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It's always exciting when a hammered Steve-O starts to run off at the mouth in the vicinity of a recording device, such as the time he announced on Jimmy Kimmel Live that he provided Paris Hilton with balloons full of nitrous oxide moments before she crashed her Bentley. The celebrity stunt-retard has cleaned up his act somewhat, however, as he recently told DailyCeleb.com (audio available here) that the only thing he's been putting up his nose lately is the barrel of a pneumatic nail gun. And who does he have to thank for helping him break free of cocaine's powdery siren song? None other than Nicole Richie—or to be more specific, Nicole Richie's celebrity:

I want to thank Nicole Richie. Seriously...We worked at the same production company...Nicole Richie said she wanted to meet Steve O. I got an unsolicited e-mail from Nicole Richie, saying "let's hang out, let's party." The first time I met her I was awake for the third day in a row on a cocaine binge. The second time were getting out of her car—I dont drive, I dont even own a car—we get out of her car and paparazzi are runing from every direction around the car popping our pictures, thumbs up, "YEAH!" Lovin' it...and I'm like, this is the kind of scrutiny I want my life to be under.

Nicole Richie brought me the attention from paparazzis that I've been craving all my life. My life was an agonizing wait to get to Hollywood. And thanks to Nicole Richie I finally got the attention that I wanted, and I just couldn't be a cokehead under that kind of scrutiny and so it's been now seven months almost to the day since I've touched cocaine, and I thank Nicoel Richie for that. She never did before. But I've seen her eat so much I'd think she's bulimic before anorexic.

We're not exactly sure how Steve-O chose to eliminate cocaine, as opposed to, say, any of the approximately four dozen other illicit substances coursing through his veins at any given moment. Nonetheless, we applaud his adoption of his cleaner-living lifestyle choices as a means to achieving lifelong goals of appearing alongside 73 pounds of primo paparazzi chum in the pages of Us Weekly. And what better way to repay his red carpet sponsor than by letting the world know that Richie in fact eats enough food for a family of four—she just happens to circumvent any of its permanent effects by making a quick, index-finger-enabled deposit into her Gustto bag before opening her car door and smiling for the cameras.