He keeps his personal life relatively private but LaKeith Stanfield is opening up about the “crippling anxiety” he experienced while filming The Harder They Fall in 2020. The acclaimed actor mentioned his mental health struggles months ago but was asked about his experience when he recently caught up with GQ. Stanfield shared that it was during that moment in 2020 he realized he was addicted to alcohol and revealed how he came to that determination.
“This is something I never really had talked about before, but I think it’s something that I need to talk about, because I want people to understand that it’s something that you can get through, that it’s something that you can get past,” he said
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“And I want people to feel empowered by the fact that the person they’re looking at on that screen has gone through addiction and survived it.” Stanfield shared that it was during a massage that his mood suddenly shifted and he was at the beginning stages of an anxiety attack.
“All of a sudden, I got so anxious during it that I just got up, canceled the massage, and told [the masseuse] to leave. And she was probably like, What the hell is going on? And I didn’t really know what was happening either,” he said. “I just thought, I’m anxious, let me just drink some wine. As soon as I drink the wine, the anxiety goes away.”
Although he initially believed that it was brought on by the stressors of life and the pandemic, the actor later learned that his anxiety was tied to alcohol withdrawal.
“I had become completely dependent upon it. To the point where I wasn’t able to move or function a whole day without having it.” He eventually went to rehab and said that he found support from people like Paris Jackson and Jamie Lee Curtis.
[via]