Jamie Foxx reveals his battle with depression and substance abuse and who helped him come out on top
The actor is opening up about some of his real-life struggles.
When it comes to his personal life, actor Jamie Foxx is pretty guarded, but now the actor is opening up about some of his real-life struggles.
In an interview with Hip Hop Hollywood, Foxx revealed he has had past drugs and alcohol addiction and bouts with depression that have hindered him and continue to hae him shook. Just like Kanye West, Foxx said he has dealt with mental health issues which most likely started in his childhood and carried over into adulthood. Drugs and alcohol, he said, helped him to deal with stress.
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“I was in a bad place because I felt like I might be literally losing my mind,” The Oscar winning actor said. “I’ve always had a childhood fear of losing my mind. I needed someone to help bring me out of it.”
He said he sought out a psychiatrist to help him mend his mental issues and it started with exploring his past indiscretions and delving into his early years to unearth the issues.
It was “a deep-seated dread of mental illness that was exacerbated by an incident when he was 18 when his drink was spiked by the hallucinogenic drug PCP (phencyclidine) at a college party,” Blackdoctor.org reports.
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That episode has played over and over in Foxx’s mind throughout the years.
“It happened to me when I was 18, and I had 11 months of harsh flashbacks, and then when I was 26 I had a flashback just like that (snaps his fingers) – and another one when I was 32, and that was the last one, but I always worry about it coming back.”
That fear still haunts Foxx today. The 50-year-old said he can empathize with West, who admitted to have mental health issues.
“When [Kanye] talked about the drugs, the mental drugs, I’ve had an episode of that,” Foxx told Hip Hollywood. “When [Kanye] was talking about the, ‘I went in for two pills, and then seven pills [he received from the hospital],’ that’s real!”
But unlike West who went on a non-stop Twitter tirade, Foxx admits that his family keeps him in grounded, in check and won’t allow him to go out in public or do anything to embarrass himself when he’s not of sound mind.
“I was lucky enough to have people, like my sister, like my family, to say ‘Yo, you can’t go out right now cuz you talking crazy,’” he shared.
Foxx is now confirmed for the upcoming Spawn reboot.
