The 'Truth Seekers' actor admits he stopped taking medication to ease his struggles with ADHD, PTSD, and anxiety disorders because of his past battle with addictions.
- Oct 17, 2023
AceShowbiz - Nick Frost stopped taking medicine for conditions including ADHD, anxiety and PTSD over fears he could end up mired in addiction again. The "Shaun of the Dead" star has unveiled he was diagnosed with the conditions - as well as OCD, dyslexia and hypervigilance - at the age of 47 and took pills for several years in a bid to ease the symptoms but he decided to give up because of worries over his past battle with drink and drug abuse.
"[I was diagnosed with] ADHD, OCD, PTSD, dyslexia, anxiety disorders and a healthy slug of hypervigilance. I was 47. And when I started looking into it, it explained so much of my behaviour. I tried to be medicated for the first couple of years," he told the Guardian newspaper.
"But knowing that I had essentially a bottle of methamphetamine in my house was difficult for the addict in me. I'd be thinking, what would happen if I took 10 of these in one go? And then, you know, I'd also had 47 years of figuring out how to cope with it myself, and mostly done OK, so I went back to that."
Frost goes on to explain his compulsive tendencies got worse during his 40s and puts a lot of it down to feelings of loneliness. He added, "I think there was a loneliness in me. I'd lost all my family. And you get to a point in your life where your friends get married and have children, and you're left again. There's part of me then that just wants to dig in and build a wall. And it just becomes a bigger and a bigger thing until you become an awfully sad, mentally ill human being."
Nick previously revealed he using painting as a way to distract himself from his worries and often disappears into his garden shed for hours at a time to work on his art projects. He told The Independent newspaper, "I go into my shed and I don't worry about money or if the kids are happy or if people like [his TV show] 'Truth Seekers'. It helps."
