Mary Cybulski | HBO

By Amy Kuperinsky | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

Artie Lange is a man obsessed with the chances he won't take.

What, he wonders, will he miss if he isn't willing to find out? For him, the thrill of the chase is just too good to pass up.

He's the opposite of risk-averse. Call it risk-addicted.

The risk of being a diabetic and performing stand-up comedy with high blood sugar.

The risk of doing heroin at a rest stop on the Garden State Parkway while starring in an HBO series.

The risk of not showing up for court after being charged with heroin possession.

The risk of cheating on his girlfriend with 11 strippers in Las Vegas.

"What if?" just isn't something he said he ever wanted to face, so he went all in.

This premise goes a long way to explain why Lange's behavior, characterized by decades of drug addiction, can seem so self-destructive.

But Lange, now approaching his 51st birthday, didn't expect to make it to 25. Today he says his fading health has him determined to stay alive.

"I get nervous now, because now I wanna live," he says, speaking to NJ Advance Media on July 17 for the release of his latest memoir, "Wanna Bet? A Degenerate Gambler's Guide to Living on the Edge" (St. Martin's Press).

"Now I do care about it, and I think that maybe I've done too much damage," Lange says.

But there was that one risk that paid off big time — the risk, in 1991, of leaving the safety of his $70K longshoreman job at Port Newark to try making it as a comedian.

Don't Edit

Andrew Miller | For NJ Advance Media

Heroin, probation and rehab

Lange, a dyed-in-the-wool (dyed-in-the-gabagool, he might say) New Jerseyan who grew up in Union Township, is best known for the near-decade he spent as a regular on "The Howard Stern Show" starting in 2001 — and, of late, for his part on the HBO series "Crashing."

However, over the length of his 25-year career, he has become just as associated with cocaine and heroin — his very existence seeming like a constant comeback story. Thanks to a recent brush with that last risk, he has just embarked on four years of probation.

Currently, Lange is enrolled in an outpatient drug treatment program, "six hours deep" into 50 hours of community service. Lange is serving his community by performing comedy just a stone's throw from his home, at a senior center in Hoboken.

"Literally it says, 'Try to make them laugh,' so that's been a challenge," he says, especially when the audience had never heard of him.

One 86-year-old man, for instance, is convinced the "MADtv" alum is a congressman, not a comedian.

"If someone was given a picture of me and had to guess my occupation, they wouldn't guess show business for like a year. They'd guess chimney sweep before show business," Lange says.

Don't Edit

Essex County Sheriff's Office

The current state of Lange's flattened nose — perhaps the most obvious marker of wear and tear in recent years — is owed to the complete demolishment of his septum after 30 years of drug abuse (it didn't help that he also accidentally snorted glass a few years ago when trying to suck up smashed OxyContin tablets).

In June, he was sentenced in state Superior Court in Newark to four years of probation after pleading guilty to heroin possession. Just weeks before, he was asked to leave the "Artie and Anthony Show," his podcast on Compound Media, because of his frequent absences.

In May of 2017, State Police had stopped him on the Garden State Parkway in Bloomfield and reported finding a bag of heroin and straw in his lap and a total of 81 decks of heroin. It was the second time he had been arrested in two months, after police alleged that they found Lange with cocaine and heroin in his Hoboken parking garage.

When Lange didn't show up for court on the Bloomfield charges, he was arrested in December and spent five "brutal" days in Essex County Jail, which produced a haggard mug shot and a flurry of headlines.

Don't Edit

Andrew Miller | For NJ Advance Media

Last month, the judge, allowing Lange to avoid further jail time, meted out the probation sentence with a warning.

"Mr. Lange, the ball's in your court now," she told the comedian. He would be the only one, she said, with the power to prevent what she called a "sad ending" to his story.

Lange, of course, has been through this kind of rehab before. His most recent attempt was an abbreviated effort at the beginning of the year.

"Now, the difference is the fear of jail," he says. Slip-ups won't just be slip-ups this time around — they could mean an end to work altogether if he's incarcerated. No acting, no stand-up and no touring.

In all of this, Lange has always referred to heroin as his one regret. While cocaine was an instrument of chaos in his life, he says he'd rather tackle people than let them try heroin.

"Nothing knocked me on my a** like heroin, with the physical withdrawals," he says. "It's the worst."

Don't Edit

St. Martin's Press

A 'degenerate gambler'

Lange's latest book "Wanna Bet?" was written with Anthony Bozza, the same co-author who helped pen his 2008 memoir "Too Fat To Fish," which hit No. 1 on the New York Times' best-seller list, and the 2013 follow-up, "Crash and Burn."

In the new book, Lange talks about benefitting from an "idiot's luck" that he says has followed him all his life.

He was first arrested for cocaine possession 23 years ago in Los Angeles during an incident in which he took a swing at a police officer (something he also says he did 17 years later in France). He credits music legend Quincy Jones, the producer of "MADtv," for getting him special treatment in jail and a lawyer who was able to get the arrest expunged from his record (though after spending time in jail in 1996, Lange ultimately did not return to the show). So when Lange got arrested again in 2017 for heroin possession, "it was technically a first offense, according to them," he says.

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

In marketing materials for his latest book, Jimmy Kimmel is quoted as calling Lange "the pride of New Jersey."

Most of Lange's stories originate from his hometown, Union Township; or Elizabeth, where he whiled away the summer hours playing stickball; or Newark, where he placed his first sports bets with local bookies. He talks about his misdeeds in the context of those committed by his Jersey friends.

Lange (pictured above with the cast of "MADtv" in the mid-'90s) was a teenager when he made his first sports bet in Newark, in 1985, decades before legalized sports betting was even a gleam in the governor's eye. He caught the bug with an improbable bet on the 49ers against the Dolphins in the Super Bowl. It wasn't long before he was putting $25K on the coin toss.

The comedian estimates that he has made $10 million in his career but is worth about $2 million now because of his penchant for risk and gambling.

Don't Edit

Bob D'Amico | ABC

One (now deceased) friend, who Lange calls "Louie," aka "The Jeff Spicoli of Elizabeth, New Jersey," made quite the impression on the future comedian when he was just 12. The boy, then 14, managed to steal a big orange canoe from a Two Guys store in Newark. But when he returned to steal the oars, he got caught and was sent to be rehabilitated at Boys Town in Nebraska.

"None of us had even seen a lake or a river," Lange writes (he didn't count the Passaic).

"My friends from high school are real close to me," he now says. "They're like my brothers. My girlfriend that I went to the prom with in high school, (that I) got arrested for attempted bank robbery with when I was 17, I still talk to her."

"Their lives are so different from mine, with kids and soccer practice," says Lange (pictured above with Norm Macdonald and the cast of 'Norm,' which ran from 1999 to 2001 on ABC). "... They're proud of me, they worry about me. Sometimes they heard about me through the news."

Don't Edit

Rob Kim | Getty Images

Lange's exposure to the "high" of what he calls "living on the edge" might have been the result of nurture, but Lange considers it at least partially nature.

He says his father, Arthur Lange Sr., was an impulsive guy. Take the time when Artie was 11, vacationing on the boardwalk in Wildwood with his family, and a man grabbed his mother's behind.

"I'll never forget, it was like this biker-looking guy," Lange says. His mother thought his father didn't see, but he saw, all right, out of the corner of his eye. He instructed his wife to take Artie's 9-year-old sister to get the car.

"She knew what was going to happen," he says. Young Artie was told to stay where he was, so he could see what was about to transpire. At first, his father apologized to the man for his mother's attire.

"She's asking for it, I'm so sorry," he said. Artie was understandably confused. But in came his father's fist, flying through the air in a sucker punch.

"Knocked the guy out in one punch," says Lange (pictured above with his then-fiancee, Adrienne Ockrymiek, in 2014). His father also beat up the man's friend for trying to intervene. From there, they ran into the waiting car, his father climbed into the driver's seat and they zoomed away.

"He was my hero," Lange says. "I wanted to be him so bad."

Don't Edit

Jennifer Brown | For The Star-Ledger

From the port to the pinnacle of radio

Lange's mother, Judy, always wanted him to take it easy — work as a longshoreman, collect his healthy paycheck and let the days roll by. After all, it was pretty good money for handling orange juice crates, and even better for a 23-year-old high school dropout who had to go to summer school to graduate.

"She knew me and I was crazy," Lange (pictured above at Howard Stern's K-Rock studios in 2004) now says of his mother. "And I did the direct opposite. I got a break when I was young and made every wrong decision. I guess I'm happy with some of the success, but I've had a lot of failure and I think that's 'cause of the drugs, he says.

"I think I would've been a bigger deal in show business if not for the drugs, but being on 'The Howard Stern Show' is something I couldn't even dream of because who knew that job would even be available? That was like something that I can't even believe it still happened. I was such a fan of it."

The majority of Lange's current fans came to know him through the radio show. Before then, he was already a millionaire, given his short stint on "MADtv," regular role on ABC's "Norm" with Norm Macdonald, steady diet of stand-up shows and appearances in movies like "Dirty Work" in 1998.

Don't Edit

Jennifer Brown | For The Star-Ledger

"I was the kind of famous where people would know my name," he says. But after three days on the 2001 iteration of "Stern," which was then broadcast on E! in addition WXRK (K-Rock), people on the street knew both his name and face, Lange says. His book points out that in 2003, "The Howard Stern Show" was drawing 14 million listeners just after 9 a.m. In a few years, Lange went from being the guy who played the Funny Bone, a comedy club in Pittsburgh, to starring in a sold-out show at Carnegie Hall.

Now, even as Lange jokes about being in everyone's death pool, many fans express sincere concern about his wellbeing. Why does his bond with listeners endure, even as Stern's show has markedly changed since the Lange days? (Lange has openly criticized the current format, saying Stern has become too complimentary to celebrities.)

"The relationship radio fans have with people on the radio, especially in the morning, is so different from any other fan in any other medium," he says. "You go to work with them ... Howard wanted to make a guy in traffic in Missouri going to his sh** job happy. That's all he wanted to do."

Lange won a spot on the show after the departure of Jackie Martling.

"I knew there were guys funnier than me, but nobody knew that show better than me," Lange says.

"I had crazy loser stories for being a crazy loser for a long time," he says. "They looked at me as someone who was one of them and got lucky," he says of "Stern" fans.

"'You know why they like you?'" Lange says Stern once told him. "'It's 'cause you're genuine. You wouldn't know how to be phony. You'd be bad at it.'"

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

John O'Boyle | The Star-Ledger

Depression, 'so-called suicide' and 'what ifs'

The comedian's lucrative longshoreman job at Port Newark came courtesy of a family connection in the wake of a tragedy that would come to define his life. His father, an antenna repairman, suffered an accident and fell off a ladder, becoming a quadriplegic for four years before his death in 1990. It's a story Lange has often told. He referenced it a few months ago in an "Artie" episode of "Crashing."

During that time, the Lange family was forced to go on welfare under the weight of mounting medical bills.

"That period of my life when my mother was struggling is something I can't get out of my head," he says.

In the book, Lange recounts the moment in 1991 when he asked his mother to leave his longshoreman job to try in earnest to fulfill his comedy dream. It still makes him tear up, he says. Leaving a reliable job was a huge risk, to be sure, but he would treat it like college, he told her — four years, and if he didn't make any inroads into the comedy scene, he would live out his days working at the port.

He started by driving a cab to get by. Three and half years later, he was on "MADtv" and pulling in $300K.

Don't Edit

Tony Kurdzuk | The Star-Ledger

But what would've happened if his mother said no, instead of vowing to get two jobs? Even at 23, Lange could see that if he didn't make a run at comedy, he would be consumed by depression. Addiction, he says, would have played a bigger role in his life than it does now if he never quit his regular job.

Still, depression would never take a permanent leave of absence from Lange's life.

In 2010, after Lange was asked to take a break from "Stern" for erratic behavior following a drug binge, he downed bleach and repeatedly plunged a kitchen knife into his stomach several times, leaving his mother to find him, passed out. It had been Lange's second suicide attempt after an incident during a bender in 1995.

Stern decided it was best that Lange leave the show altogether. Lange later said that his relationship with Stern never recovered, one of many casualties of his addiction, though the radio titan did try to help.

"I never really wanted to die, I think," Lange now says, referring to "so-called suicides" as having been fueled by drugs.

"It's almost fully gone," he says of the darkness. "I can't say fully because I'm just a depressive person."

Don't Edit

Cindy Ord | Getty Images

The comedian's memoir details his go-to strategy for coping with frustration: use chaos as a distraction.

What frustrates Artie Lange nowadays? For one, his health. He had pancreatitis from taking, at one point five years ago, 120 Percocet (yes, you read that right, 120 pills, not milligrams, he says) a day. His liver and pancreas rebounded, but complications of diabetes hound him. Lange's sentencing for heroin possession was delayed because he's been in and out of the hospital. There's also the addiction itself.

"The dope makes me feel very weak as a person," he says. "I don't look at it as a disease. I think it's a weakness."

Another maxim from Lange's book:

"Learn to trust what your gut has to say, because it's the only thing that never lies to you."

But if his gut is telling him that he wants to cheat on his girlfriend and do cocaine and heroin, what is he supposed to listen to instead?

"There's no other voice that I have," Lange says. "I really have to stop myself from listening to the bad voice. It takes willpower."

Don't Edit

Enter the "what ifs."

What if he didn't mess up his relationship with his ex-girlfriend, Dana, in the 2000s? Lange, then in his 30s (pictured above in his 2006 slacker comedy, "Beer League"), told her that he cheated with a stripper when "Stern" was in Las Vegas. He defended the transgression by saying that if he never strayed, he would have always resented her for it, because of a rockstar fantasy he had since he was a teenager. The whole truth: he cheated with 11 strippers in the course of just five days (twice, he slept with three at once, he says in the book).

And what if, Lange wonders, he had salvaged any of his three to four relationships that were headed toward marriage — just a single fiancee?

"I watched all of them walk out the door," he says. "The last two I bought rings for and the last one really broke my heart. And it all had to do with drugs."

Don't Edit

Mary Cybulski | HBO

'Crashing' into the future

Though the series didn't get a nomination, HBO recently submitted the "Artie" episode of "Crashing" for Emmy consideration. The installment of the show about comedians, which aired in the second season in February, focuses on his character's struggles with addiction.

In the series (caution: clip below contains some explicit language), Lange plays a grumpy comedy veteran, a kid of friendly foil to the well-meaning, oblivious character played by comedian Pete Holmes. Producer Judd Apatow has pulled stories directly from Lange's first book, "Too Fat to Fish," to use in the show. In the "Artie" episode, because of a relapse, Lange ditches a benefit for a fellow comedian who is sick.

"That's a big thing with addiction, so much of it is accountability," Lange says. "Do you show up for stuff?" In reality, Lange has had to cancel shows because of withdrawal symptoms.

"That destroys me," he says.

Lange compares his interplay with Holmes to Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight in the 1969 Oscar-winning film "Midnight Cowboy" — he's the street-smart "Fatso" Rizzo to Holmes' naive lead.

"We look so different and it's kind of comical," he says. In the upcoming third season of the show, Lange will be in at least the first two episodes and as many as four, about half the season. Look for his character to do "something that involves athletics that's a very funny scene" in the first episode.

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

When it comes to career, Lange is satisfied, continually returning to that initial crush on comedy — a renewable resource in a life marked by loss, self-inflicted trauma and the ups and downs of show business.

"The one thing that has not abandoned me is comedy," he says. "It is insanely important to me, my work — and for my sobriety, too."

Lange recently celebrated the 31st anniversary of his first attempt at stand-up: July 12, 1987. It wasn't that he was any good back then — he just really wanted to do it, and he was pretty sure he wasn't going to become a shortstop for the Yankees. Plus, the way performing made him feel fed into his penchant for risk-taking. It was either that or loading trucks.

"Show business allowed me to get that rush from something legal," he says. Hearing David Letterman say his name — nothing was better.

"I still get it (the rush) now because I am unhealthy and sometimes I think because I've done so much dope, my brain's kind of fried," he says.

Don't Edit

Paul Zimmerman | Getty Images

After a show in Chicago last summer, Lange collapsed from diabetic shock and had to be treated in the hospital for an infection.

"In a crazy way, knowing that gives me the rush," Lange says.

"Because I'm ill, I might f*** up, and that's the risk," he says. "It's nutty."

Lange says he's had diabetes for three years, though any casual "Stern" listener knows that his insulin issues stretch back to the show. After he kept falling asleep on the air, Stern had someone test Lange's blood sugar. The results weren't great.

But Lange isn't out of the woods on another front. He recently had an operation on his sinuses and needs another one next month "to clean it out," he says.

For now, he may still get his kicks onstage — he has several shows coming up in August — but he's worried he physically won't be able to function as he has anymore.

"I don't know how much longer my body's going to take those risks," Lange says.

Either way, he considers his lifelong chase for the next high a lesson worth sharing.

"My hope is that people look at me and say, 'OK, you know, he had a charmed life. He was an overachiever.' My guidance counselor, if he knew that I made a few million bucks a year for a while and still do all right, he probably would not believe it," he says. "But I hope they look at it and go, 'Well, you know what? It could have been so much more.'"

Don't Edit

More Artie Lange

Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup or on Facebook.