Answer Addiction

Author: The Fix

  • Is Social Media As Addictive As Cocaine?

    Is Social Media As Addictive As Cocaine?

    One expert suggests that media-stoked fears about addictive technology only serve to divert attention from pressing problems like online privacy and user consent.

    Following a recent spate of headlines likening social media to hard drugs, some psychologists deny they’re similar at all. According to Business Insider, scientists from the Oxford Internet Institute believe it’s not only irresponsible to compare the two, but doing so actually distracts from far more serious problems plaguing the tech world.

    The media, though, makes it difficult to separate founded fears from the unfounded ones. The BBC recently reported that social media companies were actively addicting their users through a variety of psychological techniques—an alarming claim that, if true, makes social media addiction more controversial than it already is.

    “It’s as if they’re taking behavioral cocaine and just sprinkling it all over your interface and that’s the thing that keeps you coming back and back and back,” Aza Raskin, a former Mozilla engineer, said of the industry. “Behind every screen on your phone, there are generally like literally a thousand engineers that have worked on this thing to try to make it maximally addicting.” 

    Raskin says that he’s the one who conceived of “infinite scrolling,” where users endlessly swipe down through online content (think Instagram) without ever having to click anywhere. It’s a trick that keeps people glued to their devices, Raskin told the BBC, as it prevents a user’s brain to “catch up” with their impulses.

    Andrew Przybylski, however, doesn’t believe that Silicon Valley’s engineers can successfully incorporate psychology into any of their social media designs. Przybylski, the Oxford Internet Institute’s director, balked at the BBC story and labeled Raskin’s research as “very sloppily done.”

    He added that if Raskin “actually knew anything” about the psychology behind addictive technology, the much-reported dangers of social media would be frighteningly accurate.

    A number of stories continue to portray digital screens no differently than addictive chemicals. And while there is evidence that the brain releases dopamine when people check their Facebook account, Przybylski insists that it’s not remotely the same thing as getting high from a drug.

    “Dopamine research itself shows that things like video games and technologies, they’re in the same realm as food and sex and learning and all of these everyday behaviors,” he told Business Insider, “whereas things like cocaine, really you’re talking about 10, 15 times higher levels of free-flowing dopamine in the brain.”

    Przybylski suggests that media-stoked fears about addictive technology only serve to divert attention from pressing problems like online privacy and user consent. They also distract from the most important objective: good research.

    Przybylski is skeptical that enough research data exists in the first place, let alone social media companies regularly using it in their work.

    “The main takeaway here is that we don’t actually know these things,” said Przybylski, calling for more collaboration with research. “It is important for these large companies to share their data with researchers, and share their data with the public. This research needs to be done transparently. It can’t just be a bunch of Cambridge Analyticas and one-on-one relationships between social media companies and researchers.” 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Iggy Azalea On Demi Lovato’s Relapse: "To Be Honest With The World Is Admirable"

    Iggy Azalea On Demi Lovato’s Relapse: "To Be Honest With The World Is Admirable"

    “I had known about it, as a close friend. So I had really wanted for her to be the one to tell people about that, and I worried a lot…”

    Australian rapper Iggy Azalea is proud of her friend and fellow artist Demi Lovato for the way she “owned up” to a relapse after six years of sobriety. 

    “I had known about it, as a close friend. So I had really wanted for her to be the one to tell people about that, and I worried a lot… that something was going to leak or somebody would take that and use it negatively against her, or to make her seem like she’s got a secret,” Azalea told Entertainment Tonight ahead of a July 22 show where the two artists will perform together at the California Mid-State Fair.

    Earlier this year, Azalea had said that Lovato’s tireless advocacy for mental health awareness had made her more open to receiving help at a time when she was “mentally exhausted.”

    Lovato, who has shared every step of her recovery with the world for the last six years, released a candid confession via song last month called “Sober,” revealing that she had relapsed after six years.

    “I don’t know why I do it every time/ It’s only when I’m lonely/ Sometimes I just wanna cave/ And I don’t wanna fight,” she sings. “To the ones who never left me we’ve been down this road before/ I’m so sorry, I’m not sober anymore.”

    While worried for her friend, Azalea was pleasantly surprised by how Lovato handled the situation. “I didn’t know that she was recording that song,” she told ET. “I was just really proud of her that she was honest, because it’s really hard to be honest with yourself. So, to be honest with the whole world, [to share] something that you struggled with very publicly, it’s something that is very admirable.”

    In some recovery communities, a relapse is no longer a mark of shame or failure, but rather, a part of the process of recovery and growth. Lovato herself has been a tireless advocate for mental health and recovery support, working to erase the shame and stigma surrounding mental illness and substance abuse.

    She’s shared every part of her recovery including her rock bottom and her struggle with bipolar disorder, and admits when she’s feeling vulnerable.

    Her recent confession is just another part of her journey.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • 5 Tips For Staying Sober In College

    5 Tips For Staying Sober In College

    At the end of the day, the college experience is about so much more than just alcohol.

    For most people, college is not associated with sobriety.

    Such was the case for me during the first two years I spent away from home. I drank often and partied hard, convincing myself that it was normal. I liked to be the one outdoing everyone else, thought there was some badge of honor I could earn by doing so. And honestly, I had a blast—until I didn’t. I didn’t realize this right away, but I drank differently than my peers. While they knew how and when to stop, I didn’t. I all too often crossed from having fun to being a sloppy, drunk mess, saying and doing things I regretted come morning light.

    It all came to a head at the end of my sophomore year, when I ended up hospitalized with a .34 blood alcohol content. My parents gave me an ultimatum: get sober, or I wasn’t allowed back home for the summer. I went along with getting sober, never planning for it to actually be something I stuck with. I wasn’t even 21 and was still in college. Who got sober in college? I didn’t know of anyone, and I didn’t intend to be that person.

    But as time passed and I refrained from drinking, I realized that I felt good, both physically and emotionally. I liked being in control of my actions, knowing what happened the night before. It felt freeing. So, I ran with the whole sobriety thing, staying sober my junior and senior year of college, and now, for the three years following college.

    I won’t lie, maintaining a social life while being sober in college wasn’t easy. In fact, at times it was one of the hardest things I’ve done. But it is possible. Along the way I discovered a number of tricks that helped remind me why I was sober and made it easier to stay that way. Here are a few:

    1. Be honest with the people close to you. Sobriety isn’t easy. But it’s even harder when you try to do it alone. It’s understandable that telling people about your decision to stop drinking is scary. It’s not something very many people choose to be open about, especially in college. But if you can, pick two or three people you are close to and tell them the truth. Tell them why you decided to get sober and why it’s important to you to maintain that sobriety. If they ask how they can help, tell them. Express what you need, what makes you feel supported. They wouldn’t ask if they didn’t genuinely care and want to do what is best for you. Give people the chance to surprise you with their support, because they often will.
    1. Make self-care a priority. It’s easy to let self-care fall to the side in college. You get so busy with classes, with friends, with study groups, with sports, that you forget to take time for yourself. This is always important, but even more so when you are sober. In sobriety, you need to know when and how to take time for yourself. This means different things for different people. For one person, it may be a bubble bath and reading a book for fun. For another, it could be working out, or journaling, or attending 12-step meetings. Whatever the case, make sure you identify what it is you need and make it a priority in your schedule.
    1. Remind yourself you won’t be hungover come morning. For some reason, this was always a powerful tool for me. Just knowing how physically awful hangovers felt and how unproductive they made me for the entire next day was usually enough to quell any desire for a drink. When I first got sober, someone told me hangovers are actually a form of withdrawals from alcohol, which is why mine had been getting progressively worse. Reminding myself that the morning would be clear and I would be able to be productive and reach my full potential always brought me back to reality when I found myself wishing I could drink with my college friends.
    1. Connect with sober peers. Though it’s somewhat unlikely you will find these people in college, it’s not impossible. But if you don’t, there are other options. Because I went to a semi-small college, there were no other people my age who had gotten sober. But by going to some 12-step meetings and joining online communities, I was able to connect with people who shared my experiences and who were in situations similar to mine. Having that connection with others in recovery is vital in moments when you need support and understanding, or even need someone to tell you it just isn’t worth it to pick up a drink.
    1. Remember that the main reason for college is to receive an education—an expensive one, at that. This may sound odd, but for some reason it really helped me when I was wishing I could have a “normal” college experience and drink with my friends. I found it helpful to remind myself that first and foremost I was at college to get an education so I could pursue the career I wanted to pursue. College is not a cheap investment by any means. If I had continued to drink at the rate I had been, I likely would have wasted a good amount of money and not received the quality education I had hoped to attain at the college I chose. But today, I can say I got the most out of my education (the last two years of it at least) because I was fully present and invested.

    At the end of the day, the college experience is about so much more than just alcohol. Sure, at times this may be hard to remember. There will be days when it may seem like everyone around you is drinking or talking about drinking. It’s easy to feel left out, like you’re missing out on a college rite of passage. But that’s not true. These are the days it’s important to remind yourself why you set out to live a sober life and why it’s important for you to continue to do so.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Opioid Crisis In The 1800s Shares Similar Roots With Today's Epidemic

    Opioid Crisis In The 1800s Shares Similar Roots With Today's Epidemic

    Just as modern doctors began using opioids to treat a variety of pain, doctors more than 100 years ago used morphine in the same way, exposing more people to the drug. 

    Aggressive advertising touting the benefits of medications, quick fixes offered by new-found wonder drugs and doctors who didn’t realize the dangers of the medications they were prescribing sound a lot like all the pieces that led to today’s opioid epidemic. However, these are a few of the causes of opioid addiction that spiked in the United States in the late 1800s, according to a report in Smithsonian.

    At the time morphine was a new medication and doctors and patients were equally enamored with it. The drug became an ingredient in everything from teething serums to constipation cures, and by 1889, Boston physician James Adams estimated that about 150,000 Americans were “medical addicts,” addicted to prescription drugs rather than opium that could be smoked. 

    Just as modern doctors began using opioids to treat all types of pain, doctors more than 100 years ago used morphine to treat a variety of ailments, exposing more people to the drug. 

    Morphine became “a magic wand [doctors] could wave to make painful symptoms temporarily go away,” said David Courtwright, a historian of drug use and policy at the University of North Florida and author of the book Dark Paradise: A History of Opiate Addiction in America. “It’s clear that that was the primary driver of the epidemic.”

    One reason for the popularity of morphine among doctors and patients was aggressive advertising. An ad for Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup for Teething Children, which contained morphine, declared the product was “The mother’s friend.”

    Most Victorians didn’t realize that the medications, which were not regulated at the time, contained potentially dangerous ingredients. When these medications were found to be effective treatment, they became increasingly popular. 

    “If buyers took a spoonful because they had, say, a case of the runs, the medicine probably worked,” Courtwright said. 

    Eventually, doctors began to realize that the heavy use of medications containing opioids was unhealthy and leading to addiction. 

    “By 1900, doctors had been thoroughly warned and younger, more recently trained doctors were creating fewer addicts than those trained in the mid-nineteenth century,” Courtwright wrote in a 2015 paper for The New England Journal of Medicine.

    Government regulation also played a part and regulating the crisis, Courtwright wrote. Medical experts, led by Adams, began pressuring their colleagues to move away from opioids, and states began to regulate narcotic use. This led to a sharp reduction in opioid prescriptions.

    For example, in 1888, 14.5% of prescriptions filled in Boston drugstores contained opiates, but by 1908, only 3.6% of prescriptions filled in California contained the drugs. 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Using Smartwatches As Harm Reduction Is Misguided, Expert Says

    Using Smartwatches As Harm Reduction Is Misguided, Expert Says

    “If someone says, ‘Let’s do a line,’ I’ll look at my watch. If I see I’m at 150 of 160, I’ll say, ‘I’m good.’ That’s totally fine. Nobody gives you a hard time,” said one man.

    Can a Fitbit or Apple Watch keep you safe while you use drugs? That’s the idea presented by some people, according to CNBC.

    “If someone says, ‘Let’s do a line,’ I’ll look at my watch. If I see I’m at 150 of 160, I’ll say, ‘I’m good.’ That’s totally fine. Nobody gives you a hard time,” said one individual called “Owen,” a tech worker in San Francisco.

    It’s his way of being safe and not overdoing it, he tells CNBC. He’ll check his Fitbit at parties, nightclubs, even Burning Man. And if his heart rate gets too high, he’ll slow down.

    “I don’t really know what’s happening in my body when I smoke some weed or do some cocaine. I can read information online, but that’s not specific to me. Watching your heart rate change on the Fitbit while doing cocaine is super real data that you’re getting about yourself,” said Owen.

    According to CNBC, there are “dozens” of accounts of this activity across social media and Reddit forums.

    One Redditor posted snapshots of her heart rate data via her Fitbit. “Sometimes I go for 3 days straight if I have an 8-ball to myself,” she wrote, according to Mashable. “And yes, I do all that with no sleep whatsoever until all the coke is gone. I wear a Fitbit Charge HR and it’s been fascinating seeing my heart rate during these coke binges.”

    However, one medical expert was not impressed with this approach, instead painting it as misguided. “Taking drugs is always a risk, whether you’re monitoring a tracker or not,” said Ethan Weiss, a cardiologist and associate professor at the University of California, San Francisco.

    He says this use of smartwatch devices is hardly a foolproof harm reduction measure, even going so far as to suggest that “it’s possible this is leading people to do more cocaine.”

    Devices like the Fitbit and Apple Watch are only getting “smarter.” A team at the University of Rhode Island is working on developing software that would allow a person’s vital signs to be measured via a smartwatch. The idea is to make this information available to doctors, who may then adjust the patient’s medication or treatment regimen. 

    Perhaps this will catch on with “tech-savvy” drug users as well.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • "Eighth Grade" Star Elsie Fisher Discusses Social Anxiety

    "Eighth Grade" Star Elsie Fisher Discusses Social Anxiety

    The 15-year-old actress said the script for her new movie helped her better understand her own social anxiety.

    Eighth Grade is an acclaimed new film directed by comedian Bo Burnham, starring Elsie Fisher as an introverted girl trying to make her way through her last year of junior high.

    As it turns out, Fisher was able to bring a lot to the role considering her own adolescence was an anxious and awkward time.

    Fisher grew up in a well-to-do suburb, Thousand Oaks, California, and had a tough time navigating middle school. As she told Mic, she was dealing with social anxiety, and thought her experience “was very, very unique, but not in a good way. I’m like, ‘I’m the only person who feels weird and quiet and bleh.’”

    Then once she read the script for Eighth Grade, she realized, “Oh, everyone feels weird and quiet and bleh.” Like her character in Eighth Grade, Fisher also had to learn how to navigate the digital world, like every other teen in today’s day and age.

    “I think the biggest thing the movie did for me in terms of social media and the internet as a whole is just make me think about it more. I feel like a lot of people don’t think about the internet. It’s just part of the air they breathe. It’s very addictive, and you don’t often think about your addictions.”

    Once she read the script, Fisher felt that Burnham captured an awkward teen with social anxiety well.

    “I truly saw it as him writing a person who felt the same things as him, just in different circumstances,” she said. “He’s one of the few people I’ve met who really understands my level of anxiety, because he shares that.”

    The trailer for Eighth Grade shows a lot of young people escaping into their own iPhone worlds. Growing up in the age of the internet “makes everyone more self-aware,” Fisher says. “And it’s affecting young children’s brain chemistry. Because our brains are still developing, we’re the most susceptible to things that mess with them. And that includes things like drugs and alcohol and the internet. You shorten your attention span and increase your need for information and approval.”

    As Burnham told The Crimson, in today’s digital pre-teen and teen worlds, “We’re hyperconnected and we’re lonely. We’re overstimulated and we’re numb.”

    Fisher also feels that in today’s world, “There’s just a lot of disconnect from adults to teens. And I just think both sides need to be more empathetic towards each other. On the adult side, understand there’s a context for why the teen is on their phone. It’s because they don’t want to live in this weird world, [this] eighth-grade phase that America is going through. Teens aren’t self-obsessed because they want to be or because they’re narcissistic. It’s because that’s how we’re being raised, and that’s how you’re judged, based on your appearance online.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Frustrated Pain Patients Meet With FDA About Opioid Access

    Frustrated Pain Patients Meet With FDA About Opioid Access

    A group of pain patients met at FDA headquarters to share their personal stories in a bid to get the agency to ease opioid restrictions.

    The FDA called a meeting in Washington, D.C. to listen to pain patients’ experiences of lacking access to opioids to manage their symptoms.

    A group traveled to the FDA’s headquarters outside the nation’s capital to ask the agency to ease restrictions that they say has made it harder for them to obtain opioids.

    NBC News reported on the stories of some of those who urged the FDA to consider what it is like to have acute or intractable pain and be unable to find relief.

    Dr. Sharon Hertz, director of FDA’s Division of Anesthesia, Analgesia and Addiction Products, told NBC of the informal meeting, “We don’t have expectations for what we are asking. If we thought we knew, we wouldn’t be asking.”

    The Patient-Focused Drug Development Meeting included harrowing stories of suffering. Sandra Flores has a condition called adhesive arachnoiditis, which is an inflammation of membranes in the brain, spine and nerve endings. She has repeatedly attempted to obtain the correct drugs for her pain.

    “I am seeing the true face of medicine,” Flores said. “Now they are throwing me in the trash.”

    FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb made an emphatic statement on the plight of pain patients without access to relief. 

    “Tragically, we know that for some patients, loss of quality of life due to crushing pain has resulted in increased thoughts of or actual suicide. This is unacceptable. Reflecting this, even as we seek to curb overprescribing of opioids, we also must make sure that patients with a true medical need for these drugs can access these therapies,” said Gottlieb, according to PatientEngagementHIT.

    The FDA does not regulate physicians’ prescribing habits; states do. As of now, 28 states enforce limits on opioid prescriptions, says data from the National Conference of State Legislatures.

    Although the FDA, CDC and most major medical institutions agree that limiting access to opioid prescriptions is a necessary step in fighting the opioid epidemic, they do not want intractable pain patients to suffer.

    Under the new regulations, many doctors have simply stopped prescribing out of fear of lawsuits. Flores has been unable to find a doctor that will take her on as a patient. “No doctors will fight. They just don’t want to get into trouble. They have forgotten the people that these drugs were made for.”

    Rose Bigham, speaking on behalf of the Alliance for the Treatment of Intractable Pain, said in the Washington meeting, “To the FDA—we are begging you. Correct the CDC’s egregious mistakes. The CDC recommendations have done irreparable harm to people in pain.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Black Keys Collaborator Richard Swift's Cause Of Death Revealed

    Black Keys Collaborator Richard Swift's Cause Of Death Revealed

    The prolific musician battled alcohol addiction prior to his death. 

    The family of singer-songwriter and music producer Richard Swift confirmed that his death on July 3, 2018 was due to alcohol addiction. A post on Swift’s Facebook page confirmed that the 41-year-old died in a hospice facility in Tacoma, Washington one month after being hospitalized for hepatitis and liver and kidney distress.

    In addition to releasing several acclaimed solo albums, Swift performed and toured with the Black Keys, Wilco and the Shins, produced recordings by Damien Jurado and The Mynabirds, among others, and owned a recording studio, National Freedom, where artists like Sharon Van Etten and Guster recorded material.

    Swift was hospitalized in June for an undisclosed “life-threatening condition,” for which a GoFundMe page was established to offset hospital costs.

    After his death on July 3, Swift’s family, his label and Next Wave Management issued a joint statement on his official Facebook page to address questions about his passing. 

    The post’s authors confirmed that Swift suffered from alcohol addiction, which “ultimately took his life,” they wrote. With help from friends and family and the assistance of MusiCares, a foundation which provides medical and personal assistance to music industry figures, he had undergone “multiple stays” in rehabilitation facilities during the past two years, and was diagnosed with hepatitis and liver and kidney ailments in June 2018.

    According to the post, “multiple hospitals worked to help stabilize him over the course of that month, but his body was unable to heal, and per his wishes and with his family’s consent, he was moved to hospice care.”

    Swift died in the early morning of July 3, leaving behind his wife, Shealynn, and three children.

    A prolific and widely admired musician and producer, Swift began his recording career with two self-released albums that were reissued by the independent label Secretly Canadian as The Richard Swift Collection, Volume 1 in 2005.

    He issued a slew of solo work between 2007 and 2014, which featured contributions by Mark Ronson and Ryan Adams, among others, while also serving as a member of the Shins from 2011 to 2016 and as touring bassist for the Black Keys in 2014 and drummer for the Arcs. 

    Black Keys co-founder Dan Auerbach paid tribute to his friend with an Instagram post on July 3 that read, “Today the world lost one of the most talented musicians I know. I will miss you my friend.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Nature as Power Greater

    Nature as Power Greater

    How would I turn “my will and my life” over to the Earth which, as beautiful and awe-inspiring as it is, surely doesn’t care whether I get clean or don’t?

    When I was early in 12-step recovery and trying to get my head and heart around Step Two (as if Step One hadn’t been mind-blowing enough) my sponsor asked me, after I was adamant that working with a traditional ‘God’ concept wasn’t going to cut it for me, to make a list of everything that was inherently more powerful than me. It was a long list.

    Yet abstract notions like ‘love’ or ‘the Lifeforce’ or even the collective power of the ‘rooms’ didn’t work for me either. I sat in the local park, still newly raw and wide-eyed from being clean for the first time in 20 years, and realized what I was searching for was all around me. Nature, Mother Earth, the whole ecosystem of which we are a part, was a Power Greater than myself which I could easily access. While I had been getting high and getting low, the grass had continued to grow, the flowers to bloom and the tides to turn. Somewhat tentatively I discussed this idea with a few people in my home group and found it wasn’t anything new – GOD was used an acronym not just for the oft-repeated Good Orderly Direction or Group of Druggies but also Great Out Doors. I had found my way ‘in’ to the spiritual aspects of the steps.

    But could this Power Greater restore me to sanity? How would I turn “my will and my life” over to the Earth which, as beautiful and awe-inspiring as it is, surely doesn’t care whether I get clean or don’t? The sanity part at least turned out to be completely practical. Using nature to restore mental and emotional well-being, including to treat addiction, is nothing new either. Rehabs have been offering wilderness therapy, animal-assisted therapies and restorative time in nature as part of their programs for decades, and recent research into the affects of eco-therapy bears this out. A recent study at the University of Essex in the UK that discovered higher rates of low mood in those that moved from ‘green’ areas into urban ones, and increased positive moods in those who did the opposite. Another British study found that the mood boost provided by time in nature was particularly pronounced for those who had been clinically depressed at the start of the study. The positive effects of time in nature on children with behavioral problems such as ADHD is also well documented. Nature is good for our mental health.

    What about ‘turning over my will and my life’? I was never comfortable with the religious language of Step Three, so I knew straight away that for me it was going to be about letting go of the need to control, relinquishing my ‘small self’ or my ego-driven insecure persona in favor of who I was – who we all are – at our core. Part of a greater whole, part of the web and flow of life. My new awareness of the natural world helped make this notion more tangible, grounded in the world I could see and touch around me. For nature, researchers are discovering more and more, is completely interconnected and growth relies on collaboration more than competition. The disconnection and isolation of addiction is in stark opposition to this natural interdependence. And so Step Three for me became – and largely still is – about letting go of my addiction and all that accompanied it and realizing my place in the Web of Life.

    Not everyone will share my idea of Nature as the ultimate Power Greater. Not every person in recovery feels the need for a Power Greater at all. Whatever our personal recovery journeys however, the healing power of nature is readily available to us all.

    Photo by Riccardo Chiarini on Unsplash.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Simon Pegg Details Alcoholism, Depression Battle: It Was Terrible, It Owned Me

    Simon Pegg Details Alcoholism, Depression Battle: It Was Terrible, It Owned Me

    “It’s like you have grown a second head and all it wants to do is destroy itself, and it puts that ahead of everything else—your marriage, children, your job.”

    Now feeling secure in his recovery, British actor Simon Pegg is discussing the years he spent hiding his drinking problem and depression from his family and friends.

    “One thing [addiction] does is make you clever at not giving anything away. People think junkies and alcoholics are slovenly, unmotivated people. They’re not—they are incredibly organized. They can nip out for a quick shot of whisky and you wouldn’t know they have gone. It’s as if… you are micro-managed by it,” he told the Guardian, while promoting his new film Mission: Impossible: Fallout.

    But one can only hide it for so long, he cautioned. “Eventually the signs are too obvious. You have taken the dog for one too many walks,” he said.

    Pegg’s secret battle with alcoholism and depression—“It was awful, terrible. It owned me.”—was even hidden from his best friend and collaborator Nick Frost. The two have starred in many films together, including Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead.

    The actor, now 48, says he’s felt depressed since he was 18. He drank to self-medicate. “It’s like you have grown a second head and all it wants to do is destroy itself, and it puts that ahead of everything else—your marriage, children, your job,” he said.

    The worst of it—the “crisis years”—began during filming of Mission: Impossible III (2006).

    Even the birth of his daughter Matilda was not the turning point he’d hoped it would be. “It was the most cosmic experience of my life. I thought it would fix things and it just didn’t. Because it can’t,” he said. “Nothing can, other than a dedicated approach, whether that’s therapy or medication, or whatever.”

    That dedicated approach came a year later, when his drinking came to a head during a 2011 Comic-Con convention in San Diego. “I sort of went missing for about four days. I got back to the UK and just checked myself in somewhere,” he said in a June interview.

    At rehab, Pegg seized the opportunity to get well. “I got into it. I got into the reasons I was feeling that way. I went into AA for a while, too. I don’t think I would be here now if I hadn’t had help,” he told the Guardian.

    Now that he’s come out on the other side, he’s more comfortable discussing the times that he struggled.

    “I’m not ashamed of what happened. And I think if anyone finds any relationship to it, then it might motivate them to get well,” he said. “But I am not proud of it either—I don’t think it’s cool, like I was Mr. Rock ’n’ Roll, blackout and all that shit. It wasn’t, it was just terrible.”

    View the original article at thefix.com