How Kevin Smith's Tough Love Helped 'Jay & Silent Bob' Partner Jason Mewes Get Sober

Everyone needs a friend like Kevin Smith!

During a recent appearance on Steve-O’s Wild Ride! podcast, Mallrats star Jason Mewes opened up about how his Jay and Silent Bob partner played a huge role in his road to recovery from addiction.

As fans know, the filmmaker gave Mewes his first big gig in the indie film Clerks in 1994. They’ve worked together plenty of times since and formed a close friendship — so close, Smith gave Mewes some much needed tough love to help the actor get himself sober.

During his chat with the Jackass Forever star, Mewes said the director saved his life by strongly encouraging him to stay clean. How? He drove him to rehab, paid for treatment, and even let the actor stay in his guest home to keep an eye on him. On top of all that, Smith made it a stipulation for Mewes to be sober if he wanted to be in his films like Dogma and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

The actor shared:

“In the past, he would always try to help me like, ‘Hey, if you don’t want to miss out on this opportunity then you need to either go into rehab or you’re going to come stay with me and you’re going to stick by my side.’ Right before [Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back] I went and stayed with him in his guest house and I literally couldn’t leave his house or guest house unless I was with him.”

Now that’s a true friend!

Unfortunately, Mewes couldn’t pull himself together to be in the movie Jersey Girl, as he was facing legal troubles at the time. He told Steve-O:

“For one, it was like, ‘I need you to get better, or you can’t be around the house. And, you can’t do the next movie.’ I was supposed to be in Jersey Girl, but I couldn’t be in it. It wasn’t so much that Kevin was like, ‘I’m not putting you in it 100 percent because you’re getting messed up and you’re in a bad place.’ It was more like, ‘You have a warrant out for your arrest, and we’re filming in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh,’ or wherever they filmed it, and you could get arrested and then we’ll have to shut the movie down.”

While the road to sobriety isn’t an easy one, Mewes said Smith was patient — yet stern — every time he hit rock bottom.

The 47-year-old recalled a painful memory from a Thanksgiving back in the day where the director wouldn’t let him inside his house, sharing:

“I remember me and him sitting out in front of his house, and he’s crying, saying ‘I want to let you in, but the whole family is here.’ And I had like a tank-top on, and I had track marks. And he’s like, ‘I can’t have you see them like that.’ And I’m like, ‘I can’t come in for a plate of Thanksgiving dinner?’ And he’s like, ‘You can’t. Here, I am going to bring you some food.’ That was the first time I got sober for a while.”

Oh man, that’s heartbreaking!

Jason would relapse again years later after getting hooked on medication for his kidney stones, but he’s since gotten clean yet again — and he credits Smith’s undying support for helping him do so. He explained: