Drake Bell Talks Overcoming Substance Abuse & His Darkest Moments
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00:00 Substances are always temporary.
00:04 They're always temporary no matter what.
00:06 Drake Bell is looking back at his mental health journey and embracing the future.
00:12 Over a month after the Quiet Onset docuseries aired,
00:15 which explored the alleged toxic work environment on some children's television shows in the 90s and early 2000s,
00:22 Drake is opening up about how he's moved past his darkest moments on the Luminosity with Kevin Quinn and Justin Crawford podcast.
00:31 The singer returned to the podcast on Wednesday in honor of May's Mental Health Awareness Month
00:36 and candidly discussed his struggle with substance abuse and what he learned from it.
00:41 I'll tell you one thing is...
00:44 Substances are always temporary.
00:50 They're always temporary no matter what.
00:52 No matter what.
00:53 You are always going to crash and burn. Burn out.
00:57 No matter what.
00:59 Temporary fix.
01:00 And then when you're out of it,
01:02 you're left with a mess that you gotta clean up.
01:06 But if you stay clean, you stay sober, you stay on the right track,
01:09 then, you know, of course life's gonna hit you in the face.
01:14 But, you know, I was listening to Mike Tyson recently and he said something where it's like...
01:23 And Matthew McConaughey too.
01:27 It's embrace the failure.
01:29 The 37-year-old then continued his advice by reflecting on how he handled his own failures earlier in life.
01:36 If you take the failures as, "Oh, I failed," you're gonna fail a million times.
01:42 It's the people who get over those failures that become the Jeff Bezos,
01:46 that become the, you know, the championship fighters.
01:52 Those people who can take the failures and go, "All right, I'm gonna learn from this.
01:56 I'm not gonna let it destroy me. I'm gonna overcome it."
01:59 And so if you're in that storm, learn from it.
02:07 You're in school.
02:08 Take the lessons. Take the punches.
02:12 As for how he moved on through dark moments in his life, Drake says he focused on the little things.
02:19 During my darkest times where I think that this is it, this is the end.
02:26 As long as I, you know, persevere, something good comes along.
02:32 There's something happy, something to be happy about.
02:34 And whether it's something big in work, a great opportunity, or whether it's my son's birthday, you know,
02:43 or my son learning math, figuring out a math problem and that blowing my mind.
02:50 You know what I mean?
02:51 You have to take the little things too and see that those so greatly outweigh everything that's really sad and hurtful in your life.
03:02 He also said he's focusing on music to make him feel better.
03:06 Even I think subconsciously some lyrics in "Found A Way," you know, the theme song, you know,
03:11 "No one can break what's so unbreakable, 'cause I found a way, I found a way."
03:15 You know, it's gonna take some time to realign, but I found a way.
03:20 If you open up your eyes and see what's inside, you know, I mean, I think sort of subconsciously, like, you know,
03:28 I was trying to tell myself, like, you know, you tried to break me, but I'm unbreakable.
03:33 You know, if you believe that you're unbreakable, like, you know, and if you actually look inside and see who you are truly
03:41 and know who you are, then you're gonna find a way out.
03:45 You're gonna find a way through it, you know.
03:48 Drake's interview comes over a month after he spoke out for the first time about the abuse he suffered as a child actor
03:55 at the hands of his dialogue coach, Brian Peck, in the explosive docuseries "Quiet on Set."
04:01 In 2004, Peck pleaded no contest to the charges of a lewd act against a child and oral copulation of a person under 16
04:09 and was ordered to register as a sex offender.
04:12 But because Drake was a minor at the time and the records remained sealed, no one knew he was a victim until now.
04:19 The series also called into question concerns over Nickelodeon's Dan Schneider.
04:24 Dan has never been charged with any crimes, but the series made claims about the toxic workplace environment
04:30 he created for child actors and crews on his shows.
04:34 Since the docuseries aired, Dan has sued the "Quiet on Set" producers for defamation on May 1st,
04:40 stating in court documents obtained by Access Hollywood that they allegedly, quote,
04:44 "falsely state or imply that Schneider sexually abused the children who worked on his television shows."
04:50 These statements are fabrications.
04:53 The television producer also spoke out publicly about the series in a video posted on his YouTube channel in March,
04:59 apologizing for his behavior on set.
05:02 Watching over the past two nights was very difficult, me facing my past behaviors,
05:08 some of which are embarrassing and that I regret, and I definitely owe some people a pretty strong apology.
05:15 Let's talk about the massages.
05:17 Okay.
05:18 Watching the content yesterday, it was disturbing.
05:21 It was wrong. It was wrong that I ever put anybody in that position.
05:24 It was the wrong thing to do. I'd never do it today.
05:27 I'm embarrassed that I did it then.
05:29 I apologize to anybody that I ever put in that situation.
05:32 And even additionally, I apologize to the people who were walking around Video Village or wherever they happened,
05:39 because there were lots of people there who witnessed it who also may have felt uncomfortable.
05:43 So I owe them an apology as well.
05:45 [Music]