Answer Addiction

Tag: celebs & mental health

  • John Goodman On Depression, Addiction

    John Goodman On Depression, Addiction

    The prolific actor, who’s been sober for 12 years, has been candid about his past struggles with alcoholism and depression.

    John Goodman of Roseanne and now The Conners has struggled with depression since gaining widespread fame in the late 1980s, according to a report by Amo Mama. He also battled alcohol addiction for decades, avoiding treatment until the problem got out of control and his wife got him into treatment in 2007.

    Heavy Drinking Affected His Job

    He spoke on this in a 2018 interview with Willie Geist of Today, revealing that he missed a rehearsal because he was still drunk from a weekend out with friends.

    “I was shaking, I was still drinking, but I was still shaking,” he said. “I had the clarity of thought that I needed to be hospitalized.”

    Now 12 years sober, Goodman is starring in the second season of The Conners, which premiered on Tuesday.

    Goodman’s mental health and substance use issues began after the success of Roseanne launched him into tabloid-worthy status.

    Dealing With Fame

    The actor had a difficult time adjusting to the new level of fame and scrutiny, calling it “very unnatural.” He had such a distaste for it that after the show ended, he moved his family from Los Angeles to New Orleans in an effort to escape from the unwanted attention.

    “I’d had it with show business, publicity, tabloid stuff – I’d just had it,” he told The Guardian in 2015. “I kind of wanted to get her, my daughter, away from that.”

    Unfortunately, by that time, Goodman was already in the grips of alcohol addiction. Though he never suffered an overdose, he admitted that “there’s many times I could have gone under” in terms of some type of “misadventure.”

    Now, however, Goodman says he only drinks in his dreams.

    Roseanne’s Cancellation 

    Though he’s doing well with his sobriety, Goodman still struggles with depression from time to time. He revealed in 2018 that he went through a depressed period that lasted about a month after the Roseanne reboot was canceled following racist comments from the show’s namesake, Roseanne Barr, about former senior advisor to Barack Obama, Valerie Jarrett.

    “I was brokenhearted, but I thought, ‘OK, it’s just show business, I’m going to let it go,’” said Goodman. “But I went through a period, about a month, where I was very depressed. I’m a depressive anyway, so any excuse that I can get to lower myself, I will. But that had a great deal to do with it, more than I wanted to admit.”

    The reboot was quickly re-crafted into a spinoff, The Conners, in which Roseanne dies suddenly of an opioid overdose following a hidden addiction and the family has to move forward without her — something many Americans could identify with at the peak of the opioid crisis.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Lake Bell Details Traumatic Home Birth To Destigmatize Psychiatric Meds

    Lake Bell Details Traumatic Home Birth To Destigmatize Psychiatric Meds

    “I barely take Advil but I was like, this is absolutely imperative in order for me to function.”

    Actress Lake Bell was a believer in the “organic f—ing kumbaya way of living,” but that did not stop her from seeking medication after a traumatic home birth in which she nearly lost her son.

    “It was like I need something, I can’t be a person. I don’t know how to be… I had never felt that before,” the Bless This Mess star said on a recent episode of The Conversation with Amanda De Cadenet. “My heart aches for those who feel that through the hardship of their life every day, like, I have felt it. I know what it is and it’s a monster. It’s a demon.”

    Bell is hoping to lessen the stigma around psychiatric medication by sharing her story. She said that turning to Zoloft after her son Ozzy’s birth in 2017 allowed her to function and feel like herself again.

    Taking Antidepressants To Feel Normal

    “I took a medication called Zoloft, a very low dose and this was again, a person who was afraid of Advil, and I begged for it for my own well-being and for my family’s well-being… and it took me to a place where I could be. I could just be,” she said. “It was rational. I needed to just be Lake and I felt finally like I could breathe the air that Lake breathes, not like some other person that I don’t recognize.”

    She was on the medication for about a year before she tapered off.

    Bell said she was overcome by guilt after insisting that she have a home birth for Ozzy. The birth of her first child in 2014 to daughter Nova was “empowering,” she told Bless This Mess co-star Dax Shepard on his podcast Armchair Expert in July, and inspired her to have a second home birth.

    Nova was born with the umbilical cord around her neck, but Bell and her husband watched as “she came to life” with the help of the midwife.

    The Trauma Of Almost Losing Her Son 

    Ozzy was also born with the cord around his neck, but did not recover as well as Nova did. The newborn was rushed to the hospital and spent 11 days in the NICU. Having been deprived of oxygen for “longer than the four minutes that is associated with being okay,” the parents were informed that “he could [have] cerebral palsy or never walk or talk. That was our reality,” Bell said.

    She struggled to cope with the guilt and trauma of almost losing her son.

    “I’ve dealt with that since,” she told Shepard. “You could blame the midwife, you could blame yourself, but ultimately the result is the only thing that matters. I’ve gone through therapy and was medicated for a year and a half. I did wean myself off but I was on antidepressants to help kind of regulate. I barely take Advil but I was like, this is absolutely imperative in order for me to function.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Kristen Bell Gets Candid About Mental Health On Instagram

    Kristen Bell Gets Candid About Mental Health On Instagram

    Bell revealed on Instagram that lately she’s been “feeling very off,” but she is utilizing resources and her support system to help her through it.

    Kristen Bell, star of Veronica Mars, is one of many celebrities who has been open about her mental health. She recently posted on her Instagram story, “Lately I’ve been feeling very off.”

    Bell added, “I’m checking in with my support systems and my resources and I hope you are too because we can handle whatever life throws at us if we ask for hope.”

    Several days earlier, Bell posted a picture of herself in a split image. In one image, she looked happy, in another image, she looked depressed. “Ever feel like this?” she wrote. “Me too. Often. It’s okay to not feel ok. We’ll get through it together.”

    On Instagram, Bell also suggested ways to battle back against tough mental health days, like going on Google and looking up “workouts near me, mental health resources near me, therapists near me, support groups near me.”

    In previous interviews, Bell has been very open about her mental health struggles. She learned about her family’s difficulties with mental health when she was 18. Her mother told her that there was “a serotonin imbalance in our family line, and it can often be passed from female to female.” Her grandmother had endured electroshock therapy, and Bell learned how to take care of her own mental health through her mother.

    When Bell decided to go on medication, her mother told her “the world wants to shame you for that. But in the medical community, you would never deny a diabetic his insulin. But for some reason, if someone needs a serotonin inhibitor, they’re immediately crazy or something.”

    Last year, Bell participated in a campaign for the Child Mind Institute, where she posted a message to her younger self, saying, “People seem like they don’t have problems, but everyone’s human. Everyone has problems. Everyone feels yucky on the inside sometimes. I have suffered from anxiety and/or depression since I was 18. What I would say to my younger self is don’t be fooled by this game of perfection that humans play. Because Instagram and magazines and TV shows, they strive for a certain aesthetic, everything looks so beautiful, and people seem like they don’t have problems, but everyone’s human.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Billie Eilish Opens Up About Mental Health, Self-Harm

    Billie Eilish Opens Up About Mental Health, Self-Harm

    The 17-year-old singer says it breaks her heart when she sees scars on her fans’ arms.

    Billie Eilish, the 17-year-old pop star who makes hit songs with her brother at home, dished about her career, mental health, and artistry in an interview with Rolling Stone.

    Despite recording vocals from the comfort of a bed at her parent’s house, Eilish took the music world by storm at 14 years old on Soundcloud. Now, her latest album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, has been streamed more than 2 billion times. At one point, 14 of her songs were in the Top 100, breaking the record for most simultaneous songs in the Top 100 for any female artist ever. Between the stream records and the sold-out concerts, it’s safe to say Eilish is successful.

    Her success does come at a price, including once coming down with multiple stress-induced rashes, according to her doctor. Once, her home address was leaked and some obsessive fans showed up, leading to her having to have a bodyguard sleep in the living room.

    “It was really traumatizing,” Eilish revealed. “I completely don’t feel safe in my house anymore, which sucks. I love my house.”

    Her work is demanding, taking her away from family and friends for longer than she would like.

    “It’s annoying,” she said. “I have this amazing thing in front of me, and I don’t want to hate it. And I don’t hate it. But I hate certain parts of it.”

    She also revealed that fame isn’t exactly how people imagine it to be.

    “I’ve loved attention my whole life,” Eilish goes on, “but I don’t think anyone knows what fame actually is. Because if I did want to be famous — it wasn’t this kind.”

    Eilish showed interviewers from Rolling Stone a journal of hers, recounting when she suffered from a bout of depression that began when she attended dancing classes.

    “At dance, you wear really tiny clothes,” she says. “And I’ve never felt comfortable in really tiny clothes. I was always worried about my appearance. That was the peak of my body dysmorphia. I couldn’t look in the mirror at all.”

    Eilish says this year has been good to her.

    “I haven’t been depressed in a minute, which is great,” she says. “Seventeen has probably been the best year of my life. I’ve liked 17.”

    She also revealed that she feels for her fans who may be experiencing the same things she did.

    “Sometimes I see girls at my shows with scars on their arms, and it breaks my heart,” she said. “I don’t have scars anymore because it was so long ago. But I’ve said to a couple of them, ‘Just be nice to yourself.’ Because I know. I was there.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Liv Tyler Discusses Anxiety, Going To Therapy

    Liv Tyler Discusses Anxiety, Going To Therapy

    Tyler revealed that she uses coginitive behavioral therapy and meditation to manage her anxiety.

    Actress Liv Tyler, most recently of Hulu’s Harlots, spoke on her struggles with anxiety and her decision to attend cognitive behavioral therapy in a recent interview with The New York Times.

    Tyler, the daughter of Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler, admitted that she doesn’t enjoy the spotlight, yet she loves the creative process of her work, and is trying to change her priorities and thought patterns to make the fame part—and her life in general—easier.

    “That is definitely the great puzzle and mystery of my entire life,” she said. “I’m always trying to learn as much as I can about myself, both from my mind and anxiety in general. I definitely have a side to me that’s very shy, or shy in certain situations. I’m better one-on-one, I think. I’m trying to articulate it. I’m still trying to understand it.”

    Handling Fame

    According to the Times, Tyler started attending cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) this year to help reduce the anxiety that so much attention from her career has brought her. She also spoke on her personal fascination with the human mind and her desire to better understand herself.

    “I tend to ask a lot of questions so that I can understand the world more, people more,” said Tyler. “It’s fascinating, people, how they think, how the brain works.”

    Tyler also practices transcendental meditation in order to help her cope with the stress of her career and motherhood. She spoke about this coping technique in 2013, saying that “it helps me make better decisions and be a better mother, and just deal with the daily stress of the modern world that we live in.”

    The pressure of the world, particularly as it embraces social media as an everyday part of life, caused Tyler to consider quitting acting altogether in 2017, according to The Irish Examiner.

    Finding The Balance

    Due to her natural shyness, she had trouble learning how to promote herself online through this increasingly essential medium, and she wasn’t sure she liked it.

    “A world changing so much, I was just kind of trying to find my place in all of that.”

    Today, Tyler is still working on achieving a balance that works for her and her family. She calls herself a perfectionist and says she has trouble with time management and tends to overextend herself.

    “I’m always striving to achieve balance, which I think is a very tricky thing in the world today in general. I think our society is not really set up for balance, a lot of extremes going on.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Ed Sheeran Talks Anxiety: "It Creeps Up On You"

    Ed Sheeran Talks Anxiety: "It Creeps Up On You"

    Sheeran detailed his experience wih social anxiety in a recent interview.

    In a new interview with Breakfast Club radio host Charlamagne Tha God, pop singer/songwriter Ed Sheeran revealed that he had recently married his childhood friend Cherry Seaborn.

    “I wake up every day with Cherry and I’m like why the f*ck are you with me? You could be with whoever you wanted and you’ve chosen me.
    “I’m saying all the things that I think are wrong with me and you still want to be with me and I find that amazing,” the 28-year-old said.

    In the wide-ranging, candid interview Sheeran also opened up about living with anxiety and how it has impacted his professional and personal life.

    Sheeran confessed that he struggles with social anxiety. “It creeps up on you. I’ve been working on it for eight years and I closed off from reality.”

    Circle Of Trust

    He told Charlamagne how he has trimmed his social circle down to just a handful of his closest friends to feel safe.

    “Whether it’s getting rid of our phone or only looking at emails twice a day,” Sheeran says. “Or cutting down my friendship group to the bare minimum just so I can trust everyone. I let people in from a, ‘Let’s hang out place.’ There is letting in and then there is letting in.

    “I have social anxiety. I don’t like large groups of people, which is ironic given I play shows to thousands of people…I have no problem with talking to people. But it’s when people film me and stare at me. It makes me feel like I’m not human,” he said.

    The Grammy winner said that after the chart-topping popularity of his hit single “Shape Of You” living a private life became nearly impossible and he made the decision to move to the country in an effort to retreat from the spotlight that followed him while he lived in central London. 

    “I lost the ability to go to a supermarket and buy a loaf of bread about three years ago. People around here treat me pretty normally, but in London it’s different,” Sheeran explained.

    While Sheeran lives with daily anxiety, he also knows he’s very lucky to have his career and a great significant other in his privileged life. “I don’t mean to be complain-y, because I have a very cool life and job, but if I can avoid it [the scrutiny] I will.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Amanda Bynes Returns To Inpatient Treatment After College Graduation

    Amanda Bynes Returns To Inpatient Treatment After College Graduation

    Bynes has been working on developing a career in fashion since she retired from acting in 2010.

    Amanda Bynes is currently still living in an inpatient care facility for her mental health as she’s taking the next steps in her life and career, an unnamed source told People.

    In late June, the actress and fashion designer walked in her graduation ceremony from the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising before returning to the facility.

    “Amanda is still inpatient in a mental health facility,” said a friend of Bynes. “She was able to get an outing pass for a few hours for the special occasion so she could walk with the other students. But she left a little early and was back at the facility at the end of the graduation.”

    Bynes has struggled with mental illness and addiction for several years.

    In 2012, she was charged with a DUI, though the charge was dropped two years later. In 2013, she was put under a 72-hour mental-health evaluation hold in a mental health facility after she allegedly started a small fire in a stranger’s driveway. Since then, her parents have repeatedly filed for and been granted conservatorship over Bynes due to her illness.

    In 2018, Bynes publicly announced that she had been sober for four years after struggling with substance use disorder, particularly with Adderall.

    Getting Help

    In addition to working on getting sober and improving her mental health, Bynes has been working on developing a career in fashion since she retired from acting in 2010. She enrolled at the Fashion Institute in 2014 and received her associate’s degree in Merchandise Product Development last year, and her bachelor’s this year.

    Earlier this year, the Bynes family attorney Tamar Arminak told People that Amanda has been doing well in the inpatient program.

    “Amanda is doing great, working on herself, and taking some well-deserved time off to focus on her wellbeing after graduating FIDM in December,” he said. “She’s spending time reading and exercising, sketching for her new line and mostly making sure this time around she puts her needs first.”

    A Rare Photo

    Bynes even posted a rare photo of herself on her Twitter account—one of only 11 tweets on an account that has nearly three million followers. The photo shows her posing in cap and gown with a friend dressed in a leopard print vest and tie.

    FIDM graduate 2019 #fidmgraduation pic.twitter.com/KdFI5dPOdK

    — amanda bynes (@amandabynes) June 25, 2019

    Amanda unfortunately suffered a relapse in March after she attempted to return to acting. She has had difficulties in the past with seeing herself on screen and hating how she looked. 

    “I literally couldn’t stand my appearance in that movie and I didn’t like my performance. I was absolutely convinced I needed to stop acting after seeing it,” she said of her 2010 movie Easy A.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Alanis Morissette Talks Postpartum Depression, Miscarriage

    Alanis Morissette Talks Postpartum Depression, Miscarriage

    “Not singularly relying on myself to diagnose myself is key, because the first time around I waited,” the singer said about postpartum depression.

    Singer Alanis Morissette is planning ahead for how to deal with postpartum depression when she welcomes her third child in a few months.

    “Not singularly relying on myself to diagnose myself is key, because the first time around I waited,” she said in an interview with SELF.

    Morissette and her husband have an eight-year-old and an almost three-year-old. After both pregnancies, Morissette said that she felt depressed. Because of her history with the condition, she immediately recognized what was happening.

    “For me I would just wake up and feel like I was covered in tar and it wasn’t the first time I’d experienced depression so I just thought ‘Oh, well, this feels familiar, I’m depressed, I think,’” Morissette said. “And then simultaneously, my personal history of depression where it was so normalized for me to be in the quicksand, as I call it, or in the tar. It does feel like tar, like everything feels heavy.”

    Morissette thought because she had overcome depression before she could do so again. In the past, doing service through her songs and connecting with audience members helped her heal. However, that didn’t work during her postpartum episodes.

    “I would just think, ‘Oh I’m just going to go out into the world and serve and then I’m going to feel better,’ but that didn’t do it. And then I had my various forms of self-medicating [that also didn’t help]. So, creativity’s not doing it, tequila’s not doing it…and I even sang about it,” Morissette said.

    Eventually, she reached out to a doctor for help. This time, she is planning ahead, asking friends and loved ones to keep an eye on her and connect her with help when they are concerned, even if she insists that she is ok.

    “I have said to my friends, I want you to not necessarily go by the words I’m saying and as best as I can, I’ll try to be honest, but I can’t personally rely on the degree of honesty if I reference the last two experiences,” she said.

    During the interview, Morissette also talked about miscarriages and her struggle to get pregnant.

    “I […] felt so much grief and fear,” she wrote in a follow-up email after her interview. “I chased and prayed for pregnancy and learned so much about my body and biochemistry and immunity and gynecology through the process. It was a torturous learning and loss-filled and persevering process.”

    However, she also learned about rebuilding her health in the process.

    “When I […] chased my health in a different way, from multiple angles—[including, among other things] extensive consistent blood work monitoring to trauma recovery work to multiple doctor and midwife appointments to many tests and surgeries and investigations, things shifted,” she wrote.

    Overall, being pregnant and parenting has been an intense experience, Morissette said.

    “It’s this whole chemistry of emotions. Hormones and chemicals that are just coursing through your body. It [can] be triggering, or flashbacking, or re-traumatizing,” she explained.

    Through it, she has learned to do what she needs to do to take care of herself. .

    “Extroverts restore, in theory, with people, and introverts restore alone—so for me, one of the biggest questions with me having two or three kids, was where is that solitude? How and where?” she said. “For me, it’s just about getting really creative, and maybe it’s a hotel room here or bathroom stall here. Making sure there’s doors that go out behind our house so there’s a little area with a little gazebo here…whatever I need to do to create this. It’s not anyone else’s job to be responsible for my temperament. Maybe pin-drop silence right now is the key. Or it might be hey, being pure presence with my daughter right now is the key. Or right now crying is the key. Fucking binge-watching a TV show is key.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Halsey Gets Candid About Bipolar Disorder, Sobriety

    Halsey Gets Candid About Bipolar Disorder, Sobriety

    “I’ve been committed twice since [I became] Halsey, and no one’s known about it,” the singer revealed in a recent Rolling Stone interview.

    Singer Halsey revealed that she has been admitted to a psychiatric hospital twice since becoming famous in a recent interview with Rolling Stone. She had been able to successfully hide both stays from the public but decided to open up about her experiences and how her mental illness affects her songwriting.

    “Halsey says that the album she’s currently working on is ‘the first I’ve ever written manic,’” writes Alex Morris. “Her ferocious writing process has been the same. ‘She’ll be like, “OK, I’m gonna go smoke a cigarette,” and literally when she comes back the song is done,’ marvels producer Benny Blanco.”

    Her upcoming third studio album, set to be released sometime this year, will be “hip-hop, rock, country, f*****g everything — because it’s so manic. It’s soooooo manic. It’s literally just, like, whatever the f**k I felt like making; there was no reason I couldn’t make it,” says Halsey.

    According to the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, bipolar disorder affects 2.6% of the adult U.S. population. There’s also quite a long list of celebrities with the disorder, including Demi Lovato, Sinead O’Connor, and Mariah Carey.

    Halsey was diagnosed with bipolar disorder when she was 17, shortly after a suicide attempt that resulted in her first stay in a psychiatric hospital. Thankfully, the visit was successful, and Halsey’s musical career launched not long after. Since then, she’s taken an active role in managing her mental health.

    “I’ve been committed twice since [I became] Halsey, and no one’s known about it,” she said in the interview. “But I’m not ashamed of talking about it now. It’s been my choice. I’ve said [to my manager], ‘Hey, I’m not going to do anything bad right now, but I’m getting to the point where I’m scared I might, so I need to go figure this out.’ It’s still happening in my body. I just know when to get in front of it.”

    In a 2018 interview with Elle, she even talked about embracing her disorder because it helps her to feel and experience deep empathy.

    “The thing about having bipolar disorder, for me, is that I’m really empathetic,” she said. “I feel everything around me so much. I feel when I walk past a homeless person, and I feel when my friend breaks up with someone, or I feel when my mom and my dad get into a fight and my mom’s f****n’ crying over dishes in the sink.”

    Halsey also revealed that she’s given up drugs and alcohol due to the fact that she has so many responsibilities and people who rely on her, including employees with children. “I just can’t be out getting f***ed up all the time,” she says.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • One Direction’s Liam Payne Gets Candid About Fame, Mental Health

    One Direction’s Liam Payne Gets Candid About Fame, Mental Health

    Payne revealed that he sometimes turned to alcohol as a coping mechanism during the height of One Direction’s fame.

    Liam Payne knows from experience that rising to fame at a young age comes with a price. 

    Payne was one of five members of the boy band, One Direction, which rose to fame after appearing on The X Factor in 2010. 

    Payne, who was just a teenager at that time, recently spoke to Men’s Health Australia about his time in the band—specifically about facing so much pressure at such a young age.

    “When you’re doing hundreds and hundreds of (concerts) and it’s the same 22 songs at the same time every single day, even if you’re not happy, you’ve got to go out there,” Payne said.

    In such situations, Payne says he often found himself turning to alcohol as a way to cope before taking the stage. 

    “It’s almost like putting the Disney costume on before you step up on stage and underneath the Disney costume I was pissed (drunk) quite a lot of the time because there was no other way to get your head around what was going on,” he said. “I mean, it was fun. We had an absolute blast, but there were certain parts of it where it just got a little bit toxic.”

    At the end of 2015, One Direction members announced they would be taking a hiatus. In the time since, Payne says he has had the time to reflect on the journey and how it affected him, specifically his mental health. 

    “It literally was the perfect storm,” Payne said. “There were so many scenarios that had to fall into line for that to happen. It’s not something that can easily be recreated or probably ever will be because of the way the internet was kicking off, the way The X Factor kicked off. I just think it was just dumb luck.”

    Payne also alluded that he was not the only band member facing difficulties when it came to mental health and noted it’s a problem that has been facing the music industry for years. 

    “It’s difficult when you have the level of fame that we had in the band,” he told Men’s Health. “There have been a lot of people in trouble with mental health that aren’t really getting the help that they need and I think that’s a bit of a problem in our industry. It’s the same shit that happens to everyone, that’s been happening since the ’70s. You know what the traps are and if you are lucky enough, like me, to be able to get out of that scenario and back into a sense of normality, then you know it’s a bit different.”

    View the original article at thefix.com