It was the art of the scam for Al Joyce.

Decked out in a blazer and turtle neck, the criminal justice student walked into area liquor stores in a small Massachusetts county and asked each owner survey questions for a college course: do you keep a handgun on the premise? What do you do for security?

He familiarized himself with which stores kept guns and cameras.

“Then I went back and robbed every freakin one of them,” said Joyce, a convicted career criminal and recovering heroin addict. “What we are is thrill seekers. We’re drama junkies.”

On Friday afternoon outside of the Starbucks at Parkplace, Joyce pulls out a pack of cigarettes.

“Do you mind if I smoke,” he says in a rough Boston accent over the squeals of children chasing each other behind a group of parents seated at a table nearby.

Joyce recounts his criminal past – a 17-page record that includes 73 arrests and seven incarcerations for armed robbery. Over the years, he’s also been through nearly 20 drug and alcohol detox programs.

“I’ve got nothing to lose, you know what I mean,” said Joyce, 55, who has now been clean for eight years. Known as “Felon O’Reilly” in the stand-up community, Joyce will perform recovery comedy at the Kirkland Performance Center Sept. 18. “For me to have the low bottom that I did and then to be given this gift of sobriety, for me to just go to a couple of al-anon meetings a couple times a week and not do more, it would be unworthy of the gift.”

His addiction took hold when he was just 14 as he started drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana. By 17, he was injecting cocaine intravenously.

“So I did that for about 22 years. I tell everybody that I tried cocaine once for 22 years,” Joyce laughs.

He would go on a cocaine bender for 10 days and do nothing but drink beer and inject cocaine, he said. During that time, he described life as “insane.” He worked in construction – the “perfect place” for an addict because it’s “cash money and lots of it,” he said.

At 43, his father died and he took care of his mother while she was sick. Shortly after, she died and Joyce started shooting heroin. He intended to just get high for a couple weeks and get cleaned up again, but two weeks turned to two years.

And then he had his best high – armed robbery – and found out about prison.

“Probably saved my life,” he said. “Anytime I’ve ever put together long-term sobriety, it started in a prison cell.”

Locked up in the Maine State Prison, Joyce discovered that inside, there were men just like himself, looking for the “juice” and the “rush.” He was also afraid to leave the protection of the razor wire, where inside he had status and wasn’t considered a junkie.

And that’s one of the reasons he started doing stand-up comedy. He said people need to understand that addicts can recover and become contributing members in the community.

In prison, he also learned that he didn’t have to be high to have fun.

He hosted burrito parties where he would invite several inmates into his cell and he would tell stories.

“We’d sit there shooting shit,” he recalled. “Later that night at lights out everyone went back to their cell and I was sitting there by myself and I realized that I’m sitting in a federal penitentiary with no drugs and no booze laughing higher than I can remember laughing since I was a little kid. So it gave me that little bit of hope that maybe I could have fun without drugs and booze. I didn’t stay clean and sober from that day on, but I never forgot that.”

One of his turning points to get clean came when his son was born. He would develop a relationship with his son, then get a “dirty year” and go back to prison.

“I had failed as a son, I had failed as a sibling. I had failed as a husband and now I couldn’t even be a father for my son. So that made me want to be clean and sober.”

From that point, it took him eight years to get sober. In April, he celebrated eight years of sobriety.

And now his focus is to help others.

His favorite gig has been speaking with inmates at federal prisons. He’s gotten thank you letters from from inmates saying that Joyce has given them confidence to rebuild their lives. He also speaks at juvenile facilities and high schools, and has done recovery comedy for six years.

He says he’s not afraid to let his secrets out, because “one of the drawbacks of the whole anonymity thing is it just perpetuates the stigma of the disease.”

He looks back on it all and says through “all those days of self-loathing – I would do that all again day for day to have the life I have today.”

More information

Career criminal-turned stand-up comic “Felon O’Reilly” will perform “Laughs Without Liquor” show at the Kirkland Performance Center at 8 p.m. Sept. 18. Tickets cost $15. For information, call 206-719-9136 or visit www.felonoreilly.com