Tom Farley Jr.­: Connection is the cure

Tom Farley Jr., older brother of the late actor/comedian Chris Farley (“Saturday Night Live,” “Tommy Boy”) was the keynote speaker at the sixth annual “Light up the Night” recovery event Sept. 12 at Rhinelander’s Hodag Park.

A Wisconsin native, Farley shared his journey within the recovery community in an effort to increase awareness of addiction. 

We understand addiction better today

Addiction has become a less taboo word over the last decade. Many stories and experiences have continued to be brought to light because of events like “Light up the Night.” The Oneida County Substance Use Coalition hosts this event to encourage people to share stories, experiences and services that relate to addiction, and more important, connect people. 

Addiction is an epidemic, which means that its effects are felt throughout the population and does not discriminate. The Northwoods is no stranger to the impact addiction has on all members of our community. 

Farley shared a few factors that contributed to addictive behaviors among his family and himself. “Usually there are a few factors that when added together make the perfect recipe for an addict and for my family, we fit a few familiar categories: being from Wisconsin and Irish for starters…”

A few years back, Farley took his family up to the Northwoods to revisit several old stomping grounds. “We spent the day reconnecting with our favorite places, all your typical local bars, and at the end of the day we realized we spent the whole day inside and neglected to see the beauty right in front of us in the Northwoods,” he shared.

The actions of people who struggle with addiction sometimes become so second nature it is hard to imagine getting out of a different routine or even recognize what it is you are missing out on.

Addiction starts with how we are taught to cope with our emotions. 

“Our coping mechanism as a family was humor,” Farley said. “When we were stressed out, we laughed, when people were happy, we laughed. We didn’t want to be mean, but we just couldn’t empathize or handle the pain, so we used humor and we got really good at it.”

That humor was a blessing and a curse for the Farley family who are comedians at heart. It meant that anytime “we didn’t get the reaction we wanted, we developed a second wave of emotion: frustration and anger. So, we would ping-pong between these cycles which was hard. As social people we really loved to connect but these two extremes made it hard.”

How do we know?

Farley recalled the time he and his brother would spend in the Northwoods. 

“Chris always had his core group. Up here in the Northwoods I called his friends ‘the ensemble’ and same was true in high school, Second City, and in New York when he was on ‘Saturday Night Live,’” he explained. “But when he moved out to L.A. he became a commodity where he was treated like an athlete and told to get on the field even when injured. That was when he lost that connection.”

Tom shared that relationships are what helped Chris fight his addiction. As a family, it was hard to be that support sometimes because “we knew we couldn’t help Chris the way we should have or could have because we were afraid that meant we would have to look at our own selves and our problems, so instead we made it Chris’s problem.”

It was easy to find inspiration to help those suffering like his brother. Tom used the public platform to stoke the flames of the conversation on addiction and speaks around the nation at schools and various other venues since the inception of the Chris Farley Foundation in 1998.

“I used to be introduced as Tom Farley, the brother of actor and comedian, Chris Farley, who died of overdose/addiction, but now that I have moved beyond being an advocate and embraced my own recovery journey, I understand what it is to be my authentic self,” he said.

“Over the last 25 years, unfortunately I’ve met some of these people who experienced loss and grief from addiction, but fortunately, I met them,” he added.

He shared that handling the grief of losing his brother to addiction was what inspired him to be an advocate. He currently works as a community relations coordinator for Rosecrance Health Network, and also contributes to recovery.com as a major pillar in the conversations surrounding addiction, mental health and recovery.

His work seeks to use foundations of improvisational comedy in combination with advocating for mental health and sharing Chris’s story to “create peer enhanced environments, as opposed to peer pressured environments.”

“I looked at my brothers who all learned improv as a comedy tool, and they learned to make people laugh. I saw it as a way to teach connection,” he said, noting that he focuses on teaching about the consequences of drug use in combination with improv to generate trusting relationships among peers. 

Farley’s Personal Recovery

Over the years, Farley recognized that his life was far from ideal and he would experience these “train wrecks” as he would recall often occurred more frequently when drinking. 

“I recognized it probably wasn’t smart of me to be drinking,” he said. “It was hard because we could all look at Chris and say well, at least we aren’t that bad. But, we weren’t OK.” 

It is easy to point a finger at someone or some situation that is worse than yourself and find a temporary reprieve from facing your own reality. It wasn’t long after a few stints of sober living for months or years that a holiday would come along and temptation — as well as overconfidence — would hit.

“I would have that one Guinness on St. Patrick’s Day, which turned into two, and then the next thing I know I’m back on varsity, starting five —  just like that,” he said.

The routine gets tiring and Farley recognized that, which is when he got into actually working recovery 6 years ago. 

“I decided to try something new. I had a friend in the recovery community. I saw all the good she did in the community and thought, if I can’t say yes to her, then I can’t say yes to anyone. I decided to just surrender. Shut up and listen. So, I started going to the meetings and this is where I found my connection. I found my family in the rooms, I learned and understood what the words ‘rigorous honesty’ were. I didn’t even know that was a thing because I’m a marketing professional, and I’m Irish,” he laughed.

Like many other addicts, it was in these rooms where he found and became comfortable being his authentic self and getting to learn from the fellowship that is shared in the rooms: shared experiences to gain insight and teach us. He found who he was in surrendering to his fears. 

“At first there was a lot of fear of like ‘Who am I?’ and ‘What if I don’t like that person?’ You get over that through sharing at the meetings, but I lead heavily on being honest and authentic and get to the reality to control what I can control,” he explained. “I thought I was putting this person out there the world wanted to see. When I realized that in order for me to be that person, everyone else around me had to do certain things, and I had to control so many things, which ultimately pushed people away.”

Addicts create situations that encourage isolation. Despite being social people enjoying the fulfillment of engaging with others, Tom shared that he and his brother struggled because they both lost social bonds. Chris and Tom may have lost connections in different ways, but the cure was in finding individually how to regain that place of purpose and service to others. Once isolation is broken through, there are connections made that help people understand their behaviors and relate to others; in turn, reflecting on their actions and learn to try engaging in the world in different ways to see what works, then, we have found a cure. 

The Cure

“I realized when I started learning things like gratitude and honesty and humility, that the person I was putting out there could never be honest,” he said. “That person that I was showing the world could never be grateful, could never be humble, because it wasn’t a real person.”

 He began to learn who he was and turned the narrative of his conversation toward his journey in recovery. In living a life in recovery, Farley was now sharing more about his personal story and the connections made along his recovery that were the answers to his disease of addiction. Teaching connections and sharing his path, Farley has found purpose in service and continues to be an influencer in the recovery world.

Renee is an active member in the recovery community and welcomes any questions or constructive comments to continue conversations about addiction and recovery. She can be reached at [email protected].