Artie Lange regrets not helping fellow addict Mitch Hedberg

When Kevin Meara started "City Of Angels" after he lost his son Casey to opioids, there were 44 people dying of overdoses a day. Now, despite all the hard work they do, that number is up to 190. That's per day! "It's the number one health crisis of our time," said Meara, who's helped comedian Artie Lange get treatment for addiction, when Artie decided on New Jersey 101.5 he was going into rehab.

Lange will perform this week t the Stress Factory on Wednesday and the Cherry Hill Crowne Plaza on Saturday. When Artie announced his decision on New Jersey 101.5, he talked about two of his comic friends that he lost, Greg Giraldo and Mitch Hedberg.

"Giraldo may have been the best roaster ever and Mitch Hedberg may have been one of the best joke writers of all time," said Lange, who regrets not reaching out to Hedberg when they were both 37, the age Hedberg died.

"The last time I saw Mitch was at the Howard Stern show and I was messed up and he was messed up and he had a gig at Caroline's. When I heard he died I had such guilt and said to myself, 'God if I was a better person, I would have just said, you know what, the heck with the Stern show, forget Caroline's,' I should have said 'Let's go to the hospital right now, let's get detoxed and get better right now.'"

But Lange knew one thing about Hedberg:

"Mitch was the kind of guy who openly said he was so far gone with shooting it then that he would say, 'Guys don't try to help me, I want to do heroin until I die,' and that's a mindset that people get into because they're so afraid of not being on it."

Artie said even that experience didn't stop him. Would he ever get to point of being afraid not to be on heroin?

"I hope not, I'm not even close to there."

Thank God and I pray that this is the time and the rehab that will keep Artie Lange on the road to recovery and may he never look back.

"The one thing about always being high," Lange said, "is Bob's funny."

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