Thaindian News

Washington, Apr 20 (ANI): American actor Jamie Foxx has revealed that he went through 11 months of mental trauma after someone slipped drugs in his drink when he was 18-years-old.

Foxx, 41, real name Eric Marlon Bishop, revealed to the LA Times the harrowing past he went through and how much it affected him.

“When I was 18, somebody slipped something in my drink and it ripped me apart,” Contactmusic quoted him as saying.

“I had to go to the hospital. I mean, I was gone, it was the kind of trip that… you’re losing your mind. I kept thinking, ‘I can’t live like this’.

“It didn’t go away, either - for 11 months, I had flashbacks.

“After what happened when I was 18, when I was at music school, at International University in San Diego, I had a roommate named Mark, a white kid from Nebraska, he would have to talk me to sleep because I would have all of these crazy thoughts.

“I would go down to the pianos… and I would just play music for hours on end just to keep my mind from the crazy stuff,” he said.

The flashbacks continued to haunt him even as he played real-life schizophrenic Nathaniel Ayers in ‘The Soloist’, and he even suffered panic attacks and bouts of paranoia as he filmed the movie.

“I thought about just walking away from this movie,” he revealed.

But he did not give up and instead sought the help of psychiatrists, asking them for help and advice, so that he could portray Ayers, a mentally challenged musician, without personal repercussions.

“I got really worried, I felt all these things. I went to a psychiatrist and I actually asked, ‘Can I catch schizophrenia?’ Now I know you can’t, but I also knew I had this thing happen to me before, and it felt like it was going to happen again,” he said.

Adding: “It’s one thing to go crazy and not know it, but, if you feel yourself slipping in, then it’s like drowning, going down. That’s how I felt as a teenager, and just getting close to it again, I could feel the sweat coming, and I felt like I had to run out of there.” (ANI)