Comedian and talk show host Bill Maher has never been one to avoid controversy. But now he’s opening up about a past experience that even he would rather forget. On his podcast “Club Random,” Maher confessed to his guests Tommy Chong and Cheech Marin that he was once arrested for driving under the influence. “I spent a night in the Beverly Hills jail, a DUI in 1992. I’m not proud of [it],” he said. “But I was barely over the limit. Both with the speeding and with the drinking. With what I was wearing at the time, leopard-print shoes, I feel might have influenced the officer.” While the challenging ordeal clearly stuck with him, he reflected on the experience with his signature humor. “It is sobering … I ordered raisin toast, no raisins. I mean the room service was like an hour, the air conditioning made a noise … you can’t get a good jail cell these days,” he chuckled.
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In a previous episode of “Club Random” with guest Bill Burr, Maher avoided laughs and spoke honestly about the experience. “It was a nightmare,” he shared, adding how the arrest coincided with the start of his first major television hosting gig. “It could’ve wrecked my life because it was just as I was starting ‘Politically Incorrect’ and I had to get a special dispensation from the court to interrupt my 14 week corrective programming that you have to go to when you get a DUI.”
Bill Maher has shared his thoughts on alcohol
Bill Maher is not the only celebrity that has gotten in trouble for drinking too much. But more than 30 years after his arrest, Maher uses his platform to sway viewers away from heavy drinking. While it is not personally his vice of choice, Maher expressed how he sees society becoming increasingly dependent on alcohol. In June 2021, Maher spoke on the subject during the “New Rules” segment of his HBO show “Real Time with Bill Maher.”
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“Since the turn of the millennium, alcohol consumption in this country has risen steadily and alcohol-related deaths have doubled,” he told viewers of his late night show. “Even millennials who used to be the more sober generation are now dying of cirrhosis of the liver at record rates. And that was before COVID hit, when the locked down nation really hit the bottle. The pandemic was an excuse for people to drink more, drink in the day, and drink alone.”
Maher shared his opinion on how the pandemic did and didn’t influence alcohol consumption, saying “The COVID epidemic may be subsiding. But the epidemic that preceded it, the anxiety epidemic, is not. And usually when people drink, it’s to alleviate some form of anxiety.” Maher even admitted. But Maher concluded by leaving viewers with a warning, stressing, “We have got to get a handle on our anxiety, and it can’t be through the bottle.”
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