Sarah Silverman's Life-Long Depression Battle: ‘It Feels Like I'm Desperately Homesick, but I'm Home’

Silverman stars in I Smile Back, out October 23. (Photo: John Lamparski/WireImage)

In a story in the November issue of Glamour magazine, comedian and actress Sarah Silverman describes her 31-year, on-again-off-again battle with depression.

Silverman, who’s opened up briefly in the past about struggling with mental health, is staring in the upcoming film I Smile Back, playing a “suburban mother and housewife, Laney Brooks, who on paper has it all, but in reality suffers from depression and self-medicates with drugs and alcohol,” she tells Glamour.

Silverman was 13 when she hit her first wave of depression, she explains, after coming home from a school camping trip and having something shift inside. “You know how you can be fine one moment, and the next it’s, “Oh my God, I f—king have the flu!”? It was like that. Only this flu lasted for three years. My whole perspective changed. I went from being the class clown to not being able to see life in that casual way anymore. I couldn’t deal with being with my friends, I didn’t go to school for months, and I started having panic attacks. People use ‘panic attack’ very casually out here in Los Angeles, but I don’t think most of them really know what it is. Every breath is labored. You are dying. You are going to die. It’s terrifying. And then when the attack is over, the depression is still there. Once, my stepdad asked me, “What does it feel like?” And I said, “It feels like I’m desperately homesick, but I’m home.”

Several years and therapists later, the depression abated — she got off her medication, went to NYU, started performing stand-up, and landed a coveted spot as a writer-performer on SNL. And suddenly, 9 years after she first began to struggle with depression, it was back. “One night, sitting in my apartment watching 90210, something came over me again,” she details. “Though it had been nine years, I knew the feeling immediately: depression. Panic. I’d thought it was gone forever, but it was back. My friend Mark helped me get through it. He found me a therapist at 2:00 A.M. and informed me that no, I would not be quitting SNL in the morning and moving back to New Hampshire. Instead I got a prescription for Klonopin, which blocks panic attacks. It saved my life, even when I was fired from SNL at the end of the season (as it turned out, I didn’t know myself well enough to make a real impression). I eventually weaned off Klonopin, but to this day I have a bottle of seven pills in my backpack that I never touch because just knowing that they’re there is all I need.”

While everyone experiences depression differently, stories like Silverman’s can help de-stigmatize the illness. Depression affects approximately 6.7 million Americans per year, and that’s without including those who suffer from an anxiety disorder.

As Yahoo Health previously reported, depression is essentially a mental health epidemic, with more than 350 million people worldwide suffering from a depressive disorder, according to the World Health Organization. In addition to symptoms that can make it hard to function, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that depression also increases the risk for other conditions, like alcoholism, eating disorders, and panic or anxiety disorders, among others.

If you or a loved one are struggling, speak with a doctor about treatment.

Read Silverman’s full essay for Glamour, here.

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