Artie Lange needs that daily reminder.

Should he somehow forget the last eight months — the last two years, really, or even the past 30, if he's being honest — a glance in the mirror brings it all roaring back.

For Lange, an acclaimed stand-up comic trying to rebuild his career after yet another bout with drugs and the legal system, the cliché "As plain as the nose on your face" takes on a literal meaning

"It sure does," he says, chatting on the phone from his Hoboken, N.J., apartment eight days after getting out of three months of drug rehab, which came after three and a half months in a halfway house and two months in jail for drug-related probation violations. He starts a small Northeast theater tour at the Cohoes Music Hall in Cohoes on Oct. 4, with another show the following night at the Charles R. Wood Theater in Glens Falls.

In photos from a court appearance last December, Lange's deflated nose seems to cover much of the middle of his face. A blob of flesh resembling putty smushed beneath a boot heel, that nose is what happens after you snort cocaine and heroin and other drugs through it for decades— and, at least once, ground glass. The drugs were intentional, the glass the result of a companion crushing an OxyContin pill with the bottom of a glass salt shaker and not noticing it broke.

After more than eight months in different forms of custody, Lange was back on stage in a comedy club 10 hours after gaining his freedom on Sept. 10. The very first jokes he told were about his nose, he says.

Addressing the audience in Manhattan's Comedy Cellar, where management had welcomed him with stage time despite an unannounced arrival, he said, "A lot of people ask me a stupid question: 'How'd that nose happen?' And I say, 'Too much yoga.' I say, 'I stopped to smell the roses in life, and they had cocaine on them.' "

Lange chuckles at the memory, at the fulfilling, natural high of audience laughter, then says, "I'm like the opposite of Pinocchio: Every time I lied, my nose got smaller." Well, he adds, smaller as in flatter, but also wider.

He says, "My nose right now — I still can breathe through it — I will eventually fix it. But right now it's a reminder of what happened to me and the nutty life that I somehow lived through, and hopefully younger people will see what can happen. I look like a boxer. I never got in a fight in a ring in my life; I fought with drugs and addiction. I want to keep it now as a reminder, to keep me good, but I will get it fixed."

"If you look into his eyes, he's a different person than he was a year ago," says Tommy Nicchi, owner of The Comedy Works in Saratoga Springs. In addition to the club, which has a sibling Comedy Works that opened in Las Vegas earlier this month, Nicchi runs Stand-Up Global, a company with a portfolio of services that includes being agent and management for comedians. Originally brought aboard as Lange's agent to help book stand-up gigs, Nicchi became Lange's manager a little over a year ago, meaning he was there for the ignominy of the New Jersey court appearance where the viral photo of Lange's smashed nose was taken, the probation violation, jail time, halfway house, rehab and more.

"Artie is a great stand-up comedian," says Nicchi, "but he's ... one of the two or three best storyteller sof his generation. ... He's as good as Dean Martin was at his peak."

Like Martin, Lange was a comedy star. For the second half of the 1990s and the first decade-plus of this century, he was on TV specials and sitcoms, in movies, a sidekick for radio legend Howard Stern. Published reports toted up him being paid for TV development deals worth more than $1 million even for shows that never got made, $35,000-per-episode sitcom salaries, $700,000 a year from Stern's show and other $3 million annually in stand-up earnings. Six years ago, Lange got an $800,000 advance to write his second memoir, after the first book, from 2008, landed atop The New York Times best-seller list the week it was published and stayed in the top 10 for almost three months.

And through it all, Lange was doing heroin, cocaine and more. He suffered from depression. He attempted suicide twice. And yet, he says, because of the way his brain is wired, even in the depths of addiction and its attendant mishaps and depravities, Lange recognized material for his comedy.

He says, "There'd be a crazy thing that was happening to me on the road, and I would go in my head, 'Wow, this is a scary situation I've got to get out of right now, but it'll be great for the stage.' "

He continues, "That's what I do — mine my life for humor, for stories."

But, he acknowledges, the challenge for him now is to find humor in jail, rehab and sobriety, not a drug-fueled life.

"Balance: I've got to get that. Absolutely," he says.

He read voraciously during his various custody arrangements earlier this year, he says, including many stories of addiction and recovery, among them comedy superstar George Carlin's interviews about quitting cocaine. Stern fans sent him a favorite book he'd spoken of on the radio, John Kennedy Toole's iconic 1980 comic novel "A Confederacy of Dunces." And he wrote with such fervor that he finished another memoir, tentatively titled "Rippin' & Runnin': Life on Drug Court."

"When you're a celebrity or famous inmate of any sort, you're in protective custody," he says. "I was in my cell 23 hours a day, and I wrote the book and 14 hours of stand-up."

Now that he's out, he says, "This is when the hard work begins. It's not one day at a time; it's really one moment at a time."

If you go If you go Artie Lange When: 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 4 Where: Cohoes Music Hall, 53 Remsen St., Cohoes Tickets: $35 and $49 Info: 518-953-0630 or thecohoesmusichall.org When: 8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 5 Where: Charles R. Wood Theater, 207 Glen St., Glens Falls Tickets: $35 Info: 518-480-4878 or woodtheater.org See More Collapse

The authorities are watching. Instead of a longer period of incarceration, he was sentenced to drug court, which is an intensive period of treatment, monitoring and obeying the rules. It could last as long as five years, he says, though he hopes to finish in less. Getting caught using drugs again, or any other violation, could mean a years-long stint in prison.

"I'm blessed to be alive," says Lange, who will have eight months clean on Sept. 30 and turn 52 on Oct. 11.

"I didn't think I'd make it to 50, that's for sure," he says. His first drug arrest was at age 28, and he remembers reflecting on his prospects while in a Los Angeles jail. "That's when it hit me: I didn't think I was ever going to be an old person."

He says again, "I'm blessed to be alive."

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