#Drake & Josh Star Josh Peck Opens Up About Ending His Food And Drug Addictions — And Dropping Over 100 Lbs
Table of Contents
“Drake & Josh Star Josh Peck Opens Up About Ending His Food And Drug Addictions — And Dropping Over 100 Lbs
“
Speaking to People on Wednesday about his upcoming memoir Happy People Are Annoying, the Nickelodeon alum explained he has an addictive personality that led him to first an addiction to food — and then to drugs.
Related: Cameron Diaz Reveals After Leaving Hollywood She QUIT Beauty Products & ‘Never’ Washes Her Face!
He came to realize:
“I was always looking for something outside to fix my insides. But eventually I realized that whether my life was beyond my wildest dreams or a total mess, it didn’t change the temperature of what was going on in my mind. I knew that nothing in the outside world would make me feel whole.”
Looking back at the beginning of his days as a child star, doing standup comedy that led him to Amanda Bynes‘ sketch comedy hit The Amanda Show, he says he was teased mercilessly about his weight:
“I spent most of my life dying to be typical but I grew up with a single mom, I was overweight and I was a musical theater kid who really had no social status… Comedy was my natural defense mechanism.”
Sadly it’s a story we’ve heard take some much darker turns than TV stardom. But even then it took a real awakening to fix the eating. Josh peaked, as he’s revealed on his YouTube channel, at 300 lbs at his unhealthiest.
As fans of the Drake and Josh know — as the struggle with the weight loss was an all too public one — he did eventually shed the weight, 127 lbs to be exact.
Unfortunately his addictive tendencies just found a new focus:
“It became clear that once I lost the weight that I was the same head in a new body. What is really clear is that I overdo things. And then I discovered drugs and alcohol. And that became my next chapter. I used food and drugs to numb my feelings… It was really a buffet.”
On what the substances did to him, he recalled:
“I had this illusion of becoming more confident and attractive when I was partaking. I was trying to quiet that voice that woke me up every morning and told me I wasn’t enough.”
A child star in a downward spiral of drugs and alcohol? Like we said, dangerously close to cliché.
Thankfully he saw the light — it was the exit sign of a soundstage. He remembers getting a rep for being “unstable and erratic” due to his substance abuse. He realized:
“I had worked so hard for this thing and I was getting very close to losing it.”
Luckily, he’s been sober since 2008 and doing better than ever. He’s also found a great outlet in social media — gaining popularity on both Vine and YouTube — being himself. He told the mag:
“By walking through discomfort and by doing my best to break down the false identity I had for myself, I was able to get to the place that I was always seeking. I’m just trying to do good work that makes people happy.”
Now that he’s a grown 35-year-old man with a wife and 3-year-old son, he’s finally made peace with his teen self. He concluded:
“It took me a really long time to love the 15-year-old version of me, But now I understand how strong he was. And I feel like everything in my life set me up to find this chapter of health, peace and contentment.”
Wait, happily ever after? Damn, guess he was a cliché after all!
So happy everything worked out for him!
[Image via Nick Rewind/Josh Peck/YouTube.]
If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on Google News too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.
For forums sites go to Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com
If you want to read more Like this articles, you can visit our Social Media category.
