We’re living in an age of growing honesty and transparency when it comes to the experience of our mental health. Collectively, we’ve realized that our struggles can no longer stay silenced. Sharing our stories helps us heal and inspires others to find healing for themselves. Increasingly, celebrities are speaking up about their experiences with mental illness, addiction, and alcoholism, in hopes to inspire their fans to seek treatment, healing, and growth. Simon Pegg, beloved British actor, is one of the many recent celebrities to open up about struggling with addiction.
Pegg explains how he was able to hide his alcoholism through acting. “I’m an actor, so I acted,” he said to The Guardian. From the age of 18 to 2005, Pegg struggled with depression and turned to alcohol to cope. After filming Mission Impossible III he realized his alcoholism needed to be dealt with. As is the case with many stories, it took years more until Pegg finally decided to seek treatment. In 2011, Pegg went to a treatment center while filming another film in the Mission: Impossible franchise. Having sustained his recovery for many years, he’s telling his story. “I’m not ashamed of what happened,” Pegg stated. “And I think if anyone finds any relationship to it, then it might motivate them to get well.”
In The World’s End, Pegg plays a character who believes that the best way to make time of an alien invasion on earth is completing a bar crawl. Making sense of his character, Pegg tells The Guardian, he was encouraged to start opening up about his addiction to alcohol. He described addiction as being like an alien invasion in one’s own body and mind, “It’s like you have grown a second head and all it wants to do is destroy itself, and it puts that ahead of everything else- your marriage, children, your job.”
Pegg’s story is not necessary unique. Many men and women spend years struggling with alcoholism before they find treatment and heal the underlying causes of what drives them to drink. However, alcoholism is a deadly behavioral pattern. While many men and women make it to treatment, many more do not. You have a fighting chance to find recovery, heal, and transform your life.
Providing effective residential care and cutting edge treatments, seeking trauma recovery at Khiron House offers healing for many common mental health problems and manifestations of trauma. If you haven’t found the treatment solution you need to sustain a life of recovery, your journey is here waiting for you to begin. For information, please call UK: 020 3811 2575 (24 hours) USA: (866) 801 6184 (24 hours).
