Josh Widdicombe has revealed severe burnout led to him suffering a “mental collapse” in 2022.
The comedian, 41, who is best known for appearing on The Last Leg and hosting the Parenting Hell podcast alongside Rob Beckett, experienced “horrific panic-attack-led insomnia” during the breakdown.
Widdicombe said his inability to sleep left him “terrified about going to sleep at night”. Yet he resisted his doctor’s advice to take antidepressants because he thought it was an “admission of failure”.
Writing in The i Paper, Widdicombe said: “Like a lot of people who think there’s some sort of shame or stigma involved, I was initially very resistant to taking antidepressants.
“But I couldn’t sleep and I was terrified about going to bed every night.”
Widdicombe said sleepless nights meant he struggled to recover: “I couldn’t make any changes to my life, because it was like trying to change the tyre on a car that was going at 120mph,” he said.
“Taking medication just allowed me to pull over into the hard shoulder and make those changes.
“It’s a shame that there’s still stigma attached to it,” he added. “It really helped me to just deal with it and make the life changes I needed to make.”
Widdicombe explained his anxiety stemmed from a fear that if he ever stopped working then all his success as a comedian would vanish.
The comedian underwent multiple rounds of talking therapy and began meditating in order to “readjust that feeling” of inadequacy and reorganise his priorities. “I’d lost sight of what the quest was,” he said.
Reflecting on his management of anxiety, Widdicombe said he doesn’t think you ever fully “recover” from mental health struggles.
“You’ve got to be eternally vigilant with these things,” he said. “It’s like that phrase ‘no one’s a recovered alcoholic, they’re always a recovering alcoholic’ and I think it’s the same with these things.
“I feel slightly like I’m a footballer that had an injury, who will always be slightly playing knowing that I’m protecting that injury even though it’s not there any more.”
Back in 2023, Beckett revealed Widdicombe had been “stretched beyond belief at home and at work” after committing to too many things, leading him to “not enjoying life and feeling stressed and fed up”.
“I was feeling incredibly anxious and depressed,” Widdicombe admitted. “I was drinking to get to sleep when I was feeling bad, which is a very bad thing to do because it’s a depressant.”
Widdicombe recalled reaching a turning point with his anxiety while filming The Last Leg’s Christmas special in December 2022.
After filming the episode, he decided to see a GP and was then prescribed antidepressants.
Despite feeling “embarrassed” of the medicationWiddicombe told two friends he was on antidepressants, and it turns out that both of them were on the same medicines. `
According to UK Government statistics published in 2024, 8.7 million adults in the UK are on antidepressants.
“You can’t just go: ‘I took this pill, and I feel better,’” Widdicombe said. “[But antidepressants] give me a safety net, or a cushion that allows me to function when it gets really tough and allows me to rebuild.”
If you are experiencing feelings of distress, or are struggling to cope, you can speak to the Samaritans, in confidence, on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email jo@samaritans.org, or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch.
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