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Reports: Comedian And Chicago Native John Mulaney Enters Rehab

CHICAGO (CBS) -- Chicago native John Mulaney is reportedly in rehab for alcohol and cocaine abuse.

The comedian has a history of addiction.

Earlier this year, Mulaney talked to Stephen Colbert on "A Late Show" about Zoom sessions with his therapist.

Mulaney: "She did say to me recently, 'I think people with your brain are thriving right now."

Colbert: "What does that mean?"

Mulaney: "I think that I thrive under the government kind of parenting me."

The New York Post's Page Six first reported that Mulaney, 38, started 60 days of treatment in Pennsylvania for alcohol and cocaine addiction recently after relapsing.

Page Six reported that Mulaney started first became sober at the age of 23.

Mulaney told Esquire Magazine in a cover story last year that he began drinking at 13 – first to "deal with the awkwardness of adolescence," and then excessively. He told the magazine's Jonah Weiner: "I was really outgoing, and then at twelve, I wasn't. I didn't know how to act. And then I was drinking, and I was hilarious again."

Mulaney told Weiner that drugs followed soon afterward. He said he never liked marijuana, but he tried cocaine and "loved it" and also dabbled with use of prescription drugs such as Vicodin.

Mulaney grew up in the Lincoln Park neighborhood and attended St. Ignatius College Prep on the Near West Side for high school.

His standup comedy routines have featured stories about growing up in Chicago – famously including memories attending "stranger danger" seminars in school as a youngster that were presented by retired Chicago Police Detective J.J. Bittenbinder, who also appeared in CBS 2 news reports as a safety consultant back in the 1990s.

Mulaney's representatives have not commented.

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