Patrick J. Adams is opening up about why he said adieu to his role on Suits.
“I wasn’t taking good care of my mental health, and I was drinking too much come the end of the seventh season,” Patrick said on Tuesday’s episode of Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s Dinner’s On Me podcast. “I was in a zone of living a pretty unexamined life, was pretty miserable [and] I would say, pretty depressed.”
The Canadian American actor, who played Mike Ross opposite Gabriel Macht as Harvey Specter from 2011 to 2019 on the US legal drama, said he spent money and drank “too much” to cope.
“I didn’t have the tools to deal with that depression beyond just spending money and drinking too much, you know, and not really knowing how to talk about it or in therapy sort of, but not really doing it,” he continued.
“You know what I mean? Like, there are all these things that I knew I needed to probably be doing and I wasn’t doing.”
Patrick admitted once his addiction started “taking a toll” on his fatherhood, he reached a “breaking point”. The Old School star has been married to fellow actor Troian Bellisario since 2016, and the pair share two young kids.
“I would numb myself [to] deal with my insecurity and my fears,” he explained.
“And they just weren’t working. And they were taking a toll on my relationship, for sure, but also just making me a very not present father. That for me was a breaking point when I was like, ‘I think I should stop drinking probably, because I don’t wanna be that dad’.”
He added: “The best thing I think I ever did for myself was stop drinking. It just needed to happen in order for all these other things to happen.
“There was really no way I was going to take my mental health seriously, take my physical health seriously, work on my marriage, work on my friendships, you know, deal with my fears and my anxiety. I just couldn’t have done any of it if alcohol was still in the picture.”
Patrick told the host that he ultimately didn’t return for the show’s eighth season when he realised the only reason he could fathom staying on board was for financial gain.
“I didn’t know what else to offer. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and think about the money [Gabriel Macht] made in those last two years, but at the same time, I never regretted the decision for a second. It was the right thing for my [relationship],” he said.
Help and support:
- If you need help with a drinking problem, call the Alcoholics Anonymous national helpline for free on 0800 9177 650 or email help@aamail.org.
- For advice on how to reduce drinking, visit Drinkaware’s website or Alcohol Change UK.
- Find alcohol addiction services near you using this NHS tool.