If you’re feeling overwhelmed, run-down, fearful, stressed out, anxious, depressed, alone, or anything that may be robbing you of your peace or your joy, talk to someone. Do not believe the lie that you are going through this alone. Because you aren’t. You could be sitting next to someone, right this second, who struggles with the same issues that you do. Maybe that person can help you. We are all in this together.
• • •
From the minute we come into this world, even though we’re not aware of it, we’re trying to feel that we belong, that we matter. We look to our parents and our friends and our family and our school and our society, and we ask them, “Who am I? Do I have worth in this world? Do I have purpose in this life?”
The answer, without question, is “Yes. You do.” Unfortunately, most of the time we don’t hear that answer. Unfortunately, too many of us have parents who don’t make us feel as if we belong. Unfortunately, we belong to a society that prioritizes all the wrong things—things like money and fame and attractiveness and overall status—forcing us to judge ourselves against all the wrong standards, standards by which we always come up short. So then we find ourselves alone in the darkness, where the voices come for us and tell us how stupid and ugly and worthless we are. But it’s a lie. It’s a fuckin’ lie. You belong here simply because you are here. God created every single one of us with our own inherent worth and value and dignity. Mental illness is the lie that undermines that truth.
In fact, not only is it a lie, it’s a lie that begets more lies in turn, as lies often do. One of the most insidious of those lies is that your problems are yours alone. Because you’ve never been inside someone else’s head to feel the pain they feel, you’re convinced that you’re the only person suffering like this—that you’re the only person who has ever suffered like this. Which is why you can be surrounded by friends and family telling you “It’s okay” and still feel so horribly alone. It’s also why the situation feels so hopeless. Why even ask for help when nobody could possibly help you? Because if you’re the only one with this problem, what are the chances of doctors ever diagnosing and treating you? You’re so broken that no one will ever be able to find the cure. Of course, none of that is true. There are millions of people who hurt the same way that you hurt. There are thousands of doctors and therapists who understand how to treat you and how to help you. But you can’t see that because the thing that you’re sick with comes with an absence of hope, an absence of faith—the inability to see yourself and life clearly.
The week of Hurricane Harvey I plunged into a despair and a darkness deeper than anything else I’d ever experienced. I was paralyzed, physically and emotionally. I could barely sleep at all, and when I was awake, it was to sit or lie catatonic on the couch. And every sleepless night I was alone in my room, on my knees, crying, weeping, sobbing, yelling out to a God who wasn’t there. “Why?! Why?! Why?! What have I done? I am lost! I need you. I need your help! I need it now!”
Outside in the world, August gave way to September and people were out living their lives, but inside my house time had collapsed. The days and weeks blurred together. I had a massive to-do list I needed to tackle, suitcases to unpack, boxes to move out of storage, and I couldn’t do any of it. When in states of major turmoil, I fall into this place where the minutiae of life will bury me. I’ll have a hard time making decisions, even about the smallest things. I think there are two broad categories of anxious people: those who are anxious about things that they can’t control, and those who are anxious about the things they can. With major events outside my control, such as getting hit by a truck on the freeway, I’ve always had a much easier time being like, “Well, okay, it is what it is.” I’ve always been far more anxious about what I can control. I get stuck trying to figure out the perfect way to do the thing and I think, Don’t fuck this up. Don’t fuck this up. Don’t fuck this up. The thing has to be perfect, because if a thing is not perfect, it’s a failure, and failures don’t receive love. And why do I think this way? Because that’s the way I was programmed as a kid by my parents.
I can remember standing in the kitchen of my Austin rental, staring at this box of plates, not knowing which cabinet I should put them in, thinking whichever cabinet I picked was going to be the wrong one and then the whole kitchen would be ruined forever—this kitchen that I was only going to be using for two months, tops. My self-talk, as always, was horrible. Why did I even buy these stupid plates in the first place when I know I’m a worthless piece of shit who doesn’t even know what to do with them? So I gave up. I left the plates in the box, left the cabinets empty.
I didn’t want to reach out to anyone. I felt so worthless I didn’t think anyone would care—I didn’t think anyone should care. Luckily, I have better friends than that. People were calling and texting to check in, realizing that I was not okay. I had several friends get on a plane and fly in to look after me: my friend Justin, my friends Hillary and Sarah. They flew in, helped me clean, made me food, and did all the other basic tasks that I was no longer capable of doing.
Then they’d sit and talk with me. “It’s okay,” they’d say. “It’s okay.” And I’d be crying, over and over again, “It’s not okay! Nothing is okay.” Everything felt meaningless. I couldn’t see any purpose to my life. Because if there is no God, if we are just sacks of meat, shuffling around, filling our days with some random purpose of our own making until we all kind of peter out around age eighty-five, then what’s the fucking point?
I didn’t want to be alive anymore. I wasn’t thinking about killing myself, not the way I had three years before when my marriage ended, which was the last time I’d felt anything close to this kind of darkness. That time I’d stood on the balcony of my hotel, looking down, wondering if the fall from thirteen stories would be enough to kill me. That time I’d put the knife to my wrist, trying to remember if you’re supposed to go crossways or longways, which one does the job and which one slices the tendons and fucks up your arm. That time I came close, but I couldn’t allow myself to think that way now. Now, there was someone else I had to think about.
People say that suicide is the most selfish thing you can do because it’s inflicting pain on the people who care about you. But when you’re in the depths of despair, it certainly doesn’t feel that way; it feels like you’re such a burden on everyone that by killing yourself you’re doing the world a favor. But even in the depths of my pain, I was self-aware enough to think about my nephew, Gryffin. My younger sister, Shekinah, had given birth to Gryffin about eighteen months earlier. She and I are close, and I knew if I killed myself, it would destroy her, which in turn would leave this boy growing up without the healthy mom he deserved, and I couldn’t bring myself do that to him. Trauma and abuse had haunted our family for generations, passed down from my grandmother to my mother to me and my sisters. I knew that I couldn’t be the one to pass that on again. That thought was the only thing that kept me out of a coffin.
Since I couldn’t bring myself to commit suicide, I was left with simply wishing that I could go to sleep and not wake up. Every night I’d put my head down and hope that some kind of natural cause would take me in the night. Then nobody could blame me for it. Nobody could say I was being selfish. It would just be one of those tragic things, you know? But that relief never came. Every morning I’d wake up and I’d still be there, still my same pathetic, worthless self.
Days passed, a week maybe. One afternoon I woke up and realized there was no food in the house. If I was going to eat, like it or not, I would have to go outside and be in the world. I got dressed and went out to my truck and drove off in search of sustenance. About five minutes up the road, I saw a sign for Chi’Lantro. I’d never been, but it was food and it was there and I didn’t particularly care about anything in the moment, including what I ate, so I stopped.
The darkness is lying to you. Your trauma is lying to you. You matter in this world. You add value to this world. You are wonderfully made.
Chi’Lantro, as its hybrid name suggests, is a fast-casual, Korean-Mexican fusion restaurant. I pulled into the parking lot, found a spot, and as I braced myself to get out and go inside, all of a sudden I got hit with a severe panic attack. I was clutching the steering wheel and slamming my back against the seat, crying and yelling like I’d done at home, screaming out to God, “What the fuck is going on?! I am lost! I am done! Give me a sign. Give me something, because I don’t know what’s happening to me and I don’t want to live anymore!” That went on for I don’t know how long. Five, ten minutes maybe. Finally, I pulled myself together, took a deep breath, did my best to wipe the tears away from my red, puffy eyes, got out of the truck, and went inside.
The place was completely empty, save for me, the guy at the cash register, and a couple of people cooking in the back. I walked up to the counter and stared up at the menu. It was one of those build-your-own-bowl situations, which nearly broke me. Talk about analysis paralysis. I kept stumbling and stammering and doubling back and changing my mind about what I wanted. Everything I did felt wrong, which the nasty voice in my head was more than happy to point out for me. Way to go, idiot. Can’t even do this right. Can’t even order fucking food for yourself. You’re gonna fuck this up the same way you always fuck everything up.
Finally, I managed to get my order out, the guy rang me up, and I walked over to a table to sit down, alone. A few minutes later, the same guy came over with my tray and set it down in front of me. I looked up with my puffy, bloodshot eyes and managed a quick nod, expecting him to turn and leave. He didn’t. There was an awkward pause.
“Um . . . sir?” he said. “Are you okay? Can . . . can we help you?”
When your Chi’Lantro server is asking you if you need help, that’s when you know you’re in trouble.
I thanked him and politely declined. I genuinely was grateful that this complete stranger was showing me such generosity in the moment, but it was a telling sign. All my life, no matter what was going on with me, no matter how depressed or anxious I felt on the inside, I always managed to put on a cheerful, positive act for the world. But now I’d reached the point where I couldn’t even do that; I couldn’t even put on a happy face long enough to make it through lunch.
When you start to be critical of yourself, see it as the lie that it is. Take a deep breath in, then let the lie go as you breathe out.
The minute I was back in my truck, I started weeping again, muttering to myself, “What am I doing? What’s going on?” It was like when you see homeless people talking to themselves, because who else are they going to talk to? Nobody talks to them anymore. And that’s when you really start to feel like you’re losing your mind: when you have to talk to yourself in order to not be completely alone. I felt like I didn’t even know what was real. I didn’t think the walls were melting or anything like that, but I couldn’t make sense of this world and who I was and how I fit into it. Nothing made sense. All I knew was that whatever was going on with me was a real five-alarm fire. I needed help, and I didn’t know how to ask for it.
One of the friends who’d come out to visit me, my buddy Justin, had been worried enough that he’d taken it upon himself to google the local treatment options, and he discovered that the Dell Seton Medical Center at the University of Texas has a psychiatric wing where you can admit yourself on an emergency basis. Justin had also told me what everyone with mental health issues needs to hear. “Don’t be ashamed to go,” he said. “If you need to go, and there’s a place to go, go.”
THERAPY
Having come through to the other side of intensive therapy, I now know how important and necessary therapy is. We get so wrapped up in our own narratives, the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, that we can’t see any truth other than the twisted one we’ve constructed to justify what we do. Those narratives might be debilitating because they’re unfairly negative, like when we tell ourselves that we’re stupid or worthless or unworthy of love. Or they might be debilitating because they’re positive to the point of being delusional or narcissistic, like believing that we’re always right about everything because we’re smarter than everyone else. Whatever our individual issues are, we all have bad programming that day by day is crippling us, but even as it’s crippling us it’s also comforting us through its familiarity. We retreat to it and take refuge in it. We avoid anything that challenges it, because it’s the only defense mechanism we know.
So we avoid therapists. We avoid them precisely because they’re going to do what we’re scared to do: dismantle the defense mechanisms we’ve come to rely on. Because a therapist is, or should be, an objective third party with no investment in maintaining the lies and stories we prop ourselves up with. And when we share our stories with a therapist, it’s like exposing them to sunlight or holding them up to a mirror. We can start to see our bad programming for what it is, and the lies that we tell ourselves about ourselves will, hopefully, begin to crumble and turn to dust.
Opening up to friends and family doesn’t accomplish the same goal. Friends and family are a wonderful, necessary place to start. We absolutely should open up to them and admit we need help. But our friends and family are not objective, disinterested third parties. They have their own agendas, misperceptions, and biases. People in my life have never known how to counsel me. To start with, my friends didn’t live my childhood, so how could they possibly understand the trauma I’ve gone through? Second, I had always been a stubborn person who didn’t think I had that many problems to begin with. And finally, on most days, regardless of what was going on inside me, I projected the image of someone who’s chipper and upbeat.
That situation was further complicated by the fact that so many of my friends and family members worked for me and were dependent on me financially. I had massive trust issues because of that. I could never be sure if the advice they were giving me was in my best interest, or theirs.
Merely talking to God doesn’t cut it either. Prayer is a wonderful thing, and it has given me solace on countless occasions, but it is not a substitute for therapy. If your head’s not right, and if you don’t see reality the way that reality actually is, then prayer alone isn’t going to help you see it. Prayer offers a time to reflect, to look inward, to be present with God. But prayer doesn’t hold up a cold, unflinching mirror to your life the way therapy does. Therapy breaks down our defenses and exposes us so that we can finally begin to understand ourselves and build ourselves back up. No matter how healthy we think we are, we all need it.
Even as miserable and suicidal as I’d been, the idea of seeking institutional help was possibly even more terrifying. It was something that could greatly affect my livelihood. If I walked into a psychiatric hospital and someone recognized me and said, “Hey, there’s that guy from TV,” my career could seriously be in jeopardy. I could see the headlines on TMZ: “Star of NBC’s Chuck Admitted to Hospital over Nervous Breakdown.” But in that moment, I was so messed up and so terrified of what I might do to myself, I decided I didn’t have any choice. I have to go, I thought. I have to take the risk and do this. And besides, I was already convinced I’d screwed up my entire life. Even if I fully exposed myself to the world as a crazy person, how could that possibly make my situation any worse? So I went.
I pulled out of the Chi’Lantro parking lot and drove straight across town to the medical center. The whole way over I was beating myself up about it, my terrible self-talk turned up to eleven. Am I really doing this? Am I doing the right thing? Yes, you idiot. What the hell else are you going to do? What are your options? I arrived at the hospital, parked, went inside, and found my way to the psychiatric wing. The nurse at the desk took one look at me, saw the same red, puffy face that had concerned the Chi’Lantro guy, and realized right away that there was a problem. She processed me and told me to have a seat. “Wait here,” she said, “and a doctor will be with you shortly.”
Looking around, I quickly realized this was no regular waiting room. I was in a special waiting room, for special people, like me. Most of the patients all looked zonked out on different heavy medications, most of them slouched down in their vinyl chairs, eyes glued to a television up on the wall. I remember there was some sort of horribly violent action movie on, people mowing each other down with machine guns. Even in my messed-up state, I was keenly aware of the dark irony of playing this kind of film for people wrestling with anxiety, depression, or thoughts of self-harm.
Finally, I was called in to meet with someone, not a therapist or a doctor, but a social worker. She started going through this standard form, asking me all these generic, open-ended questions, such as “How are you feeling?” and “Why are you feeling this way?” Inside, all I wanted to do was scream, “I don’t know why I’m feeling this way! Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here!” Luckily, I was still in touch with reality enough to know that this social worker was a nice person who, God bless her, was just doing her job. I didn’t scream, but I still didn’t know how to answer anything she was asking me. I felt like I was on another planet of despondence and fear and anxiety, wrestling with deep and complex issues that I had no understanding of. I didn’t have the words to explain anything.
At the same time, I had so much bottled up inside me that I was also like, “Where do you want me to start?” So I basically rambled, from my mother’s emotional abuse to her drinking problem to my absent father to the suicidal thoughts I had on my honeymoon. Then there was the fact that I couldn’t leave my house, that I’d lost faith in God, that I was crying in my car. And on and on and on. None of it made any sense. I felt terrible for this poor lady who was surely staring down at her form, clueless as to what box she should check for the human disaster sitting across from her.
Eventually, a doctor arrived. After taking a moment to look over my intake forms and ask me a few questions, she presented me with my options. Option number one was that they could give me a mild sedative and send me home. Option number two was to check myself in for a twenty-four-hour watch while the doctors determined how to proceed. Option number one seemed like a joke. This sedative they offered me was something you can get over the counter. It’s the equivalent of taking a Benadryl. I couldn’t believe it. All I could think was, Are you shitting me? That’s it? I am dying, and that’s the best you can give me?
On the one hand, I understand why hospitals can’t give out powerful psychoactive medications to people when they haven’t even determined a diagnosis. But on the other hand, if I showed up at the emergency room with a broken leg, I feel certain they’d give me something way stronger than a fucking Benadryl, and whatever was happening to my mind was worse than a broken leg. Therein lies the riddle of mental health. Even a severe and obvious symptom, like a grown man crying and wailing at the ceiling, doesn’t point to a specific cause or a clear-cut course of treatment. It’s often the case that nobody, not even the doctor, knows what to do at first.
Which left me with option number two: checking myself in. The minute she raised the possibility, I balked. When you’re an actor, anytime you star in a movie or a TV show, the studio takes out an insurance policy on you. For the duration of the production, your health and well-being are very much their business. Over the course of my career, and even in my personal life, I’ve filled out hundreds of forms and contracts, and a lot of them ask, “Have you ever been hospitalized for a mental health condition?” All of a sudden, I wasn’t just panicked about the public finding out that I was in this place, I was paranoid in a “this will go down on your permanent record” kind of way.
I gave the doctor a long look and took a deep breath. Then I said, “Okay. I think I’m going to take the sedative and go home. Thank you very much.”
And in that moment I felt, not better, but a sense of calm, almost relief. My feelings of anxiety and panic momentarily subsided. Because if these truly were my only two options—taking a Benadryl or being institutionalized—then I really was doomed. And if I was doomed, then there was nothing left for me to worry about. I got up from my chair, almost like a zombie, and shuffled back out to my truck.
That night I called my sister Shekinah, which I’d been reluctant to do. Shekinah’s not only my sister, she’s also one of my best friends and closest confidantes. She’d worked for me as my personal assistant for years; I relied on her for a lot. She had also been one of the biggest opponents of my moving to Texas, and I was scared to admit to her how much I was struggling. But after I explained what was going on, she said, “Maybe you should go away, to a facility.”
“Maybe so,” I replied.
“What about Promises?” she said, referring to the drug-andalcohol rehab in Malibu where Hollywood’s rich and famous go to dry out.
“Promises?” I said. “I’m not an addict, Shekinah. My problem is that I’m broken and I need healing. I’m open to going somewhere, but it’s got to be the right place, and it’s got to be a place of deep healing.”
“Okay,” she said. “Don’t worry. I’m on it.”
My sister is one of those people who, when given a mission, does not stop until it’s done. She’ll exhaust every option, leave no stone unturned, checking and double-checking every detail. And that night, tasked with saving her brother’s life, she went online and started digging through every corner of the internet to find the right facility for me. By the time I woke up the next morning, she was already emailing me ideas. Eventually, she forwarded me some info on a group in Connecticut that was created for corporate CEOs and the like. She vetted it thoroughly, even calling and talking to the owner. Then she called me to discuss it.
“Zac,” she said, “I think this is the place. It’s great.”
I looked it up online and browsed the website while we spoke. It wasn’t cheap. None of the good options are, which is yet another hurdle keeping people from getting the treatment they need. Ultimately, after going back and forth about it, I decided to pull the trigger. I was blessed and fortunate enough to have the money, which not many people do, and what good would it do to save the money if at the end of the day I was dead? Having any amount of money in the bank doesn’t mean a whole lot if you can’t bring yourself to get up off the living room floor.
Shekinah called the organization, booked my stay, and started making the travel arrangements. For the next few weeks, I did my best to hold myself together. I started seeing a local psychiatrist. He couldn’t do much for me in the short period of time I had before leaving, but he did prescribe me some medication, a combination of carbamazepine and Lexapro. I don’t know if it helped, and I’d always been extremely resistant to the idea of being on medication, but at that point I was willing to try anything.
At the same time, I went about wrapping up loose ends so I could get away for a month, which included a quick trip out to LA to do some housekeeping with my agents and managers. When we sat down, I told them that for the next month I’d be off the grid. “At a healing retreat,” I told them, which they understood and were fully supportive of. I didn’t share the specifics about what the place was or how bad things had gotten for me, but then I didn’t need to; it was obvious to everyone that I was in rough shape. We talked a bit about possible jobs and business that might come up while I was out, and it was then that I learned that the role of Shazam had basically been cast. “They found their guy,” my agent said, “and it’s a guy who’s similar to you. You could have had a real shot at that.” It was disappointing to hear, but not getting cast as a superhero was hardly my most pressing concern in the moment; I was far more preoccupied with remaining alive.
I flew back to Texas and the morning of September 29, my thirty-seventh birthday, the papers came through for me to close on my land outside Austin. I drove down to the real estate title office and pulled into the parking lot in a total state of panic about the whole thing. Was I about to make the biggest mistake of my life? Was I a complete idiot? Just as I had outside Chi’Lantro, I sat there clutching the steering wheel, rocking back and forth and crying and screaming for a good ten minutes. Then I wiped away the tears, went inside, and put on a big, happy show for everybody, being that guy from TV, the jokey extrovert’s extrovert. I signed the papers, shook everyone’s hand, went back to my truck, and broke down weeping uncontrollably again.
That night, some family and friends who’d flown into town took me out to dinner, doing their best to prop me up and keep me in decent spirits. I spent the next two days packing and getting ready, and on October 2, I took a car to the airport and boarded a plane for Connecticut.
I landed in the evening. It was already dark and a bit rainy out. A car was there to pick me up. It was about an hour-and-a-half drive to the place. I spent some of it chatting with the driver, doing my best to be affable and friendly. But most of the time I stared silently out the window. We arrived at the house, and I went through the check-in routine, filling out the necessary paperwork. Then I headed up to my room, closed the door behind me, and collapsed onto the bed.
For weeks, I’d been on my own in my house in Austin, feeling abandoned by everyone, including God. Even though I’d decided to commit to this program, I was deeply skeptical of it. I questioned that I would come out of it changed for the better. But I had already taken the most important step: I’d asked for help. I’d reached out from the darkness and my friends and family had grabbed my hand, which was enough to tell me I wasn’t completely alone in this. As I eased my head back onto my pillow that night, I realized I was in a nice, warm house and there were people there who wanted to help me, good people who were there to console me and take care of me. I closed my eyes to sleep and, for the first time in months, allowed myself the tiniest bit of hope.
Maybe it will be okay, I thought. Maybe I’ve got a chance.