At the tender age of 20, Pete Davidson reached the mecca for all comedians: securing a casting role on Saturday Night Live. Davidson was the first SNL cast member to be born in the 1990s, and one of the youngest cast members ever. From the outside, SNL’s ‘Resident Young Person’ was living a fairy tale life.
Not the case. Since being in the spotlight, Davidson has not shied away from sharing his struggles–his dad passing away in the 9/11 attacks when he was just a eight, being diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease as a teenager, and even saying that if it weren’t for Kid Cudi’s Man on the Moon, he would have committed suicide.
Back in March, Davidson took a heavily publicized leave of absence from the show, later to announce that he “quit drugs and am happy and sober for the first time in 8 years.”
And most recently on a Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, he dropped another bombshell. The 23-year-old revealed that he has borderline personality disorder. Davidson said that he originally thought the episodes he was having were due to his “pothead” nature, but when they became more intense, he decided to seek professional help.
“Around October [or] September last year, I started having these mental breakdowns where I would, like, freak out and then not remember what happened after. Blind rage,” said Davidson.
“I never really did any other drugs, so I was like, ‘I’m gonna try to go to rehab. Maybe that’ll be helpful,'” Davidson said. “So I go and I get off weed. They told me there, they’re like, ‘You might be bipolar,’ and I was like, ‘OK.’ So they’re like, ‘We’re gonna try you on these meds.’ And then I got out [of rehab], and then I started smoking weed again — and I’m on meds.”
After one “really bad episode” later, Davidson returned to his doctors, who diagnosed him with the disorder.
“I found out I have BPD, which is borderline personality disorder,” he explained. “One of my psychiatrists [diagnosed me]. He was always saying before this big meltdown, ‘You’re probably bipolar or borderline, we’re just going to have to figure it out.'”
“It is working, slowly but surely,” he said. “I’ve been having a lot of problems. This whole year has been a fucking nightmare. This has been the worst year of my life, getting diagnosed with this and trying to figure out how to learn with this and live with this.”
Dealing with Crohn’s disease, personality disorder, and the pressures of fame has to be a colossal burden for anyone, let alone a 23-year-old. Props to Davidson for being so open with his struggles to help normalize them for others who may be struggling with issues of their own. Now that he’s been diagnosed, hopefully he can take the proper steps to subdue the symptoms and get to a place where he can make us laugh.
[h/t Page Six]