In trouble again. Troubled former Howard Stern Show personality Artie Lange has been arrested again, Radar Online reports.
“Lange is non-compliant,” an official from the Essex County Sheriff’s Office in New Jersey told the website. “Consequently, he will be taken into custody by officers from the Essex County Sheriff’s Office. He will be returned to the Essex County Correctional Facility in Newark.”
The troubled comedian, who has long battled with substance abuse issues, violated probation while completing his drug court program.
The official also told the site that despite recent reports that the 51-year-old had been doing well, the opposite was the case.
Radar reported in April that the comedian was ordered to an intense six-month drug program. “This program is going to force him to get clean,” an insider told the site at the time. “He has no choice. This is possibly the best thing that could’ve happened to him.”
Lange, who pleaded guilty to possessing heroin in December 2017, was serving four years of probation. The comedian was jailed in February 2019 after he twice tested positive for drugs — including cocaine, amphetamines, benzodiazepines, morphine, and Suboxone — in less than two months.
His Twitter account then announced that Lange would be heading to rehab.
Stern, 65, rarely speaks about his one-time sidekick who joined the show in 2001, but did address his struggles in an interview with The New York Times Magazine in early May.
“I choose my words very carefully because I love him,” the shock jock said at the time. “What’s happening with Artie makes me very sad. We’ve lost touch, and that’s my doing. I got my fingers crossed for the guy. And it wasn’t a clean break. It was many years of wanting Artie to get help.”
