Josh Peck Gets Candid About His Past Addiction to Drugs & Alcohol

Josh Peck is opening up.

In a new interview with People, the 35-year-old How I Met Your Father star discussed his time in the entertainment industry, as well as his struggles with drug addiction.

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“I don’t even watch my new stuff,” he told the outlet, adding, “I don’t watch anything!”

He went on to bring up his public weight struggle and a years-long drug addiction, which he addressed for the first time in his new memoir, Happy People Are Annoying.

“I was always looking for something outside to fix my insides,” Josh said. The actor has been sober since 2008. “But eventually I realized that whether my life was beyond my wildest dreams or a total mess, it didn’t change the temperature of what was going on in my mind. I knew that nothing in the outside world would make me feel whole.”

Recalling his early days performing standing and appearing on Drake & Josh, he continued: “I spent most of my life dying to be typical but I grew up with a single mom, I was overweight and I was a musical theater kid who really had no social status. Comedy was my natural defense mechanism.”

After his dramatic weight loss, where he dropped 127 pounds with 18 months of diet and exercise, Josh realized his self-confidence hadn’t changed.

“It became clear that once I lost the weight that I was the same head in a new body,” he said. “What is really clear is that I overdo things. And then I discovered drugs and alcohol. And that became my next chapter. I used food and drugs to numb my feelings.”

“It was really a buffet,” the Turner & Hooch star of his addiction. “I had this illusion of becoming more confident and attractive when I was partaking. I was trying to quiet that voice that woke me up every morning and told me I wasn’t enough.”

Eventually this led to a reputation of being “unstable and erratic.” He explained, “I had worked so hard for this thing and I was getting very close to losing it.”

Josh joined a treatment program and got sober. “By walking through discomfort and by doing my best to break down the false identity I had for myself, I was able to get to the place that I was always seeking,” he said. “I’m just trying to do good work that makes people happy.”

“It took me a really long time to love the 15-year-old version of me,” he concluded. “But now I understand how strong he was. And I feel like everything in my life set me up to find this chapter of health, peace and contentment.”

Josh‘s new memoir Happy People Are Annoying will be available on March 15. In case you missed it, there were recently some new photos of him on the set of iCarly season 2!