Darrell Hammond Was on Booze and Crack

Darrell Hammond has a new book out which talks about his days on SNL. He says, to escape the memories of a traumatic childhood, he ended up drinking heavily and doing cocaine and crack and was once taken from NBC “in a straightjacket.”

“I kept a pint of Remy in my desk at work,” Hammond recalls in “God, If You’re Not Up There, I’m F*cked,” out Nov. 8 from HarperCollins. “The drinking calmed my nerves and quieted the disturbing images that sprang into my head … when drinking didn’t work, I cut myself.”

In 1998, cops took Hammond from the NBC infirmary to New York Hospital in a straitjacket. “My wife came but I didn’t recognize her,” he writes.

In 2002, Hammond recalls, “I’d started adding an obscene amount of cocaine to my binges … I had to be creative about how I did it without other people catching on or letting it interfere with the work. At least too much.”

In 2009, during his 14th “SNL” season, and having gone to rehab once, Hammond relapsed. “I had the brilliant idea I should try crack,” he writes — and he spent time in a Harlem crack house. Page Six

You’d think a coked up Darrell Hammond would have made SNL a lot funnier what with awkward pauses and unscripted lines, but no, the show still sucked. If only Darrell Hammond wasn’t a functional drunk. Sometimes you just want to wish for someone to have a more debilitating addiction.