NO LAUGHING MATTER –
May 28, 2025 – John Perrotta likes to stay busy. He 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.”
