Amy Poehler isn’t really holding back in her new memoir, Yes Please — especially about how she said “yes please” to lots of drugs in her 20s.
“I tried cocaine, which I instantly loved but eventually hated,” Amy said in a chapter called “Obligatory Drug Stories,” according to Radar Online. “Cocaine is terrific if you want to hang out with people you don’t know very well and play Ping-Pong all night. It’s bad for almost everything else… The day after cocaine is rough.”
She said the same was true for ecstasy, which she tried while working on the Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB) show in the late 1990s.
“I remember a wonderful UCB New Year’s Eve party where we all danced and drank water and loved each other,” Amy, now 43, said. “I also remember the next day when I thought I had no friends and I was so sad I wanted to sink into the carpet and permanently live there.”
Young Amy Poehler with her Upright Citizens Brigade costars.
Even though she didn’t have as bad of experiences with marijuana, the Saturday Night Live alumna said regularly smoking pot just isn’t conducive to success as a single parent to her sons, Abel 4, and Archie, almost 6.
“I can’t perform, drive or write stoned, and therefore I smoke pot a lot less than I used to,” she said. “How do you explain to a 4- and 6-year-old that you can’t play Rescue Bots because you have to spend all day in bed eating Cape Cod potato chips and watching The Bicycle Thief?”
In another chapter, Amy addressed her divorce from Will Arnett for the first significant time — although she steered away from specifics, saying they are “too sad” and “too personal.”
“I am proud of how my ex-husband Will and I have been taking care of our children,” said Amy, who separated from Will in 2012, in a section excerpted by Hello! Magazine. “I am beyond grateful he is their father, and I don’t think a 10-year marriage constitutes failure.”
Although the transition seems to have gone smoothy as Amy and Will are still pictured out together with their sons, she said she was fearful.
“Imagine spreading everything you care about on a blanket and then tossing the whole thing up in the air,” she said. “The process of divorce is about loading that blanket, throwing it up, watching it all spin, and worrying what stuff will break when it lands.”
Part of the struggle, she said, was the strange line between feeling “incredibly alone” and knowing many others get divorces.
“You are constantly reminded by society of how frequently divorce happens and how common it has become,” she said. “You aren’t allowed to feel special, but no one knows the specific ways you are in pain.”
One thing that helped was remembering friend Louis C.K.’s words that “divorce is always good news because no good marriage has ever ended in divorce.”
Amy Poehler’s memoir, Yes Please, is available on Oct. 28.
