Drew Carey & Depression: What He Has Actually Written About

Drew Carey wrote about his depression in 1997, in a comic memoir, at a time when almost no American comedian was doing that. He described two suicide attempts in his early twenties with a bluntness that startled reviewers who had picked the book up expecting jokes about beer.

He has not, as far as we can establish, ever reported a bipolar diagnosis. He appears on bipolar lists anyway, and this page explains what he actually said.

Cleveland

Carey was born in Cleveland in 1958. His father died of a brain tumour when Drew was eight, and he has written about the effect of that loss and about the household afterwards. He has also written about being sexually abused as a child, which he disclosed in his memoir.

He was expelled from Kent State University, joined the Marine Corps Reserve, and spent his early twenties drifting between jobs including waiting tables and working as a bank teller.

It was during this period, in his early twenties, that he made two attempts on his own life, using sleeping pills. He survived both. He has described the state he was in as a total absence of any sense that anything would ever improve.

Comedy as Method

Carey has described, in interviews and in Dirty Jokes and Beer, deciding at a certain point that he was going to deliberately construct a happier life — reading self-help and psychology books, working on his outlook, and using comedy as both a career and a form of treatment.

He borrowed joke-writing books from the library, started performing in Cleveland in 1986, won a competition, and progressed to Star Search and then a career-making appearance on The Tonight Show in 1991, where Johnny Carson called him over to the couch.

The Drew Carey Show ran from 1995 to 2004. He hosted the American version of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, and in 2007 succeeded Bob Barker as host of The Price Is Right, a job he still holds.

What He Has Said About Mental Health

Carey has been consistent over three decades: he had clinical depression, it was severe enough to nearly kill him twice, and he addressed it partly through therapy and partly through a deliberate, sustained effort to change how he thought.

He has been sceptical in interviews about medication for his own case, describing himself as having worked his way out through reading, therapy and effort. It is worth saying, gently, that this route works for some people with depression and does not work for others, and that it is not an approach that treats bipolar disorder — which requires medication.

We have found no statement from Carey reporting a bipolar diagnosis, describing manic or hypomanic episodes, or discussing mood-stabilising treatment.

So Is Drew Carey Bipolar?

There is no evidence for it.

What is documented is major depression with suicide attempts, in a man with a significant childhood trauma history. That is a serious and important story on its own, and it does not need to be relabelled to matter.

The distinction is not pedantic. Depression and bipolar disorder are different illnesses with different treatments, and the approach Carey describes — self-directed cognitive work without medication — would be actively inadequate for bipolar disorder. Listing him as bipolar risks presenting his method as a template for an illness it does not treat.

If you're in the place Carey describes, please talk to someone. A doctor, a mental health professional, or a crisis line in your country — and emergency services if you're in immediate danger.

Legacy

Carey has had one of the more durable careers in American television, and he has quietly been one of its more generous figures — funding causes, and continuing to perform improv in small Los Angeles venues long after he stopped needing the money.

His contribution to this subject is that he described a suicide attempt in a mass-market comedy book in 1997, when the culture had almost no vocabulary for it. A lot of men read that who would never have read anything else on the subject.

Frequently Asked Questions