His life changed for the better on the day he stood up in a room and said, "I am an addict". And then, he discovered his raw talent for making people laugh.
His life changed for the better on the day he stood up in a room and said, "I am an addict". And then, he discovered his raw talent for making people laugh.
His life changed for the better on the day he stood up in a room and said, "I am an addict". And then, he discovered his raw talent for making people laugh.
Costa Carastavrakis — that's right, he's of Greek descent — is standing up, doing standup, in a Greek restaurant in Bedfordview, a suburb of Johannesburg that is about as Greek as you can get without crossing the Mediterranean.
"Bedfordview is so Greek," he says. "I mean, it's got two Greek churches. That's two Greek priests I have to dodge every Sunday!"
A ripple of laughter spreads across the room as Costa, wearing the traditional stand-up comedian's outfit of a black t-shirt and white trousers, gets into the groove, showing the style that won him the "upLiFTing Comedic Content Award" at the 2024 Savanna Comics' Choice Comedy Awards.
Not bad for someone who first took to the stage at the age of 44, with a gig at the Gotham Comedy Club in New York.
He's a little older and none the wiser now, and he's taken his show, "Desperately Seeking Souvlaki", as far afield as Los Angeles, Austin in Texas, and Athens, a city that is almost as Greek as Bedfordview.
But the really funny thing about Costa is the laughs he mines from his favourite topic. Himself.
"Can I stand up on stage and laugh at my life?" he once asked his therapist. To which the reply was, "Well, we got the meds right, didn't we?"
That came as a relief, because for a long time, Costa had been struggling with, well, let's just call them the wrong meds.
Cocaine. Crystal meth. Speed. Alcohol — lots and lots of alcohol.
And then, wrong place, wrong time, just as he was emerging from a breakup, somebody offered him some Methcathinone, a psychoactive stimulant that is better known as Cat.
"Cat is something that you inhale," says Costa, chatting with Ruda Landman for When Change Happens, the BrightRock Change Science podcast.
"You make a line and take it through your nostril. I'd never done that before. I was like, well, what can it do? How bad can it be?"
The next day, Costa phoned his friend and said, "You know what, I absolutely loved it. I was like, what if I get hooked? And he was like, oh, relax, it's just one line."
The thing about using drugs, as Costa soon discovered, is that they end up using you.
He had always been a party animal, getting drunk for the first time at the age of 12, and his animal instincts told him that life is better when you're on a buzz.
But he didn't have an off button. He was always on something, always high, until he came down with a crash.
He remembers falling off his chair at work one day, after sleeping in his car the night before because he couldn't find his house keys.
That led him into therapy, where he was told that he had a "very troubling relationship with alcohol".
Which was hardly a revelation. His therapist was "a bookish guy who didn't understand what it was like to have fun," recalls Costa.
"But he did help me look at me being gay, understanding it, assimilating it, and also sharing it with the world. So that was a great win."
Did it help him get over his troubling relationship with alcohol?
"No."
The real trouble was crystal meth, which sent him soaring like an angel and then tumbling into the deepest depression he had ever known, leaving a hole in his soul that could only be filled by more crystal meth.
He promised himself he could quit, and he did, pouring his last half a gram down the drain as his partner watched.
Except it was really sugar, and he had kept the real thing for himself.
"I was so crafty," says Costa. "I found a way to get him to go to bed so I could finish the half a gram I had left. I just finished the drugs I had on me. And that was when the psychosis really set in."
Crystal meth heightened his moods, swinging him from euphoria to paranoia to depression and back. He became a reckless borrower and spender, fuelling his increasingly grandiose dreams.
His epiphany — a nice Greek word, meaning "manifestation" — came when a friend helped him get into a 12-step programme, and he realised he wasn't alone.
"I was in a room full of people," he says, "and everybody had the same problem as me and we all kept nodding our heads when everybody spoke because we all shared the same affliction. And I thought, hang on a second, these are my people. And this could actually work."
In the powerlessness of standing up in a room full of strangers and saying, "I am an addict", he discovered a power he never knew he had. The power to run away from his problems.
In his book, "I Am Costa, From Meth to Marathons", he tells the story of his redemption and rehabilitation, how he worked his way from a wreck to a runner, going on to complete three gruelling Iron Man ultras.
He has been clean for 17 years now, and he has a lot on his plate, as a RocoMamas franchisee, motivational speaker, "company culture architect", and of course, standup comic.
And there's one thing you can be sure of, wherever Costa’s interests, obsessions, and talents may lead him next.
No matter how meze his life may get, there'll always be room on that plate for a little more souvlaki.
The opinions expressed in this piece are the author's own and don’t necessarily reflect the views of BrightRock.
