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early I could be done with it by nine or ten and get on with my day. Like that ever worked. Have you ever heard anyone say, “No, no, I’m good. I’ve had enough blow. Time to get on with my day”?
    One day I got to the coke dealer’s house in the late afternoon, before it was dark. I was the Early Bird Special guy. When I gotthere he was pulling down the shades and then there was a knock on the door. A short old Colombian man with a ponytail walked in. He handed my dealer a wad of tinfoil in exchange for some cash. He was the source. I said, “Let me do some of that!” My dealer said, “Okay, just a line.”
    He opened the foil to reveal what seemed to be a jewel of blow. He flaked some off the rock into two lines. I snorted them. I felt a tingling behind my eyes that spread up through my brain like a wildfire of joy coursing through my nervous system. Apparently I had never felt the effects of pure cocaine. I said, “Holy shit! Why don’t you just sell that?” He said, “Because people would never leave me alone.” Then he crushed the gemstone and dumped it into a Baggie of last night’s stepped-on crud. It was heartbreaking.
    My comedy career was stalled. Dramatically stalled. I was all bloated and sweaty and fucked-up. I was hosting segments on a local TV program on the Metro Channel, which I don’t think even exists anymore. It was awful. I would interview people on the street at a desk we would haul around the city. It was a “talk show on the street” segment. It was cute but like being dead but accepting it. I was married to a woman who had just added prenatal vitamins to our kitchen vitamin lineup. I was thinking, “That can’t happen.”
    I’d surrendered. I’d given up. I would lie in bed blasted on coke with my heart exploding out of my chest, next to somebody sleeping comfortably, and I wanted to wake her up to tell her I was dying but I would’ve rather just died.
    I thought that was the only way to get out of my situation. I wanted my heart to explode. I didn’t have the guts to leave her. I didn’t have the guts to be honest. I was fucked. My career was done. I was bitter.
    Then a miracle happened, I guess you can call it a miracle. I’m going to go ahead and call it that even though it ended up the disaster with which I opened this chapter. But at the time it seemed like a miracle, a silver lining. Maybe it was just foil.
    I’m at the Comedy Cellar in New York. I’m hanging out. I’m sweating. I’m talking to a few young comics. I’m probably having one of these conversations: “Well, I think if you really want to talk about the history of it, Pryor was really the first.…” You know the rap. Holding court. And this woman comes up to me. This woman like a spirit, an apparition. I didn’t know who she was. What she was. But this six-foot-tall, spectacular-looking being walks up to me and says, “Hey, you’re Marc Maron, aren’t you?”
    “Yeah. Yeah, I am,” I say, defensive but as charming as possible.
    “What happened to you? You look like you’re going to die.”
    “Huh? Yeah, well … what? I’m cool, I’m good. What do you mean? What’s the deal?”
    “I’m just a big fan, and I don’t know, you look like you’re in trouble. If you want to get sober I can help you get sober.”
    “What? You mean like meetings, AA and that kind of shit? Like the God thing? Are you a God person?”
    “I can just point you in that direction.”
    “Uh, okay,” I say.
    In my mind I had no desire to get sober or even live, but every part of my mind and body wanted to be as close to her as possible, so I said, “Yeah. Hell yeah, I want to get sober. I need to get sober.” But in my mind all I was thinking was, “I’ll do anything with you. I’ll go anywhere. I’m going to follow you home now even if you don’t want me to follow you home.” And I did.
    We walked thirty-five blocks. I smoked. We talked about cigarettes and about addiction and about comedy and about