Howie Mandel ‘almost died’ while self-medicating during COVID-19 pandemic

Howie Mandel’s mental health struggles during the COVID-19 pandemic nearly cost him his life.

During an appearance on Hoda Kotb’s “Joy 101” podcast Monday, Mandel opened up about how his OCD and ADHD drove him to self-medicate as the outbreak unfolded.

The “America’s Got Talent” host told Kotb that he is currently medicated and goes to therapy to manage the anxiety he experiences.

“I have such a fear of those lows because they’re incredibly painful and hard to navigate,” Mandel, 70, explained.

“My life consists of trying to balance up here,” he said, gesturing toward his head. “So I’ve medicated myself. And I’m talking about prescription medication, not that I’m self-medicating, though I did that during [the COVID-19 pandemic] and I almost died.”

Mandel told Kotb, 62, that he uses distraction and tries to stay “in the moment” to quiet the “dark, reoccurring thoughts” that he said are his “mind’s resting place.”

When Kotb asked him to explain more about his self-medication during the pandemic, Mandel reassured her that he is now sober.

“But during the pandemic, I couldn’t sleep because part of my rumination is … I make fun of it, but I’m a germaphobe and I live like I’m in a pandemic anyhow,” the comedian said. “And then where there [was] a real one, it was hard for me to handle that.”

“It was hard for a lot of people, but I wasn’t strong enough to handle it, and I couldn’t sleep, so I started taking gummies.”

Mandel said he eventually began smoking and drinking after the gummies were no longer enough to help him sleep, hoping to “escape and make [himself] unconscious.”

“There were times when my wife, she couldn’t wake me up, or she thought she was going to take me to the hospital,” Mandel continued. “It wasn’t healthy and it wasn’t good, and it’s not an excuse, but it was really bad.”

He said his wife, Terry, whom he has been married to since 1980, ultimately pushed him to seek professional help, calling her a “hero” for doing so.

“My wife just went, ‘I can’t do this. This is really tiring. Go talk to somebody,’” Mandel recalled, adding that she had given him an ultimatum.

In May 2020, Mandel told Page Six how he was coping in the middle of the pandemic.

“I’m on medication,” he told us at the time. “I’m moving my therapist into a whole new tax bracket on the phone. Some people call it a pandemic. I call it ‘told ya!’”

Mandel also joked that he felt partly responsible for the shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) because he had been hoarding gloves, masks and hazmat suits for the past 50 years.

He was spotted in March of that year, as the outbreak began to spread, arriving on the set of “America’s Got Talent” in a hazmat suit, gas mask and orange rubber gloves.

“I can’t wait for this to be over,” Mandel previously said.