Q: According to the book The Chris Farley Show, Beverly Hills Ninja depressed Chris Farley a fair amount and put him back in to a bad place that spiraled into his death. Is that accurate? Any sense of that on set? A: There was no sense of that on the set. I mean, we all were depressed on Beverly Hills Ninja. So we were ALL depressed. It wasn't a great representation of anybody in it.

i felt compelled to share my mental health challenges to help take the shame and stigma off it, but i couldn't do it on stage-was just too insecure and nervous. i wanted to write the book that i wish had been available to me when i was suffering--self help books are usually very boring and i wanted to write a cool, funny one! i also wrote about getting my ear getting bitten off and almost getting arrested in guatemala which i couldn't really do while making eye contact with humans

I'm pretty happy being me. That's not to say I don't have my own little demons, but I don't foresee myself going anyplace dark right now. My kids save me from that stuff. I'm good.

i really hope so dude. sane people don't try to kill people en masse. theres a mental health epidemic in this country and its very distressing that there's still such a stigma around it. i also hear a lot of misdiagnosis i.e. doctors conflate ADD with schizophrenia, which is a very dangerous mistake. in this book i wrote about my mental health struggles in an attempt to do my part to help remove the shame around mental health challenges. i was harming myself and possibly could have harmed others due to my adrenaline addiction. i really hope one day people won't have to hide or feel ashamed about mental health challenges. its so much more common than we think, and so unfair to the people who ...[Read more]

Anxiety, depression, imposter syndrome

It hasn’t always been this way but I feel really lucky that I’ve been able to get here because when you’re in the trauma, you’re just seeing red. You have no idea what’s going on but comedy has really helped me get to this point. I can’t imagine another job that could’ve helped me the way that comedy has helped me work through all of this. I think my trauma response is telling jokes and that is what’s fun about comedy. I can take these really tragic events and I just can’t be mad at what happened because I have this creative outlet that I might not have had if I was sitting in math class paying attention. It’s the dents you have that make you unique and I love being able to do comedy about a...[Read more]

Every few seconds. Yes, of course. OF COURSE. What helps me is community- which means I belong to several 12-step groups, I call people, I've learned the name of every barista at the coffee shop (Brooklyn, Jeremy, Sarah, Angel, Gabby, Lydia, Anja, Matt) and I ask my friends for help A LOT. I need to "bookend" (checking in with someone before and after doing a task) in order to do the simplest 5 -minutes of rehearsal. For reals. It is sometimes setting a timer for 5 minutes, calling my friend Alex and telling him I'm going to rehearse and then rehearsing and calling him again when the timer goes off. It is sometimes EXCRUTIATING to get myself to do things and then, even when I do things, I am...[Read more]

Ooof, still figuring the mom stuff out! The weird part is, when you grow up with something odd you just think everyone else has it the same way. Around 12 or 13 I realized something was wrong and spent less and less time at home. By the time I was 30 I got my ass into therapy and really figured it out. And yes, separating from her was a huge help. I recommend everyone get their ass into therapy if they feel something is off. It saved my life.

You’ve said you learned in therapy that your compulsive behavior – eating, sex – is just self-medicating your anxiety. Does having that insight help? Oh, definitely. Once you say that to yourself, “Oh, this is anxiety,” you get to say to yourself, “Why am I anxious?” because when something’s bothering you, you don’t name it, you just start eating something. I’m still going to eat the two Twinkies, but when I start opening the second packet, I say to myself, “What’s going on, buddy?” That will get me to two Twinkies instead of eight.

a weighted blanket, beta blockers and dogs

Q: According to the book The Chris Farley Show, Beverly Hills Ninja depressed Chris Farley a fair amount and put him back in to a bad place that spiraled into his death. Is that accurate? Any sense of that on set? A: There was no sense of that on the set. I mean, we all were depressed on Beverly Hills Ninja. So we were ALL depressed. It wasn't a great representation of anybody in it.

I think that comedy, at its most basic level, is making light of unpleasant things. That’s how we deal with life. I think that the myth that comedy and depression are linked, and that any artist has to be unhappy to create, is a very dangerous myth that I think has hurt a lot of people. When Robin Williams died, I did a few interviews about that, because people were reaching out to the comedy community and asking people how they felt and their personal stories. A lot of people wanted to draw a link between comedians and depression and suicide, and I think that’s a really terrible myth. Anybody can be depressed in any walk of life. It just seems strange when comedians are depressed, because t...[Read more]

I would let that bad feeling drag me down to the bottom of the lake and I’d lay down there. The only thing that would pull me out of it would be getting a new chunk of material. And to get a new chunk of material you have to go out into the world. But when you’re in that funk you don’t want to go out and then you get writer’s block. When I was younger I even used to think all that clichéd sad-clown shit. Now I don’t want to fucking be that guy. I want to be the happy guy, which believe it or not, I am.

Try to take in some sun every day. Like 15-30 minutes of direct sunlight. Every day. And stay on the medication until you and your doctor are ready to go off as a team. And when you do go off, challenge the people in your life to stay up on you and to tell you when or if they think you're starting to slip.