General Hospital’s Maurice Benard promised a very special episode of his video podcast, State Of Mind, and what he delivered was a very raw look behind the everyday facade that people put up to hide their pain. The actor shared the story behind his own horrific journey with anxiety that gave birth to his widely successful show on the many layers of mental health.
Maurice Benard: Battling The Demons Within
The 2020 pandemic changed life as we knew it. The isolation, economic woes, education shutdown, the job situation, and the fear of getting sick were all major things to the average person, but to the people who struggle daily with their mental health, it was a near-death experience. For Benard (Sonny), who has been very vocal about his dealing with being bipolar, it was literally a struggle between life and death*Trigger warning: If you struggle or know someone who struggles with depression, anxiety, or other forms of mental health, the following material may cause some distress. Please proceed with caution and know you are not alone.
The three-time Daytime Emmy award-winning actor described how it all began. “Just to get an idea, the panic attack for me started when the pandemic hit, and General Hospital shut down. I wasn’t going on my book tour. My mom and dad moved out of the house.” He also described his physical reaction. “I had this enormous rush come over me, and I was shaking like a leaf. It was really horrific.”
His book, Nothing General About: How Love (and Lithium) Saved Me On and Off General Hospital, which would go on to be a New York Times bestseller, was just coming out, and the promotional tour took a huge hit. “I still had to do the book tour, but I had to do it on Zoom,” he said.
Despite battling insomnia, anxiety, and depression, he had to face the press. “It was really terrible because what I really wanted to say to people like Dr. Oz, Dr. Drew, and Charlemagne Tha God was, ‘Please help me because I am dying here.’ Of course, I couldn’t do that, so I had to fake it to make it,” the actor admitted
