Takechi, 48, of the comedy duo Super Maradona, struggled with alcoholism for years. He drank with fellow comics almost every night through his 20s and 30s, and 10 or 20 glasses a session was normal. He had been drinking for 20 years when a doctor diagnosed alcoholism and told him that if he wanted to live, he had to stop.
He ignored the instruction for about four years, he told Nikkan Sports. He lied to the doctor, saying he had quit and was not drinking, and drank in secret. "My body and mind were exhausted, but I still couldn't stop, and I stood on stage in a wrecked state," he said. Late last year he decided to quit.
His partner, Kazuhiko Tanaka, 49, had watched him keep forcing himself through their routines. Tanaka said Takechi sometimes admitted before a show that he might not be able to perform, and at other times spoke far too fast. On bad days he did the routine with no memory of it and asked afterward whether it was already over.
“I seriously thought, 'Is he going to die?'”Kazuhiko Tanaka, Super Maradona
Takechi nearly did. He fell asleep in the bath and almost drowned, something he said happened several times a week. Fearing he would lose the ability to do comedy at all, he chose between continuing to perform and falling apart, and began abstaining from alcohol.
The first days brought insomnia, and he went one night and then another without sleep. He filmed himself through it and posted the footage on YouTube every night. He is now 300 days in, close to a full year.
Upcoming shows
Super Maradona formed in December 2003. The pair reached the final of the M-1 Grand Prix, Japan's main contest for manzai stand-up duos, every year from 2015 to 2018, and won the Kamigata Manzai Taisho encouragement prize in 2017.
Takechi appears at YOSHIMOTO COMEDY NIGHT at the Yoshimoto Dotonbori Theater on November 6. From December into January the duo tours five cities with a manzai show: Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Fukuoka and Ehime, Takechi's home prefecture.