‘Worst Year of My Life’: Saturday Night Live’s Pete Davidson Opens Up About Mental Health Struggles

Saturday Night Live cast member Pete Davidson opened up about his mental health issues this week, revealing a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder.

Speaking with Marc Maron on his WTF podcast, Davidson spoke openly about what led up to the diagnosis after he entered a rehabilitation program last December. Davidson first entered the program because he started having mental breakdowns he initially blamed on his frequent marijuana use.

“I never really did any other drugs,” Davidson told Maron. “So I was like, ‘I’m gonna try to go to rehab. Maybe that’ll be helpful.”

While at rehab, Davidson was told that he might have bipolar disorder and started to take medication for it. Once he got out of rehab, he started smoking marijuana again while taking the medication. Davidson said that two months later, he “just snapped” and had another mental breakdown. Davidson then decided to quit, although he still felt the same mentally. And a few months later, he was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. Davidson said he has been “depressed all the time,” but told Maron that going to therapy regularly has helped.

“It is working, slowly but surely,” he said. “I’ve been having a lot of problems. This whole year has been a f—ing nightmare. This has been the worst year of my life, getting diagnosed with this and trying to figure out how to learn with this and live with this.”

Davidson, who joined SNL in 2014, said his mental health problems stemmed in part from the death of his father, a New York City firefighter who was killed in the September 11 terror attacks.

“My big thing is trust,” he said. “One day he was here and the next day he was gone.”