His Latest Trick? Staying Sober

REGRETS, Steve-O’s had a few. Not among them: holding a lit firework in his derriere, attaching a leech to his eyeball, inserting a hook through his cheek and swimming with sharks, or any of the other stunts he performed as part of the “Jackass” cast.

But the way he conducted himself when he was off-camera — the drug and alcohol binges; arrests (for drug possession, disorderly conduct and assault); the time he urinated on the red carpet at the premiere of “Jackass Number Two” in front of his entire family — those were not his proudest moments. Yet they weren’t quite regrets, either.

If he hadn’t done all that, “then I wouldn’t have the real motivation” to act differently, he said recently, over dinner at Angelica Kitchen, a vegetarian restaurant in the East Village.

Steve-O, 36, born Stephen Glover, has been a vegan for more than a year. He says he has been sober for two and a half years, including during filming of “Jackass 3D,” the third installment of the prank series, which opens Oct. 15.

For much of his professional life, he said, he was high. “Just about every scene in that first movie, except the ones we filmed in Japan, I was visibly on cocaine,” he said. After promising his co-stars, he stayed off drugs for the second film, “but I was more out of control in other ways.”

He was hearing voices, one in each ear. “I can only describe them as demons and angels,” he said. In 2008, his cast mate Johnny Knoxville, with the help of Dr. Drew, the TV therapist, staged an intervention that resulted in Steve-O being committed.

“I was locked up in the psych ward with two weeks on my hands,” Steve-O said. “Some people came in and talked about how they stayed sober and it stuck. They gave me the idea that getting sober was something that could be done and that I had to do it.” He spent six months in treatment, then moved into a halfway house.

Now he lives alone in suburban Glendale, Calif. “I keep it simple,” he said. He has a dog, “a diversion named Walter.”

In a backward baseball cap, loose jeans and flip-flops, he is unassuming enough to sit on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, after having walked there from Times Square, and famous enough to be spotted by a tableful of teenage girls, who squealingly asked for photos. (He obliged.)

For a while, being Steve-O had been his full-time identity, and his downfall. At the premiere of the second “Jackass” film, “I felt like I was at my own funeral,” he said. “I was convinced there would be no more movies, nothing was ever going to be that big of a deal. I was so afraid of the rest of my life. I just didn’t have any identity aside from my persona. Peeing on the red carpet had a lot to do with that.”

Now he’s trying to be someone off-screen as well. He is a mentor to a boy in juvenile detention and he’s working on his autobiography. “My main focus in sobriety has been to replace fear with faith or love,” he said.

But fans of “Jackass” need not worry that Steve-O has gone soft. “If I don’t perceive a risk of paralysis or death, then I’m in,” he said of his stunts. He still has a BB embedded in his nipple from the new movie. “It’s a pretty gnarly nipple wound,” he said, lifting his shirt and pressing a finger on it to show it off.

After dinner, he met a few friends at 675 Bar, a sleek pool hall in the meatpacking district. They shot a few games, and Steve-O goofed off, trying to juggle (he’s a graduate of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College), but by 10 p.m. he was dutifully heading to a 12-step gathering. “I don’t care if people think I’m boring,” he said.

A few weeks later, at a promotional event for “Jackass 3D,” he set his head on fire.