Rescued by comedy

John Perrotta likes to stay busy. The Cranston native spent decades building a comedy business at night while working as a correctional officer by day. He did all this while living a reckless lifestyle that nearly ruined him on more than one occasion. Now 67, Perrotta has just released an autobiography, How Comedy Saved My Life: My Wild Journey of Addiction, Recovery & Making the Ultimate Comeback.

The story is largely unhappy, beginning with a difficult childhood. “My father was an alcoholic and had depression,” Perrotta says. “In the sixties he had shock treatments. I was an only child. Because of my father, I swore that I’d never drink, but I started in eighth grade. And I was an alcoholic from day one. It was crazy back then. You could walk into a liquor store at fourteen years old and nobody blinked an eye.”

The same was true of Lincoln Downs, the old Greyhound racing track. “I just walked in at fourteen, fifteen. Nobody cared,” he said. Gambling became an issue thanks to a friend with a bookie father. “I lost a thousand dollars in one week,” he says. “I didn’t have a thousand dollars! I thought they were going to break my legs.”

In high school, Perrotta discovered drugs. “Back then, between City Hall and Cranston East you could get any drug you wanted,” he says. “Coach [Michael] Traficante wanted me for the football team because I was a big guy, but I wanted nothing to do with it. I was behind the Park Theatre drinking beer and smoking pot.”

Living with two alcoholics was rough on Perrotta’s mother. At sixteen, he voluntarily went to Marathon House, a drug and alcohol program for adolescents, and he lived there for six months. The effects didn’t last.

The night after Perrotta finished high school in 1976, a group of graduates went to Scarborough Beach and spent the night on the sand. “At six in the morning I opened a can of beer. I looked around, and everybody on either side of me was passed out. I never wanted to stop.”

“The seventies were nuts,” he says. “It took until I was in my fifties to get the seventies out of me.”

After high school, Perrotta enlisted in the Navy, visiting 25 countries. In Egypt he smoked opium and stole a horse despite not knowing how to ride one. The women in Mallorca were so much fun that he missed his ship leaving. In New York, he went out drinking one afternoon and passed out in a men’s room. When he woke up three hours later, the bar was full and a band was set up. He hadn’t heard any of it. He was nineteen.

After the Navy, attempts to settle down were rocky. His first marriage lasted only seven months. But he went to CCRI and later to Roger Williams College, getting a degree in criminal justice. He was hired at the Adult Correctional Institute in 1982, and he was sober for a few years in the eighties. His first standup routine was performed during a rehab facility talent show. He remarried and had two children, but after a while returned to his old vices.

“I hit a lot of bottoms,” Perrotta says. His parents died in the early 2000s, from lung cancer and liver cirrhosis. “I’m so happy I’m dying,” his father told him. That was hard to hear, especially as his own life was crumbling at the time. His rocky second marriage was dissolving, and his wife took out a restraining order forbidding him from seeing his children. He discovered crack cocaine and moved into a hotel on Hartford Avenue.

A year after his mother died, he hosted an event at Stitches Komedy Kafe, a club that was briefly located in Providence Place Mall. Snorting lines backstage between acts, Perrotta suddenly felt that something was wrong. Heart racing, he stepped outside for air. “I thought I was having a heart attack in the parking lot of the Providence Place Mall. Imagine a worse place to go!”

He recovered but cites that as another instance of hitting bottom.

At that point, he’d been booking comedy shows throughout southern New England for over a decade. “Putting shows together keeps me busy. I do everything, soup to nuts,” he says, from working with venues and booking acts to managing table reservations and frequently performing himself. As a comedian, Perrotta says he mixes jokes with crowd work. “I’m fast on my feet,” he says. “I’m a ball buster. Don Rickles was my idol. I loved Rodney Dangerfield.”

“I didn’t sleep much,” he says of that period. “And some days I was a little hungover. It wasn’t easy being an addict. How did I keep my job?” He was still a guard at the ACI, where he remained until he retired in 2018.

When Terry, his second ex-wife, became very ill, Perrotta drove out to Cleveland, where she received a life-saving double lung transplant. Reunited, the pair decided to remarry. “My second wife became my third wife,” Perrotta says.

In 2014 he quit drinking again for about three and a half years. Then he was back at Twin River for one last weekend bender. Drinking, drugs, and gambling were a package deal for Perrotta.

After that, he quit for good. His doctor told him that he would have only made it for a few more years if he kept going.

Now he stays focused on comedy. “Sometimes I book two shows a week, sometimes it’s five,” he says. “In the nineties I once booked eight shows in one night and I performed at five of them, one after the other.” He regularly produces, hosts, and performs at venues around southern New England, like his regular All You Can Eat, All You Can Laugh events at Lemongrass in Warwick.

“We’ve got a good comedy community in Rhode Island,” he says.

Perrotta’s new book is published by Legacy Books, an imprint started by his son David. “Comedy saved your life, Dad,” David told his father, the family now reunited. The younger Perrotta is a dating coach and influencer who has published five books teaching men how to attract women.

“My son made me realize my life was really different from a lot of people,” Perrotta says. The book ends at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, where Terry presents Perrotta with a coin for eight years of sober living.

Perrotta hopes his book might reach readers who are in recovery, or who want to be.

“I don’t have the urge anymore,” he says about drugs and gambling. “I lost a grand every time I went to the casino. I went bankrupt twice. It’s like there’s a switch. As long as I keep the switch off, I’m a regular guy. I’m not proud of everything I went through, but I’m proud of the book. I’ve had a pretty good career. Now my high is being with my grandson.”

The June 14 book launch is a dinner buffet and comedy show at 39 West in Knightsville (39 Phenix Avenue). Perrotta will share the stage with local comedians Carolynn Gifford, Tyler Hittner, and Stephen Turgeon. Tickets are $60 for dinner and the show. Books are sold separately.

He’ll sign copies of the book before and after the show. Those who can’t make the show can stop by after 9:30pm for the book signing. Reservations can be made by calling (401) 639-7726.