my first meeting,” Shoemaker revealed.

“And what was that experience like?” I asked.

“When I walked into my first meeting the room was filled with famous people, good-looking people, and I said, ‘Wow that’s an alcoholic?’ So it redefined the entire thing for me. Then, when the meeting started everyone went around the room and identified themselves and when it got to me I was thinking, ‘how do I say it?’ My palms began to sweat as they got closer and closer to me and then when it finally got around to me I just said, ‘Hi, my name is Craig and I’m an alcoholic.’ That was the biggest epiphany of my life,” Shoemaker said.

“And was that the last time you ever drank?” I asked.

“No, I went out again, again and again, three times that year, every trip back to Philadelphia. I would go out and my old friends would say, ‘Hey where’s the old Shoe at?’ which was my nickname. And I was like, ‘I’ll show you!’ Then I’d end up taking the mic over of a band and then going out to the Black Banana which was an after-hours club; and then I’d find the coke dealer and then it’s all the same story from there which friends of mine used to call, ‘The Shoe-Zone’, like ‘The Twilight Zone,’ which meant if you were going with me you might be hitchhiking home from Alaska. To this day old friends of mine are still afraid of me when I come home to Philly. Even though they know I’m sober, they’ll still say, ‘Hey Craig, I’ll drive myself, thank you!” Shoemaker explained.

“So when did you finally get sober?” I asked.

“The last night of course I ended up naked in a bed next to my sister’s friend on my sister’s pull-out sofa with springs poking me in the ass. And that was the last day,” said Shoemaker.

“And when was that exactly?” I asked.

“That was November 19, 1987. My sobriety date is November, 20,” Shoemaker said.

Early in his life, Craig Shoemaker was able to soothe his interior turmoil, using comedy to distract just about anyone within arm’s reach of him. He exposed himself by converting his tears of sorrow into a laughing game, publicly relating his personal stories in a livelihood that has spanned over thirty years.

“Was comedy always a calling for you?” I asked.

“I was already a comic from a young age; and not only a comic, a successful comic from the get-go. I started in high school at keg parties. I was already doing stand-up by the time I was sixteen, got paid at seventeen, and was making a pretty good living at it by the time I was nineteen,” Shoemaker said.

“Do you find that using stories about your difficult childhood and surviving through a pain-filled existence is what makes you such a talented comedian?” I asked.

“Yes, I do. I’m a storyteller and I’m still gonna stay a storyteller, although that doesn’t go over so well these days with kids who have A.D.D. I mean, in the attention deficit disorder society we live in if they rewrote War and Peace it would just be a pamphlet called WN’P. The Bible would just be ‘the Earth was made in three hours and then he died for yours sins, done!’ There wouldn’t even be a New Testament. There would just be Genesis, that’s all! It wouldn’t even be called Genesis, just - Gen. And it would be tweeted. Jesus would be twittering – ‘Walked on H2O today,’” Shoemaker noted.

“So many artists feel that drugs and alcohol are what gives them their creativity. A lot of artists entering recovery feel that they will lose the very essence of their creativity once they put the substance down they feel drives their art. How did getting sober affect your creativity as a comedian and do you feel that you are funnier sober?” I asked.

“Finally getting grounded and finding the authenticity in me from staying sober, working a program, and having a relationship with a higher power gave new meaning to my life. After staying sober awhile I said to myself, not only can I be sober and funny, I can take funny, sober to another level,” Shoemaker said.

Once that microphone is in the palm of his hand there is no stopping Craig Shoemaker from keeping you doubled over in belly pain for as long as he can keep your undivided attention. His act of over three decades, comparing his dysfunction to the world’s, pushes any audience that attends his show to participate in being human until his hilarious performance draws the curtain. Whether it’s his jaded childhood, his absent father, his outrageous mother, his role as a parent, his pride in being “The Love Master” or just the mere fact that there’s no shame in knowing you’re not the only idiot driving a repulsive minivan, Craig Shoemaker knows how to turn any frown upside down. His non-profit organization, Laughter Heals, continues to find its way into millions of hearts that discover that a little bit of laughter goes such a long way. His success in keeping comedy as a full-time gig is a direct result of learning to live a spiritual life, giving back to society, and staying sober one day at a time. To Hollywood, it may just be business as usual. However, to me, there’s no business, like Shoe business.

Shoe-Business

Just a Little Patience