Josh Peck is opening up about past addictions to drugs, alcohol and food.
The former child star, now 35, reveals for the first time that he got sober in 2008 — the year after his Nickelodeon series Drake & Josh ended. He details his journey in his new memoir, Happy People Are Annoying, which he spoke about to People magazine.
“I spent most of my life dying to be typical but I grew up with a single mom, I was overweight and I was a musical theater kid who really had no social status,” said Peck, who was teased mercilessly because of his weight. “Comedy was my natural defense mechanism.”
Peck, who now appears on How I Met Your Father, weighed nearly 300 pounds at age 15, and detailed how he would overeat, including consuming an entire pizza himself. A commitment to diet and exercise saw him shed 127 pounds in 18 months. However, while he reached that goal physically, he didn’t do the emotional work.
“It became clear that once I lost the weight that I was the same head in a new body,” Peck said. “What is really clear is that I overdo things. And then I discovered drugs and alcohol. And that became my next chapter. I used food and drugs to numb my feelings.”
Peck said he would drink, use cocaine and take pills in his teen years into his early 20s. And that era, from his teens into his 20s, is when the world first met him — first on Amanda Byne’s The Amanda Show, 2000 to 2002, and later on Drake & Josh, 2004 to 2007, with Drake Bell. (Bynes and Bell have had their own high-profile personal problems. Peck and Bell are no longer close.)
“It was really a buffet,” he said of his drug and alcohol abuse. “I had this illusion of becoming more confident and attractive when I was partaking. I was trying to quiet that voice that woke me up every morning and told me I wasn’t enough.”
In an except he shared of the book, out March 15, Peck said the “first time I did drugs was because of a girl,” not specifying who. He said the fifth time, he ingested “copious amounts liquor and bright-colored prescription pills” on a random weeknight and then was dangerously speeding down Coldwater Canyon in L.A. at 8 a.m.
“I had been living like this for a year now without much slowing down,” he wrote. “Drugs and alcohol were like a water truck in the middle of a desert for me.”
Peck told People that his addiction impacted his work which was the impetus for getting help. He said he developed a reputation for being “unstable and erratic” and was at risk of “losing” a career he spent years building.
Peck entered treatment and got sober in 2008 — the year he turned 22 and the year his third and final Drake & Josh film (Merry Christmas, Drake & Josh) came out. He was then able to start focusing on his work with a clear mind — instead of obsessing over insecurities. He’s appeared in TV’s Turner & Hooch, and Grandfathered, and in movies including the Red Dawn remake.
“By walking through discomfort and by doing my best to break down the false identity I had for myself, I was able to get to the place that I was always seeking,” he said.
He added, “I was always looking for something outside to fix my insides. Eventually I realized that whether my life was beyond my wildest dreams or a total mess, it didn’t change the temperature of what was going on in my mind. I knew that nothing in the outside world would make me feel whole.”
Peck has been married to film editor Paige O’Brien since 2017 and they are parents to a 3-year-old son, Max.
While this is the first time Peck really details addiction journey, his Grandfathered co-star and friend John Stamos credited Peck last year for helping him get sober. They were making their TV show, which aired from 2015 to 2016, when Stamos was arrested for DUI and entered treatment for alcoholism.
“Josh Peck was a big inspiration in my recovery,” Stamos said. “Right around that time, I was going down the wrong path and I had to straighten out. And then, I’m on this show with this guy who was then in recovery for many, many years, playing my son. That part was meant to be. I wouldn’t be alive, if I hadn’t straightened up, and he was certainly part of it.”
Stamos added, “I think I was meant to meet Josh Peck.”
