Name: The Therapy That Saved Zachary Levi's Life
Uploaded: 2022-07-19T17:04:25.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Therapy That Saved Zachary Levi's Life' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-07-19. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Therapy That Saved Zachary Levi's Life' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-07-19. Transcript available.

- The Joe Rogan Experience.
- I struggled with depression so much throughout my life.
Even as a kid, I didn't know I was depressed
or dealing with anxiety or whatever, but...
- Did you find different methods
that helped you relieve it?
- Yeah, well, so yeah, ultimately at 37,
I talk about it in the book, but at 37,
when I moved out to Austin, I had a whole meltdown.
And thank God was surrounded by some friends and family
that helped kind of pick me up and get me to this program
that's up in, they operate out of Southern California,
Connecticut, and I chose to go to Connecticut for three weeks
of this like super intensive, life-changing,
life-saving therapy.
And it was, I threw the psychological kitchen sink at it.
It was three weeks, every day, at least three or four
appointments that were one of either a psychiatrist,
psychotherapist, dialectic behavioral therapist,
art therapist, meditation therapist, life coach,
nutritionist, gym four days a week, yoga twice a week,
Pilates twice a week.
And that helped me tremendously.
And I learned a lot of modalities and things from all of that.
But that wasn't until, you know, five years ago.
The rest of my life, I'd been coping by fucking boozing
and drugging and sexing, you know what I mean?
Like I didn't realize how much self-medicating I was doing for so long.
And I wish that there would have been some way for anyone to be able to be like,
let me just, I'm just going to like see what your levels are.
Right.
Because I had, I didn't even know.
I didn't know that what I was constantly feeling all the time.
Well, anxiety, I was constantly feeling all the time.
Depression would hit me in these moments where basically I'd have massive
dopamine crashes.
As I've, as I've, I think I've come to find out, like I just, I would finish a
job or I, you know,
get out of a relationship or I wouldn't be working for a while.
And all of a sudden it's like, I'm worthless.
I'm worthless.
I'm worthless.
Work always kept me buoyed.
If I'm at work, it's dopamine all day long, particularly on a movie set or
whatever.
It's all, there's a little, a bunch of little puzzles.
You're just solving little problems all day long.
Yeah, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine, being on a Broadway stage, you
got a thousand people.
I mean, you know, you, you understand the rush of a live audience.
Fuck, you're feeding off of that energy, you know,
and you're playing jazz with this crowd.
I mean, it's incredible.
So much dopamine and I would get off, you know, doing a Broadway show.
I'd be flying after the show and then I would go to the bar with some of my
cast mates
and I would be drinking whiskey, gingers, like till three in the morning.
Cause I didn't even have to be at work the next day until 6:00 PM or whatever.
And it was all just a ton of self-medicating because I didn't love myself
and I didn't know that I didn't love myself.
Wow.
So you just thought you were partying.
Yeah, basically.
I think that's what a lot of people think.
And so then you have a moment where it just comes crashing down.
Is it a moment?
Is it a series of moments?
No, it was like, you know, I had this, this big dream, still do, of, of moving
out here,
buying a bunch of land, building a movie studio slash arts commune slash resorts.
That's kind of like a new United Artists studio.
Someone sounds like a cult leader.
Why do you think I came to Texas, bro?
Uh, and so, so I had, you know, head full of steam and dreams and all that.
And I was so convinced like, this is what I'm supposed to do with the rest of
my life.
I want to make a better Hollywood, all these things.
Right.
And I came out, but I had like, my, my work life wasn't great at the moment.
Like the jobs I was doing, I wasn't stoked with.
I was again, feeling like a failure.
I had just broken up with this girl, wonderful girl who was from Austin, who
probably would
have moved here with me, but I self-sabotaged it all.
And I was like, no, I don't think this is going to work.
And I came out here, I had no real support structure and my friends and family
had a beautiful
community in Los Angeles, but I was like, I got to go.
I got to, I feel compelled.
I got to go do this.
I got to go buy this land.
And I'm really grateful that I did, but I didn't do it in the healthiest of
ways.
And so I ended up out here and I was alone and I was deeply, deeply feeling
like, oh,
I've blown up my life.
I don't feel support.
I didn't feel like, I felt like a lot of my friends and family were watching me
go in this
kind of almost manic state of like, I got to, you know, like just, if I don't
do it now,
I'm not going to do it.
And I knew I had to get out of California.
Like California was, has been broken for so long and I love California.
I'm from California, but it's, it's just so busted in so many ways.
But so I came out, had nobody, had no real support structure.
Work wasn't great.
Love life wasn't great.
All these things were just like falling down on me.
And so massive, just spiral into darkness.
Damn.
Yeah.
It was gnarly.
I mean, even went to, um, I mean, I was definitely considering killing
myself and it wasn't the first time that I'd ideated on certain thoughts like
that.
If, if, if ultimately committing suicide is like a 10 rung ladder.
I was at rung nine a couple, a couple of times, a couple of times in my life.
Yeah.
It was gnarly, but I didn't realize that the reason why you get there is
because your hormones
are all completely out of whack.
My dopamine, my serotonin, my norepinephrine, all these things that are, you
know, and me going
and drugging and boozing doesn't help balance those things either.
But you don't know that you're just chasing.
Like, I got to be happy.
I don't know how else to get, get through all this stuff, you know?
Yeah.
So all of that just came.
Oh, I quit smoking when I moved here too.
So like all this, everything.
It was so, it was so intense, but anyway, but it, it, you know, this place
changed my life.
It saved my life.
But I will also mention though, that it gave me a lot of understanding of my
own psychology
and just psychology in general, I suppose.
But I, I learning all these things about how to like love yourself more.
That's great.
You can learn all that knowledge, but if you still don't believe that you are
worthy of
being loved, you won't apply any of it.
You don't care about any of it.
You don't see the value in yourself to want to put that work in, you know?
And so thank God there was this woman, uh, her, her name is Beth in the book.
She was, we had these like, um, uh, like companions basically like house moms,
because if somebody's
not in a very good place, you can't depend on them to like get up and like make
themselves
breakfast and get to your appointments and all that kind of jazz.
It was a, a very nice place that really took care of you.
It was built for like CEOs that were having massive burnout and all that jazz,
like lots
of depression and, and, and, and things of that nature.
But anyway, we had these companions and they would rotate through lovely women,
all of
them.
Uh, but there was one Beth who was a mom of three kids, just like me and my
sisters, middle
boy between two girls and her son also struggled with mental health.
And it, I, it, she turned out to be this angel, man, like this total God loved
me through that
woman in the most intense, amazing ways.
And she doesn't take credit.
Like she did it.
She knows she was just a vessel.
She was just a tool that God got to show me a mother's love.
Like really kind of for the first, not the first time, I know my mom loved me
and tried
to do her best, particularly now that I've done all the therapy.
I know that my mom did her best, but it still left me with so many holes,
particularly with
that maternal, you know, trauma.
And so this woman ended up at least like just lighting the, the pilot light,
you know, just
getting me started so that I could then, you know, take that journey on and go,
go about
it more on my own.