Patrick J. Adams is opening up about why he said adieu to his role on “Suits.”
“I wasn’t taking good care of my mental health, and I was drinking too much come the end of the seventh season,” Adams, 43, said on Tuesday’s episode of Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s “Dinner’s on Me” podcast. “I was in a zone of living a pretty unexamined life, was pretty miserable [and] I would say, pretty depressed.”
The Canadian American actor, who played Mike Ross opposite Gabriel Macht as Harvey Specter from 2011 to 2019 on the USA Network’s legal drama, said he spent money and drank “too much” to cope.
“I didn’t have the tools to deal with that depression beyond just spending money and drinking too much, you know, and not really knowing how to talk about it or in therapy sort of, but not really doing it,” Adams continued. “You know what I mean? Like, there are all these things that I knew I needed to probably be doing and I wasn’t doing.”
Adams admitted once his addiction started “taking a toll” on his fatherhood, he reached a “breaking point.” The “Old School” star has been married to fellow actor Troian Bellisario since 2016. The pair share two young kids.
“I would numb myself [to] deal with my insecurity and my fears,” Adams explained. “And they just weren’t working. And they were taking a toll on my relationship, for sure, but also just making me a very not present father. That for me was a breaking point when I was like, ‘I think I should stop drinking probably, because I don’t wanna be that dad.’”
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He added, “The best thing I think I ever did for myself was stop drinking. It just needed to happen in order for all these other things to happen.
“There was really no way I was going to take my mental health seriously, take my physical health seriously, work on my marriage, work on my friendships, you know, deal with my fears and my anxiety.”
The “Accused” actor added, “I just couldn’t have done any of it if alcohol was still in the picture.”
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Adams told Ferguson that he ultimately didn’t return for the show’s eighth season when he realized the only reason he could fathom staying on board was for financial gain.
“I didn’t know what else to offer. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and think about the money [Macht] made in those last two years, but at the same time, I never regretted the decision for a second. It was the right thing for my [relationship],” he said.
“Suits” is gearing up for a revival with a spinoff, “Suits: L.A.,” which premieres Feb. 23 on NBC.