The Therapy That Saved Zachary Levi's Life

I struggled with depression so much throughout my life, even as a kid. I didn't know I was depressed or dealing with anxiety or whatever, but... Did you find different methods that helped you relieve it? Yeah, well, so yeah, ultimately, at 37, I talk about it in the book, but at 37, when I moved out to Austin, I had a whole meltdown. And thank God was surrounded by some friends and family that helped kind of pick me up and get me to this program that's up, and they operate out of Southern California, Connecticut. And I chose to go to Connecticut for three weeks of this super intensive, life-changing, life-saving therapy. And it was... I threw the psychological kitchen sink at it. It was three weeks every day, at least three or four appointments that were one of either a psychiatrist, psychotherapist, dialectic behavioral therapist, art therapist, meditation therapist, life coach, nutritionist, gym four days a week, yoga twice a week, Pilates twice a week. And that helped me tremendously, and I learned a lot of modalities and things from all of that. But that wasn't until five years ago. The rest of my life, I'd been coping by fucking boozing and drugging and sexing. You know what I mean? I didn't realize how much self-medicating I was doing for so long. And I wish that there would have been some way for anyone to be able to be like, let me just... I'm just going to see what your levels are. Because I didn't even know. I didn't know that what I was constantly feeling all the time... Well, anxiety, I was constantly feeling all the time. Depression would hit me in these moments where basically I'd have massive dopamine crashes as I think I've come to find out. I would finish a job or I'd get out of a relationship or I wouldn't be working for a while, and all of a sudden it's like, I'm worthless, I'm worthless, I'm worthless. Work always kept me buoyed. If I'm at work, it's dopamine all day long. Particularly on a movie set or whatever. All this is a bunch of little puzzles. You're just solving little problems all day long. W-me, W-me, W-me, W-me. Being on a Broadway stage, you got a thousand people... I mean, you don't understand the rush of a live audience. Fuck, you're feeding off of that energy, and you're playing jazz with this crowd. It's incredible. So much dopamine. And I would get off doing a Broadway show, I'd be flying after the show, and then we'd go to the bar with some of my cast mates, and I would be drinking whiskey, ginger, it's like, till three in the morning, because I didn't even have to be at work the next day until 6 p.m. or whatever. And it was all just a ton of self-medicating, because I didn't love myself, and I didn't know that I didn't love myself. Wow, so you just thought you were partying. Yeah, basically. Yeah. I think that's what a lot of people think. You have a moment where it just comes crashing down. Is it a moment? Is it a series of moments? It was like, I had this big dream, still do, of moving out here, buying a bunch of land, building a movie studio slash arts commune slash resort. That's kind of like a new United artist studio. Someone sounds like a cult leader. Why do you think I came to Texas, bro? And so, a head full of steaming dreams and all that, and I was so convinced, like, this is what I'm supposed to do with the rest of my life, I want to make a better Hollywood, all these things. And I came out, but my work life wasn't great at the moment. The jobs I was doing, I wasn't stoked with. I was, again, feeling like a failure. I had just broken up with this girl, wonderful girl, who was from Austin, who probably would have moved here with me, but I self-sabotaged it all. I was like, nah, I don't think this is going to work. And I came out here, had no real support structure, and my friends and family had a beautiful community in Los Angeles, but I was like, I got to go. I feel compelled. I got to go do this. I got to go buy this land. And I'm really grateful that I did, but I didn't do it in the healthiest of ways. And so I ended up out here, and I was alone. And I was deeply, deeply feeling like, oh, I've blown up my life. I don't feel support. I felt like a lot of my friends and family were watching me go in this almost manic state of, I got to just, if I don't do it now, I'm not going to do it. And I knew I had to get out of California. California has been broken for so long. And I love California. I'm from California, but it's just so busted in so many ways. But so I came out, had nobody, had no real support structure. Dark wasn't great. Love life wasn't great. All these things were just falling down on me. And so massive, just spiral into darkness. Damn. Yeah. It was gnarly. I mean, even went to... I mean, I was definitely considering killing myself. And it wasn't the first time that I'd ideated on certain thoughts like that. If ultimately committing suicide is a 10 rung ladder, I was at rung nine a couple of times. A couple of times in my life, yeah. It was gnarly. But I didn't realize that the reason why you get there is because your hormones are all completely out of whack. My dopamine, my serotonin, my norepinephrine, all these things that are... And me going and drugging and boozing doesn't help balance those things either. But you don't know that. You're just chasing. Like, I got to be happy. I don't know how else to get through all this stuff. So all of that just came... Oh, I quit smoking when I moved here too. So all together. All this everything. It was so intense. But anyway, this place changed my life. It saved my life. But I will also mention though that it gave me a lot of understanding of my own psychology and just psychology in general, I suppose. But I learning all these things about how to love yourself more. That's great. You can learn all that knowledge. But if you still don't believe that you are worthy of being loved, you won't apply any of it. You don't care about any of it. You don't see the value in yourself to want to put that work in. And so thank God there was this woman... Her name is Beth in the book. She was... We had these companions basically, like house moms. Because if somebody's not in a very good place, you can't depend on them to get up and make themselves breakfast and get to your appointments and all that kind of jazz. It was a very nice place that really took care of you. It was built for CEOs that were having massive burnout and all that jazz. Lots of depression and things of that nature. But anyway, we had these companions and they would rotate through lovely women, all of them. But there was one Beth who was a mom of three kids, just like me and my sisters, middle boy between two girls. And her son also struggled with mental health. And she turned out to be this angel, man. Like this total God loved me through that woman in the most intense, amazing ways. And she doesn't take credit like she did. She knows she was just a vessel. She was just a tool. And God got to show me a mother's love, really for the first, not the first time. I know my mom loved me and tried to do her best. Particularly now that I've done all the therapy, I know that my mom did her best. But it still left me with so many holes, particularly with that maternal trauma. And so this woman ended up at least just lighting the pilot light, just getting me started so that I could then take that journey on and go about it more on my own.