Drew Carey Opens Up About His Struggles with Depression: ‘Humor Is My Way Out of Everything’

Laughter is the best medicine to Drew Carey, who declares, “Humor is my way out of everything.” Now 66, Drew was 8 years old when his dad died, setting him on a spiraling path to depression that culminated when he tried to kill himself while in college.

“I didn’t know what I was doing,” the host of “The Price Is Right” admits. “I took a whole bottle of Sominex, which is not strong enough to kill you. While I was throwing up, my friend Paul was holding my shoulders and started singing the jingle: ‘Take Sominex tonight and sleep, sleep, sleep.’ I laughed so hard. It made me feel better being able to joke about it.”

Drew knew the healing power of humor at a young age.

“My mom was really funny,” he says. “I loved poring over the newspaper reading comics. At school, we’d repeat jokes that we’d heard from the morning radio DJ or read in joke books.” Growing up in Cleveland — jokingly dubbed “The Mistake on the Lake” — also sharpened his sense of silly. “The city was always a punch line,” Drew notes. “People made fun of it and the whole place had a self-deprecating sense of humor. You learned to make it part of your humor.”

The funnyman was devastated by the 2020 murder of his former fiancée, family and sex therapist Amie Harwick, even though they had previously broken up.

“It destroyed me for a while,” confides Drew. “I still don’t date. I have women I go out with and spend time with, but it’s all platonic, and I don’t care about anything else. Amie’s death really affected everything.”

After Amie’s funeral, three of the therapist’s best friends reached out to him to tell him how much Amie loved him, and “they’ve now become some of my best friends. I also got to reconnect with her mother, father and brother.”

In addition to using wit to battle his depression, Drew says, “Everybody needs a therapist, whether you see a professional or not. “When you talk to a friend or a bartender or Reddit, you are seeking therapeutic help for a problem.

“Why not see a pro who has a degree in psychology and understands how the brain works, what neurons do and how habits are formed?”