This really made me stop and think. Here is the You Tube video, and I wrote down the words:

It's a great day for Americans. Happy President's Day! It's a great day to celebrate this great country and the freedom of speech, for which we are so rightly famous.

Because I'm going to talk about something tonight that's a little bit different. I want to talk about something that's been bothering me for a little while now.

You know if you've ever seen this show before, I know that's not everybody, but... If you've ever seen this show before you know that I make fun of people on this show. I make fun of a lot of people on this show.

Now a couple months ago, Kevin Costner got himself into some kind of bother, and I made fun of him in the monologue. And then, a couple of weeks later, I met him at this event, and I could tell he was, he was angry at me, I could tell that. But I was told he's a very polite man, and a gentleman, and I could see in his eyes he made a decision to not go after me, just to be polite and nice and stuff.

And that kind of freaked me out because it kind of personalized it for me. Up until then, that guy was there with his wife and his kids and stuff, and I was like ragging on him on television, and I was... I'm not sure if I feel good about this.

It was the look in his eye that bothered me. And I began to think, at what price am I doing this stuff? And I started to think about the effect it was having on real people, and it's been needling at me a little bit ever since.

Now I'm as guilty as any... I'm as guilty as sin about this. I mean, I made fun of the lady astronaut wearing the diapers when she was driving. That is clearly funny, that is clearly a funny thing. But at the same time, then the mug shot comes in, and I go, this woman's in trouble, she needs help.

And then I'm thinking, I don't know how good I feel about this. And I need to do stuff that I feel comfortable with. I want to be able to be funny, but I want to be able to get some sleep. So... and I don't just do this job for the money, I assure you, which is handy, because there isn't much in it.

It's been happening in the press and the media lately, particularly in the so called news outlets, the way the media is looking at the world.

I kind of had similar feelings when I used to watch America's Funniest Home Videos. You know, you'd be laughing at the kid falling over, and then you'd go, "Wait a minute, put down the damn camera and help your kid! What the hell is wrong with you?" And I think we're kind of holding the camera - and people are falling apart. People are dying. That Anna Nicole Smith woman, she died!

No, it's not a joke. You know? It stops being funny, that. She's got a 6 week old kid, or a 6 month old kid. What the hell is that, you know?

And I'm starting to feel uncomfortable about making fun of these people. And for me, comedy should have a certain amount of joy in it. It should be about, about always attacking the powerful people - attacking the politicians, and the Trumps, and the blowhards. Go after them. We shouldn't be attacking the vulnerable people.

This is totally a mea culpa. This is totally just for me. I think my aim's been off a bit recently. I want to change it a bit. So tonight, no Britney Spears jokes. And here's why. Here's exactly why. Britney Spears - ...

No, it's the truth. Wait...

I'm not doing them! The kind of weekend she had, she was checking in and out of rehab, she was shaving her head, getting tattoos, that's what she was doing this weekend.

This Sunday I was 15 years sober.

So I looked at her weekend, and I looked at my own weekend, and I thought, you know, I'd rather have my weekend. But what she's going through reminds me of what I was doing, it's an anniversay, you start to think about it. It reminds me where I was 15 years ago, when I was living like that.

Now I'm not saying Britney Spears is an alcoholic. I don't know if she is an alcoholic or not. But she clearly needs help.

Now what I do here is I speak for myself. There's always speculation when you're in In television that someone's behind it, a corporation,
the production people, No, this is me. This is me. This is me and you.

I'm trying to be honest with you, I'm not an expert about alcoholism but I am an expert on my own story. I'm trying to be honest with you. This is my own story. I was there when it happened. I was present. The tape recorder wasn't running until February 18, 1992.

It made me think of the last weekend when I was a drinking man.

I was in a terrible, mess. I wasn't shaving my head or getting tattoos, I saved that for a bit later. I got that for my midlife crisis.

When I got sober, I was a bit older than Britney. I was 29. And Christmas morning before I got sober, I had been on an all-night bender, and I woke up in a room above a bar. I had been in that pub the night before, it was Christmas Eve, I was going to have a drink and then go home. I was going in London, I was going to go to Scotland, then one thing let to another, and I stayed in the room above a pub. I woke up on Christmas morning, and I was soaked in my own urine. At least I think it was mine. I can't be sure... I hope to this day it was mine.

I woke up that morning - now this is the mind of an alcoholic - I thought to myself, you know, I can't do this anymore. I'm going to kill myself today. I'm going to do it today. I made a plan, I'm going to go to the Tower Bridge in London and I'll swan dive. I don't know how to swan dive, but... I thought, by doing this, I'll show them. I didn't even know who they were. I was desperately confused and desperately twisted and turned upside down by whatever the hell was going on in my head.

On the way out of the bar, you know, Tommy the barman, that I'd been drinking with, you know, he was kind of playing around at the bar, he was getting drinks together at the bar in the morning. Now he had slept behind the bar all night, I'm not saying he was an alcoholic, but he slept behind the bar all night.

He was an Irish fellow, Tommy, and he said to me, "Where are you going?" I didn't want to cause a fuss and say I'm going to the Tower Bridge this morning to kill myself, so I said, "I'm going home."

And he said, "To Scotland? I said, "Yeah."

He said, "Well, there's no transport. It's Christmas. You can't get a bus. The planes aren't running, there's no, you can't go anywhere."

And I said, "Just let me go, Tommy, will you?" And he said, "Well, before you go, have a glass of sherry for Christmas morning." And I said, "Oh, all right, all right."

So he poured me the type of glass of sherry that only an alcoholic would pour you. A Venti sherry they would call it in Starbucks.

And I had my glass of sherry, and you know, one thing led to another, and I forgot to kill myself that day.

Here's the important point - the alcohol saved my life. I was self-medicating. I'm an alcoholic, I needed alcohol. I needed something.

And from that point on, until February 18 the following year, I was in a fog. I was on a wild bender. I was doing standup gigs, apaprently. I wish we had tapes of that! I'm sure they were hilarious.

Anyway, on the day I finally decided to stop, I called a friend of mine who had disappeared out of the pub world and there was scuttlebutt about him in the bars. And I said, "I need help." And he said, "I have been expecting this call." And he got me into a rehab. And it wasn't like the way the rehabs are portrayed in the news at the moment. Lindsay Lohan and the fabulous all...

My rehab roommate was a 65 year old vicar, a priest, from the Church of England. He said, "Well, he thing is, Craig, the parishoners were all complaining that all the communion wine was going missing. An old lady complained that there was a hobo sleeiping in the church graveyard. I had to pretend to go and look for him, but it was me!"

And so what happened was, I stuck with it. There is a myth that goes around the popular culture, I think, right now, as well, that says alcoholism can be cured by a 28 day stint in rehab. I'm sorry to annoy the censors, but that is horseshit. That is horseshit. That was not my experience.

For me, there are two types of rehab clinics. There are the good ones that say to you, you've done your 28 days, now this is the begining, you now have a lifetime of vigilance. This is a chronic condition you are going to have to manage, that you will have to deal with the rest of your life. The bad ones will say, you're good, off you go.

The Reverend Ted Haggard, for example, when he gets out of rehab and is cured of his gayness - this is clearly an unscrupulous bunch of people running that rehab!

The point I'm trying to make to you is this. Now, I have been sober 15 years. There is absolutely no way I have a drinking problem. I don't have a drinking problem - I can get one fast, but I don't have a drinking problem. I have a thinking problem.

I'm 15 years sober. Last week, right, I found out that Guiness has 125 calories a pint and I'm thinking, without a wink of an eye, maybe I should go on a diet! That's clearly insane. What Guiness did to me, and I'm thinking, well, it's only 125 calories, what can possibly go wrong?

I want to make clear, I'm not advocating temperance, I'm not. I'm not advocating that. I'm saying, this is for me. If I could drink, I would drink, but I can't. You can't say to kids, drink responsibly. You can say to me, drink responsibly and I'll say I'll try! But I can't.

Certain types of people can't drink. And I'm one of them. I threw in the towel with alcoholism 15 years ago, and I've been trying for the last 15 years to get little bits of it back.

And it looks to me a little bit that Britney Spears has a similar problem going on with alcohol. This woman has two kids. She's 25 years old. She's a baby herself. She's a baby, you know.

And the thing is, you can embarrass somebody to death. It is embarrassing to admit you're an alcoholic. It's embarrassing to wake up in your pee or someone else's pee. It doesn't really matter. It's embarrassing.

Now I'm not absolving this woman of her behavior. I'm not. You have to be responsible for your actions, sick or well. You have to be responsible for your actions - you just have to be, all of us are accountable, you have to be. God knows, if you have a kidney problem, it's your responsiblilty to get yourself to dialysis. It's your responsibility to deal with the condition that you have, in whatever way you can.

Now, all of us - in America and in Scotland and anywhere I've ever been in my life - everbody knows an alchoholic. They either work for one or they have one work for them, or they have a parent, or a sibling, or a child - everyone, there's not one of us - they have a friend, God forbid some people are married to them - you all know what it's like.

I have found this. You can't beat it with money. If you could beat this rap with money, rich people wouldn't die. You can't.

This is for me, only for me, and I only speak for myself, I have to stress this for you. I have found that the only way I could deal with it is find other people who had similar experiences and talk to them. It doesn't cost anything. It doesn't cost a thing.

And they're very, very easy to find. They're very near the front of the telephone book.

Good luck!