Ad-Rock Quotes

Fame made me develop a panic disorder.

I went through a lot of changes and a period of depression. I'd reached an age when I had to grow up and start taking life a bit more seriously, which had a huge impact on me. I suffered terrible anxiety, and sometimes, in the middle of a game, my legs would start shaking uncontrollably. It was pretty scary.

I hadn't even released my first proper single when I started to feel the strain of attention. But I don't believe that it was the attention that was giving me panic attacks. I think it was everything in my life colliding at the same time. It really did get to a serious point where I couldn't even walk down the street without getting the pain.

Stress is the demon in our society, stalking the cities and the countryside, striking down young and old and growing in strength daily.

The release of 'Lungs' was so hard. It was terrifying, because it was the first time doing everything. The first experiences of media exposure were almost paralysing. I spent a lot of time crying on the floor of the studio - it sent me a bit mad.

Stress is a killer.

I have such difficulty calming down - my stomach, my head, reality, everything. That is the reason I live in Faro.

In my 15 minutes of fame around 'Diamonds and Dirt,' it was not a healthy time for me because of my insecurity.

I had panic attacks during rehearsal. There were times when I really thought I wasn't going to be able to do it.

I don't deal at all well with the relative amount of stuff I have to face already.

Some girls love to go to the airport and have 50 paparazzi on them. I go to the airport and have a mental breakdown.

My biggest enemy for the longest time was my head. When I first became successful, it made me anxious because I was overthinking everything, and you hear so many 'fail' stories.

Stress is the negative whirlwind of emotions that gets imposed on top of our stimulation and engagement.

Some people thrive under pressure, but pressure can also ruin your performance, it can push you down angles which you don't want to go.

For Devil's Backbone I loved it but I felt very pressured but so I was neurotic on the shoot.

I get panic attacks in big crowds.

Every time I'm shooting a movie I want to kill myself. Because I don't see the light in the end of the tunnel.

We all have those days when you feel like you're against the world, every little thing goes wrong and your blood pressure is up. And you feel like punching somebody!

People win Oscars, and then it seems like they fall off the planet. And that's partly because a huge expectation walks in the room and sits right down on top of your head. The moment I won the Oscar, I felt the teardown the very next day.

I'm not the type to get ulcers. I give them.

The sky was falling down on me and I spent most of the time drunk. It was the only way I could handle it.

At some stages of your life you will deal with things and at others you are overwhelmed with misery and anxiety.

I can look back at different times in my life when I felt I could not find my way out of whatever it was. I'm not necessarily talking about marriage, but I wanted to pack it in. I wanted to disappear. A lot of that has to do with being in the public eye.

Every day there's a lot of things I block out, because if I start visualising things, I tend to go completely insane. I've always had anxiety issues, and it can totally overwhelm me and suck me under if I'm not keeping focused. I just think and think until I have a panic attack, and then it dies down.

There was a period of time during the 'Jagged Little Pill' era where I don't think I laughed for about two years. It was a survival mode, you know. It was an intense, constant, chronic over-stimulation and invasion of energetic and physical literal space.