“SNL” Star Pete Davidson Reveals He Was Diagnosed With Borderline Personality Disorder
Saturday Night Live had a big year at the 2017 Emmys, and fans were happy to see one of the show’s young stars, Pete Davidson, on hand at the ceremony, looking happy and healthy, to support the show in its nominations and wins. Davidson took time off from the NBC series this season to focus on quitting his marijuana habit, and now, he’s opening up about the mental health issues that have come to light with his sobriety.
“Around October, September, last year, I started having these mental breakdowns where I would, like, freak out — rage — and then not remember what happened after,” Davidson told comedian Marc Maron in a new episode of his WTF podcast. Davidson said that, at the time, he smoked weed “all day, every single day,” and had for about eight years.
After an initial stint in rehab in December 2016 to help him kick his weed habit, Davidson, 23, began treatment for what doctors suspected was bipolar disorder. But shortly after getting out of rehab, he was back to his marijuana habit, and two months later, he suffered what he describes as a “really bad mental breakdown.” At that point, Davidson attributed it to his weed habit and quit for good, but his symptoms persisted. That’s when he got a proper diagnosis of borderline personality disorder.
“I found out I have BPD, which is borderline personality disorder,” he shared. “One of my psychiatrists…was always saying before this big meltdown happened, ‘You’re probably bipolar or borderline, we’re just going to have to figure it out.'”
He also told Maron that his doctors tracked some of his problems to the loss of his father, a firefighter who died in the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. “That’s the big one,” he said. “However I lived my childhood — in fear — is related to it.”
Davidson is on new medication for BPD now, and while that, combined with therapy, is “slowly but surely” helping, he’s still working through what he calls the worst year of his life.
“This whole year has been a f**king nightmare,” he admitted. “Getting diagnosed with this and trying to figure out how to learn with this and live with this and going to doctors nonstop. It’s getting better, but it’s taking a while.”
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(Photo via Frazer Harrison/Getty + Michael Loccisano/Getty)