Depression and mental health problems can affect anyone at any time. The latest high profile celebrity to speak up about his battles against mental health issues and alcohol misuse is Simon Pegg.
The Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz star told Empire that during the darkest days of his mental health he turned to alcohol as a mechanism of coping with his struggles. Needless to say, it didn't work and he sought outside help.
He said: "I was depressed. I had always been susceptible to it. But at the same time as I started to ascend into what would conventionally be regarded as a success, I was going down,
"The more material success presented itself to me, the less I could understand why it wasn't fulfilling me in any way. It wasn't that it wasn't fulfilling me, it was because I was depressed."
As a result of his mental illness he began to drink more and more heavily. He said that he now looks back on some of his work and can easily see that he was not in a good place just from his appearance.
He continued: "If you look at Burke & Hare, I'm bloated and fucking dead-eyed... I look at it now and think, 'Fuck me, I was in a dark place then'. I was drunk a lot of the time and I was profoundly unhappy."
As these things often do, the situation brought itself to a head. He was eventually forced to check himself into a facility to receive help.
He eventually 'crashed out' and had to get help to stop drinking and find the cause of what was making him so unhappy in the first place.
"At Comic-Con in 2010 - I've never told anyone this - we were promoting Paul and I sort of went missing for about four days. I got back to the UK and just checked myself in somewhere," he said.
"I got well in 2010. I stopped drinking. I got a little bit of help."
He also credits the team that he worked with on Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol for aiding his recovery. He added: "They took care of me and it helped me to get out of this dark place and realise that life was enjoyable. By the time I finished Ghost Protocol, I was better."
"J.J. [Abrams] unending faith in me makes me teary to think about it. He's always stuck by me."
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