I spoke with John Moe about my mental illness for his podcast, The Hilarious World of Depression:
Wil Wheaton was a child star in Stand By Me, a regular on Star Trek: The Next Generation as a teenager, and has been trying to figure out his role in show business for a long time since then. He was dealing with the pressures of fame and the fickle tastes of Hollywood, all while dealing with a chemical imbalance in his brain that made him prone to anxiety and depression. Wil’s better now thanks to medication, but despite his long IMDb page and regular work on The Big Bang Theory, his hit YouTube show, and a thriving and varied career, he sees himself primarily as a failed actor.
It’s a good show, as they say. Go give it a listen.
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A friend recommended that I listen to this, and I want to say, thank you, as always, for your openness about your struggles. Every conversation makes it easier for another conversation to happen. It’s inspiring.
I really enjoyed the podcast, not in a way of making fun, but because it really takes guts to go out and talk about these sorts of things and be open and honest about it.
Greetings from a fellow nerd of the same generation Wil,
After lurking around your blog for the last several / many years, it’s clear you’re an upstanding, nice, decent person who happens to be famous. I’m a little older than you, but basically have grown up watching your work…and it seems to me that much of your underlying issues tie to that early success. I get it, I’ve had my own issues with my career in tech and how its turned out…our work kind of defines us…especially early on.
Cutting to the chase, I have little experience in your industry other than one radio-tv-film class I once took, but from my point of view, it seems you’ve just lost a little of your mo-jo after Trek. If you go back and watch your early work in Stand By Me and STNG, it seems to me that you ARE the character that you played; where your performance was fluid and natural. However, in your subsequent work, it’s more like it’s Wil Wheaton playing character X, Y, or Z. It’s like watching someone who’s trying too hard vs. their natural instinct. Maybe just unlearn / set aside some of the stuff you learned in those latter acting classes?
Regardless, anyone who’s been around a while knows you’ve got the skills, and for what it’s worth, as just regular dude, I consider you a great actor representative of my generation. I admire your never give-up, never surrender tenacity as well!
Keep being a good human, keep inspiring people, keep sharing, and keep acting.
Long live Wheaton’s law!
MikeL
@Wil, “failed actor” is the absolute last thing that comes to mind when I hear your name.
Some thoughts for everyone after listening to the podcast:
Know that depression is not a compact “thing” in the same way that, say, the common cold or a broken femur are. I see billboards announcing “Do you have depression?” as if it were some sort of plastic, packaged and predictable object that can placed on a shelf and sold. Right up there with “Do you have an iPhone?” or “Do you drive a Buick?” This maybe helps raise awareness in these bite-sized sorts of ways, but remember that after a certain point depression can be amorphous, living in this existentially weird intersection between the brain and the mind. A complex and woven place where memories, experiences, desires, self-perception, dreams, intelligence, social awareness, beliefs and more intertwine, and are all modulated by sophisticated circuits in the brain that we don’t fully understand. Which is why, historically, the best treatments have been those that combine medications, cognitive therapy, behavioral therapy and even a few other modalities (e.g. voc. rehab) into a customized and relevant approach. Though depression has common, identifiable symptoms (see the DSM V for details) beyond this it becomes a very, very individualized illness.
Also understand that many people who suffer from depression can intellectually understand and maintain insight into their circumstances, but emotionally are unable to control the swells of mood changes that occur in their lives. Always the heart vs. the head (I could double-back here and get into some curiously applicable Meisner philosophy, but I’ll let our actors out here contemplate that on their own).
It sure ain’t like the old days. Treatment professionals coming out of schools (or unforgivably worse, “mail-order” universities) are now trained in specific “compartments” of expertise. Social Workers do therapy and it stops there. Psychiatrists prescribe medications (usually during a 15 minute appointment) and it stops there. Psychologists specialize in testing and it stops there. In the old days, professionals would have solid training across all dimensions of the illness, and could synthesizes this into a workable, effective holistic treatment plan. A psychiatrist, for example, would spend an hour with you, talking about your experiences, tweaking medications, conducting therapy. I so worry that we have become a field of silos. TIP OF THE DAY: if a Social Worker can’t tell you the importance of what “D1” and “D2” are, or if they can’t detail “trichotillomania” without having to look it up in a book? Bad, bad news. Feel free, by the way, to use this as a means to test potential providers.
The National Suicide Hotline is a great resource. But do this, also. Check to see if your community has something in place called “C.I.T.” It stands for “Crisis Intervention team.” It originated in Tennessee and have become popular across the country. Your local police officers undergo sophisticated training in how to recognize and deal with mental health emergencies in a clinical and non-confrontational manner. And boy, are they good. It’s not “COPS”. Assessments are done with delicacy and compassion. Here in Las Vegas it is now a requirement for all officers who want to promote to Sargent or beyond. Now, any police officer can take someone into protective custody if they suspect mental illness, but if they’re specially trained through C.I.T.? Trust me. It makes a world of difference (I’m very biased here as I am one of the folks who actually conducts the training here–but again, trust me). If your community doesn’t have this, consider advocating for such.
There have not been any significant breakthroughs in pharmaceutical treatment in a long, long while. Don’t let insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies (the “Patty and Selma” of the mental health world) fool you. Asking your doctor about adding Abilify to your anti-depressant? It’s an anti-psychotic.
In its severest form. depression can create psychotic experiences. Hallucinations. Delusions. Thought disorder. The worst of both worlds. Truly, the boundaries between the mood disorders and the psychotic disorders seems to blend more and more with year. I predict that at some point in the future we’ll no longer refer to these illness by these names, but rather more specifically to their neurological elements. “Dopamine Excitation Disorder”, maybe. Or “Pervasive Seratonin Effect Disorder”.
WANT TO KNOW MORE about what’s happening with mental illness around the country? Check out my pals at the Treatment Advocacy Center. treatmentadvocacycenter.org, to be exact.
If there was ever a field that will challenge your self-esteem and worth, it’s acting. Check your expectations at the door. In just about every other profession, success breeds more success. Up the ladder you go. Work in the mail room yesterday, CEO of the company tomorrow. And why not? That idea of achievement= success or commitment = rewards is woven into the fabric of our society. We’re taught this from an early age. Not in acting. You can work your ass off. be the best trained. Have the best agent. The best headshots and reel. Have tons of talent. Ace auditions. Know people in the business. And. Never. Book. The. Role. You. Want. Or even get a callback. Terribly soul-shattering. For those who, at some level, demand or expect success, driving around on the101 in a beat-up old 2-door, 3-cylinder Chevy while Porsches and convertible Lamborghinis race by you, underneath those mansions on the hill (constant reminders of what you’ve done or not done) can be an absolute esteem-killer. Day after day after day.
Whew. As you can see, I could go on about this topic all day.
(Apologies, folks. My paragraph breaks didn’t format as expected. Sigh…)
I listed to this today. You are very honest and quite engaging. It helped a lot. Thank you.
Thank you so much for sharing and recording this piece, I listen to it everytime life gets dark. Not only is your voice so calming, but you always manage to make me feel less alone in an environment that doesn’t accept that mental illness is a valid problem.
Thank you, Wil, for always being Wil. This was definitely worth the listen.
Thank you so much for sharing this podcast. I’ve now listened to your show twice and it’s got me thinking a lot about being a child and how much control you have over your own destiny, regardless of show business. Your frustration with the audition process is totally understandable and I can see how that would eat at you. For what it’s worth, I think as good of an actor as I think you are, your true talent and calling is in writing. You really do have a way with words.
I’ve gone back and listened to all the episodes of THWOD and have learned something valuable from each one, so thanks for bringing more attention to this worthwhile podcast!
I was a fan before. I’m an even bigger fan now. I’ve struggled with similar demons in my life. It helps when I know that someone like you, who I hold in high esteem, can say “me too.” Maximum respect Wil Wheaton.
You are a really good actor and a top human being, your work on Big Bang especially gave me respect for Wil Wheaton the person as well as Wil Wheaton the actor, most of my favorite episodes have your name in the credits. Its one thing to play someone else but to play yourself so seamlessly into a fictional story and make the character so relateable is a skill in itself. You will get another crack one day just wait for the right moment.
Odd as this statement is: I was happy to find you coming through my headphones on The Hilarious World Of Depression. I listen to this podcast regularly. It helps. YOU’ve helped, more than you know. Thank you for sharing.