Comedian Drew Carey has opened up about his decades-long battle with depression, including two suicide attempts.
“Humor is my way out of everything,” Carey said.
“I’ve always used my sense of humor to get me over this kind of stuff. Still, sometimes I need to have serious time and ponder life instead of laughing with everyone. I need balance.”
Carey’s mental health struggles began when he was 8 years old after his father died from a heart attack. To help cope with his emotions, Carey resorted to nail biting, a habit that persisted into adulthood.
“The idea of looking someone in the eye was tough for me. I could be talking to you, but I’d be looking at your shoulders or at the wall or the ground,” the comedian told Us Weekly.
“I had this feeling that I didn’t deserve anything: I’m just little Drew Carey from this poor family in Cleveland, this town that everybody makes fun of, and don’t mind me, hope I’m not in your way. Oh, but I’ll tell you a joke to get you to like me.”
At the age of 18, Carey, then a student at Ohio’s Kent State University, tried to take his own life by overdosing on sleeping pills while at a fraternity party. He said he made another suicide attempt in his early 20s.
“I was so mad that everybody was having a good time [at the frat party]. I remember that. I remember walking down the stairs and everybody’s drinking, and I was like, ‘What ... are they so happy about?’” he said.
“I was just angry that they were happy. ... I was just tired of my life and [thought], ‘Who’s gonna miss me?’”
“If I was with my friends joking around, I’d be maniacally happy. Really high highs, really low lows,” he recalled.
“I couldn’t have picked a major. I couldn’t have told you with certainty what I wanted to do with my life that a lot of people can. There were people that just knew what they wanted to do, and they needed the college degree as a step along the way to their life’s path that they were sure of. There were a lot of people like that, and I was not one of them.”
After turning to self-help books in college, Carey eventually sought guidance through counseling.
“Therapy’s been a big game changer for me,” he told People.
“I have a great therapist I can count on to talk to me—a couple of them, actually. And I have a crew of very close friends that I’m in. We always support each other. If anybody’s having a downtime, we always are there for them.”
Carey pursued a career as a stand-up comedian after serving as a sergeant and field radio operator in the U.S. Marine Corps.
After an appearance on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” in 1991, he created and starred in the hit ABC sitcom “The Drew Carey Show,” which ran from 1995 to 2004.
During that time, he also began appearing on the comedy series “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” before leading the game show “The Price Is Right,” which he took over from longtime host Bob Barker in 2007.
However, tragedy struck again in February 2020, when Carey’s former fiancée, Amie Harwick, was murdered by her ex-boyfriend, Gareth Pursehouse.
“I still get depressed often ... like everybody else,” Carey told Wallace last year.
“But it’s not as bad. I mean, just because you’re a celebrity and you have money doesn’t mean bad things don’t happen to you or you don’t have bad days.
“Everybody’s a person.”
