Pete Davidson is getting candid about his past drug addiction.
The Saturday Night Live alum dropped by Power 105.1 FM’s The Breakfast Club radio show on Wednesday, August 13, and opened up about how smoking weed affected his mental health.
“I was a daily, all day sorta guy and I got psychosis where you hear voices, and you feel like you’re sitting next to yourself, weed isn’t supposed to do that … it’s because it’s too strong,” Davidson, 31, said.
The comedian said he struggled with substance addiction in his 20s, while also dealing with the effects of fame after he was cast on SNL in 2014.
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“Yeah, I was just doing drugs and trying to do comedy — you know what I mean? I didn’t kill anyone or anything, but it’s still… you don’t want that out, you want to be able to grow,” he shared. “That’s what we don’t really have anymore — any form of privacy, I feel like, for young people where you, like, get to make those mistakes and learn your lessons, and it not be in Page Six.”
“I was a big drug addict — I would go to rehab and stuff, and I do have mental stuff, and I was in therapy, but if you’re a drug addict none of that works,” Davidson continued. “You can’t go to therapy on a bunch of drugs and expedite it to work.”
Davidson shared how he eventually kicked his habit after realizing that it was affecting his personal relationships.
He said, “I’m not a person who can do things in moderation, unfortunately, and I think I was kinda trying to fool myself — be like, ‘You can do this’ — and it just got to a point where people I really cared about were like, I will not f*** with you anymore.’ Some of them don’t still. Most of them, I will say, came back.”
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Ultimately, Davidson — who is expecting his first child with girlfriend Elsie Hewitt — is glad that he was able to contain his substance abuse to his formative years.
“[It] got a little out of control fast, and I was really young … I’m glad all the bad, crazy stuff happened in my 20s,” he said. “I’m glad I got it out of the way, but it’s tough when you’re young and doing that. I’m jealous of people who blow up when they’re 35 because they have a full life, they have their family, they have their friends, and they know who they are as people.”
He added, “When you don’t know who you are yet and you’re just in the news all the time for literally bulls***, it’s embarrassing, it sucks. I’m grateful that, not that it’s excusable, but that I was really young.”
If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, contact the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
