Bruce Springsteen, the singer of the hit “Born in the USA”, opens up about his mental health in an interview with Esquire. In his statement, he mentioned, “I’ve had to deal with a lot of it over the years.”
Springsteen, now 69, shared he has suffered emotional breakdowns. One of which he believes the reason for his hospitalization. The rock singer mentioned in the interview that he’s now on several medications that “keep [him] on an even keel.”
“Otherwise I can swing rather dramatically and… just… the wheels can come off a little bit. I have come close enough to [depression] where I know I am not completely well myself,” Springsteen added.
In the interview, when asked if he ever thought of committing suicide, Bruce answered, “I once felt bad enough to say, ‘I don’t know if I can live like this.’ I once got into some sort of box where I couldn’t figure my way out and where the feelings were so overwhelmingly uncomfortable.”
Springsteen also shared that mental illness runs in their family. According to the musician, his father Doug was diagnosed with schizophrenia later in his life.
Bruce said, “all I do know is as we age, the weight of our unsorted baggage becomes heavier.”
“With each passing year, the price of our refusal to do that sorting rises higher and higher. Long ago, the defenses I built to withstand the stress of my childhood, to save what I had of myself, outlived their usefulness, and I’ve become an abuser of their once lifesaving powers.
“I relied on them wrongly to isolate myself, seal my alienation, cut me off from life, control others, and contain my emotions to a damaging degree. Now the bill collector is knocking, and his payment will be in tears,” he added.
The rock musician said he watches his children closely as mental illness runs in the family. He told Esquire, “It ran in my family going way before my dad.”
As a celebration for Springsteen’s stint that went for two years, Netflix released a “special” show, Springsteen on Broadway. People from all over the globe can watch the film, which according to Indie Wire, “epitomizes the full potential of a platform so large that it tends to crush whatever it touches.”
