Pete Davidson is recalling the moment he hit rock bottom in 2023, before his mother’s fear prompted going to rehab.
“It was K [ketamine]. I was getting liquid and cooking it,” Davidson, 32, told Variety on Wednesday, September 30, of the drugs he was taking during that dark period, which came after he played himself on the autobiographical Peacock series Bupkis. “And I would do acid and shrooms and whippets and smoke weed all day and eat pills every day.”
The actor — who exited Saturday Night Live, which he said provided structure and routine, one year prior — admitted that while starring on Bupkis he was “constantly living” in his “own crap” and past trauma, so he turned to drugs to numb the pain.
“It got scary because I didn’t feel high,” Davidson recalled of his daily drug use. “I felt high when I wasn’t doing it, so I was like, this is a huge problem.”
Pete, who has been open about losing his firefighter father, Scott Davidson, during the deadly September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York City, said it was an emotional call with his mother, Amy Davidson, that made him want to get clean.
“She told me her biggest fear was waking up one day to see on the news that something bad had happened to me,” the comedian remembered. “I reached a point where I couldn’t do that to her anymore.”
Pete took his mom’s worries to heart, walked away from season 2 of Bupkis and checked himself into rehab.
“I was part of the problem of what I hated the most, which was the invasiveness around my personal life,” he explained. “I was just lobbing it up and continuing the narrative.”
Pete noted that while his mom was the catalyst to his rehab stay, he was ready to make a change.
“When I turned 30 and I was there, it was a real low point. Nothing much was going on with my career and I was like, ‘This f***in’ sucks. I can’t do it anymore,’” he said of his inspiration to get sober for himself. “And it can’t be for anyone or for a job. You really have to want it, and when you’re done, you’re done.”
The How to Rob a Bank star is currently sober aside from “four beers a year.”
“I don’t f*** with drugs anymore. It’s been two or three years from doing really hard stuff and about a year or more from weed,” Pete shared. “Weirdly, the hardest thing to stop was weed.”
He pointed to fatherhood as one of his biggest motivations for maintaining his sobriety, saying it’s “easy” to stay away from drugs “because I have a kid.”
“Anytime there’s ever a thought, I look at my phone background and go, ‘Oh yeah, no,’” Pete revealed, referring to his daughter, Scottie, 9 months, whom he shares with ex-girlfriend Elsie Hewitt.
Pete, who named his baby girl after his late father, explained that his whole world shifted when she was born.
“Scottie is my whole life. I was living or dying on this business and what I thought people thought of me,” he confessed. “It was all validation and ‘If I do this, then I’ll do that.’ But as soon as I saw her for the first time, I was like, ‘Oh my God, none of this f***in’ matters at all. It’s a job.”
Now, Pete has a new perspective on his career, saying, “If I get to do cool stuff, great; if not, cool, I get to be home more with my kid.’”
If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, contact the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
