Simon Pegg Says Addiction Is ‘Like You’ve Grown a Second Head and All It Wants to Do Is Destroy Itself’
Mental illness and substance use issues are difficult enough to manage on their own. But coupled together, the two can fuel each other in a sometimes destructive way, Simon Pegg explained in a new interview with The Guardian. The actor spoke candidly with the outlet about his experiences with alcoholism, depression, and entering recovery.
In the interview, Pegg revealed that he had been self-medicating his depression since he was 18 and began to deal with serious alcoholism in 2005 after starting to shoot Mission: Impossible III.
“When I watch that film back, I can see where I was then, which was fairly lost, and unhappy, and an alcoholic,” the actor told The Guardian, adding that his fans couldn't tell this was the start of "the crisis years" because he "hid it" so well. “I’m an actor, so I acted … all the f*cking time."
“One thing [addiction] does is make you clever at not giving anything away," Pegg continued. "People think [people who use alcohol or drugs] are slovenly, unmotivated people. They’re not—they are incredibly organized. They can nip out for a quick shot of whiskey and you wouldn’t know they have gone. It’s as if…you are micromanaged by it. But eventually the signs are too obvious. You have taken the dog for one too many walks.”
Pegg said that the birth of his daughter (in 2009) was significant because he realized that, even then, his behavior didn't change.
“I thought it would fix things, and it just didn’t," he explained. "Because it can’t. Nothing can, other than a dedicated approach, whether that’s therapy, or medication, or whatever.”
After a trip home from the airport during which he had to repeatedly stop for drinks, the actor says he ended up in rehab. “I don’t think I would be here now if I hadn’t had help," he went on, adding that he went into recovery while shooting Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol (released in 2011). During this period, the actor said that he had to prevent stories of his recovery from leaking to the press by using court orders.
Now that he's in recovery, Pegg said he wants to tell his story to help others who might be in the same situation.
“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 sh*t. It wasn’t, it was just terrible.”
In fact, Pegg said he was "kind of telling people" with his film The World's End (released in 2013), in which he plays a character who insists on completing a bar crawl during an alien invasion. “Because that’s what addiction is like," he said. "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.”
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