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Dec. 23, 2024 - Dr. Oz Podcast
42:53
What Happened to America’s Sitcom Kids? | Dr. Oz | S7 | Ep 123 | Full Episode
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Time Text
Drugs, alcohol, and pills.
What really happened to America's sitcom kids?
I really hit bottom.
From growing pains to everybody loves Raymond, even the Partridge family.
See what was really going on behind the scenes of your favorite shows.
I think he kind of blamed Hollywood for that.
The breakdowns, blackouts, and breakthroughs.
Coming up next.
Who remembers this face?
That's Jeremy Miller, who filled America's living rooms as Ben Seaver from 1985 to 1992 on one of America's most beloved sitcoms, Growing Pains.
But what fans didn't know is that Jeremy suffered from growing pains of his own.
He had his first drink at age four.
He had binged on alcohol by age 12. And by his mid-twenties, He contemplated suicide.
Jeremy Miller is here today, along with three other child stars, to reveal their struggles after the cameras stopped rolling.
Today, from drugs to alcohol, what really happened to America's sitcom kids.
And when it comes to child actors, no one is more notorious than Partridge Family star Danny Bonaduce.
He's here today to talk about the addiction he says nearly ended his life.
And it's been nearly a year since 19-year-old Everybody Loves Raymond actor Sawyer Sweeten took his own life.
His family is here speaking out together for the first time.
But first, how did a child star turned teen heartthrob Jeremy Miller had a lifelong battle with alcohol that he says nearly cost him his life?
Life was going pretty well for Jeremy Miller during his seven-year run as the youngest brother Ben Seaver in the hit 80s sitcom Growing Pains.
For Miller, the real Growing Pains didn't start until the show ended in 1992. Miller had always had a taste for alcohol.
According to family lore, at just four years old, he would run around family get-togethers, finishing off whatever was left in people's beer glasses.
When groin pains went off the air, Miller continued drinking.
He went to college, but dropped out after just one year.
And then, the binge drinking.
Over the years, Miller's addiction escalated to the point where he would start his day with a drink and end it by blacking out.
Filled with self-loathing, at 39, the famous former child star hit rock bottom and, in his very darkest moment, was on the verge of suicide.
Jeremy Miller is here.
You won't eat.
Please.
They still love you for good reason.
You're only eight years old when you became one of the most beloved TV actors in the country as a child.
What was that like?
For me, it was amazing.
It was one of the best times of my life.
I don't have the horror stories, the child actor horror stories.
It was an amazing set.
We had a great cast, a great crew.
We were all one big family for seven wonderful years.
We were a very big part of each other's lives.
It was just about everything I could have asked for.
I've heard you say that you had the perfect ingredients to be a child actor.
How much of this problem that you ended up living through most of your life came from you being a child actor?
Tracy Gold, who's one of your co-stars, has fairly voicefully said that it was because of her acting that she became an anorexic.
Any role in your life?
For me, I don't feel that that played a big role.
I really don't.
The acting provided opportunities.
So in that way, it's maybe connected.
But my demons had a lot more to do with family issues and personal life like that, that I was trying to kind of run away from.
As well as social anxiety disorder, which I found that the social lubricant aspects of the alcohol tended to make events and things like that where I was very overwhelmed much easier.
So you come off the show, as you mentioned, you're about 15. You think things are going to be okay.
You go to college, and you sort of hit a roadblock.
Yeah, it...
You almost dropped off.
Yeah, I went to USC, had a great time, but...
I went for drama, and the faculty treated me very differently.
I didn't expect it, and it was a very discouraging time for me.
Very soon after that, I broke my ankle at a charity tennis tournament, had to withdraw from all the movement classes and stage classes, And then got sick with pneumonia and mono and ended up withdrawing completely from classes, although still living in the dorm, which was a wonderful recipe for alcohol and drugs.
A lot of free time in a dorm room with, you know...
Access to money and everything else, so it ended up dropping out after just one year and had not won credit to my name.
But you did start drinking.
Yes.
In college it was mostly beer.
I hadn't discovered the higher alcohol beers yet, so it didn't get out of control very much.
Pot was a bigger part of my story, although never really addicted.
It was more attractive to me in my college days.
So when did addiction take over your life?
Right around the time I was about 24, 25, I really started having problems with the addiction of alcohol.
It had become more common for me to drink pretty much every day, although it was not an all-day thing.
Around 1920 area.
But by 2425, we went to Montreal to do the first Growing Pains reunion film.
Very European culture up there.
People kind of looked at you weird if you didn't order a drink with lunch.
So I thought, hey, permission.
You know, all right.
Started ordering beers at lunch and just kind of that became a regular thing.
It started moving up and probably around 26, 27 years old, I just woke up one day and I realized, I mean, first thing in the morning, I had to have a drink.
With everything in my being, I needed a drink.
And that set off a lot of red flags in my head.
Not enough to actually do anything about it, but it was like, okay, this is a problem.
We've reached a real issue here.
So the one silver lining is you met your now fiancé, Joni.
Yes.
And right around then, you hit rock bottom.
Within about three years of us being together, I really hit bottom.
What happened?
I had become a very unpleasant drunk.
I was never violent, thankfully.
I honestly don't know if I would have been able to forgive myself if I had actually abused her or my boys.
But verbally, I was abusive.
And by that time, the blackouts were pretty much every day.
I really didn't remember what I did the day previous, almost every single day.
And I just, I woke up one morning, probably about, I knew it was bad, but right around 31, 32 area.
And Joni's sitting on the edge of the bed, again.
Pissed off again.
And I had to ask that dreaded question that all blackout drinkers just are terrified of.
What did I do this time?
And as I've said before, she could have told me that I killed someone in the car.
That I had beaten the boys senseless.
She could have told me absolutely anything in the world and I wouldn't have known any different.
And that was rock bottom for me.
That was when I knew I had to get help.
Had your father been a drinker?
No, actually, my father and my mother were not drinkers.
My mom was the occasional, she's the type that have half a daiquiri and be like, whew, that's enough for me.
My dad was a teetotaler and doesn't drink at all.
But the rest of my family, aunts, uncles, grandparents, were functional alcoholics for the most part.
And that's what I was raised around.
And it was very normal to me.
I was under the impression that As long as I got what I needed to get done, as long as I handled my responsibilities, the rest of it didn't matter.
And that was part of what, I mean, at one point, I mean, it was almost kind of sick.
I was almost proud of being an alcoholic.
I mean, I had friends who would, you know, kind of take me aside getting worried about me.
And they, you know, they'd be, Jeremy, I think you might have a problem.
You might be an alcoholic.
And my general response was, might be, I'm a freaking professional.
How sick is that?
But that's where my mind was.
And that was long before the rock bottom and long before I had started to realize what a problem there was.
Well, it was a long road back.
And when we come back, I want to talk about what it took.
Jeremy's been sober for four years.
Up next, extreme medical treatment, he says, helps save his life.
We'll be right back.
Next, hitting rock bottom, Jeremy needed to make a change.
You'd have told me that we're going to chop off your arm and it's going to make you sober.
I'd have let you do it.
What he did to overcome his addiction to get sober and the unique route he took to get there.
Coming up next.
He says you've been dieting all wrong.
We show you how to fix it fast.
All new Oz.
That's coming up tomorrow.
We're back with former child star Jeremy Miller, because we're going to be talking about the show.
We're going to be talking about the show.
Today he's revealing the alcohol addiction he says nearly took his life.
So you've hit rock bottom.
Everything's falling apart.
What did you change?
How did you bounce back to get sober?
I tried pretty much everything that's out there and I prefaced this by saying I don't put any other program down.
I've had friends that have gotten sober with pretty much every modality of treatment that's out there and there are No one thing works for everybody.
But I tried inpatient rehab.
I tried intensive outpatient.
I tried hydrotherapy, hypnosis, meditation, acupuncture, herbal therapy.
I mean, I really ran the gamut.
Everything I could possibly find.
And I couldn't make any of those work for me.
My mom came across this program, I think it was a small blip on a, I don't know, Good Morning America something, who knows, but it was a small thing on the internet about this implant that had started in Australia.
And my first reaction was, BS. There's no way there's some little pill, some little thing that's going to make all this better.
And then I talked to them and I learned about that it wasn't just that.
That this isn't some cure.
This isn't some magic bullet.
This is just a tool that goes along with a lot of other things.
Counseling, after support, all that kind of stuff.
So you can really deal with the alcoholism as a whole, the mental, the physical, everything.
And I started to think, you know, maybe this just might work.
And I was so desperate at that point.
I mean, if you'd have told me that we're going to chop off your arm and it's going to make you sober, I'd have let you do it.
I mean, that's how desperate I was.
I was looking into a place up in Washington that still does shock therapy.
Old-school, fry-your-brain shock therapy.
Google's Nest style.
Oh, yeah.
I was willing to try anything.
So, as skeptical as I was about this, I started to think, hey, this might work.
So, it's called naltrexone implant.
Yes.
You had one in your belly.
Mm-hmm.
It's a drug that blocks opioid receptors.
So, your theory, it's made for narcotics, but it actually, interestingly, works for alcoholism.
It required a surgery.
Yeah.
It's a significant step.
So your doctor, Dr. George Falieras, is here.
You credit him, and that's very kind of you, for being a big part of your sobriety.
Yeah, Doc actually was not the doctor who performed it for me, but he came into the company very soon afterwards and was a very integral part of my sobriety.
Dr. Falieras, explain how this medication works, denotraxone.
Who's it right for?
Well, addiction, in the case of addiction, the reason why most people can't get sober is because they succumb to these constant, intrusive, overwhelming cravings.
Jeremy is a perfect example.
So naltrexone is a very effective medication at blocking those opioid receptors in the brain, and the phenomenon of craving, which is the hallmark of addiction, is mediated by these endogenous opioids that dodges endorphins and these opioid receptors so by blocking that it effectively helps people focus on their recovery without having these constant intrusive cravings.
So this is a typical one I understand and we haven't covered this on the show before but you see this little pellet here and they make the cut in your belly and they insert this I guess partially cut syringe and they push out I can do it gently this little pellet and you see how it comes out there and that gets left behind inside the body.
Can you all see that?
So it's pretty small, and it dissolves over the course of about six months.
I guess that's the time that it takes for you to deal with the other issues without those cravings.
Yes.
So I pulled pictures of a brain scan made from someone who's an alcoholic.
See how those vibrant colors are there?
Those are the opioid receptors, those narcotic receptors, and that's what causes cravings.
Now watch what happens to that same brain on naltrexone.
You see the colors are all really drained out.
They're dulled.
It's all gone.
You're no longer going to be turning on this really cool feeling of happiness when you take a drink, when you're taking this product.
Do you have any cravings at all now, Jeremy?
No.
You know, medically speaking, as it's been explained to me as well, that phenomenon of craving does not happen again until I put alcohol back in my body.
Now, that doesn't mean there's not the occasional whimsical thought, but I have enough tools in my bag that when that pops up, I immediately know, you know where that's going to lead.
What in the heck are you thinking?
You know, I mean, I give myself the mental beat down after that because I'm not going down that road.
Thanks for that.
You've been in recovery for four years.
Yes.
You're actually a patient advocate.
Yes.
Which I want to applaud you for.
Thank you.
Because you know more about this than anybody else out there is going to take you because you live there.
So there's someone here who I'd like you to meet.
Peter Michael.
Let's walk on over here.
And I, her name is Arielle.
And I asked her to have a seat next to your doctor.
So I thought it would be a safe place for her.
You can sit next to her.
And she wanted to come and meet you and actually say something to you.
So Arielle, go ahead.
Thank you.
Jeremy, I just want to let you know I'm a huge fan.
I celebrate 14 months over yesterday.
Thank you.
About the time that you went public with your alcoholism was about the time I went to rehab.
I do work a 12-step program and I have my hands in very far with that.
The inspiration that you are to everybody out there and talking so freely about your alcoholism really is a big deal.
I just want to thank you.
Jeremy, stick it around for the rest of the hour.
When we come back, The Partridge Family's Daddy Badoguchi is here.
You won't want to miss it.
You okay? - Next, the Partridge family's Daddy Mataducci went from famous TV child star to being homeless.
How did this talented kid become the poster boy for ex-child stars gone back?
Nobody bothered to say, hey, you're going to need a skill.
His story is next.
Remember this mischievous, freckled-faced redhead?
Of course you do.
It's Danny Bonaduce.
After becoming famous as a member of TV's The Partridge Family, Danny Bonaduce became the poster boy for ex-child stars Gone Bad.
I'm very proud to be a part of this family.
It's nice to know you have people around you who care.
From the beginning, Danny Bonaduce had a special spark, and America quickly came to love this spunky, freckle-faced boy in his role as Danny Partridge, kid bass player in the beloved 70s sitcom, The Partridge Family.
You wanted me to confess?
Okay, I confess.
I stole it from Phelps Drugstore.
Congratulations, your trick worked.
But when the cameras stopped rolling in 1974, neither his fame nor his charisma could protect Bonaduce from himself.
He descended into periods of drug abuse and even homelessness.
Over the years, Bonaduce was in and out of the limelight as a radio DJ, TV host and reality star.
All while falling in and out of trouble and getting arrested several times for drug possession and assault.
In 2005, Bonaduce let the world in on his tumultuous life when he starred in his own reality series, Breaking Bonaduce.
The show made headlines when a night of drinking and drug abuse culminated with his wife asking for a divorce and Bonaduce slitting his wrists.
That suicide attempt landed him in the psych ward.
Embarrassed and humiliated, with his marriage dissolving on national TV, Bonaduce finally hit rock bottom and checked into rehab.
Welcome, Danny Bonaduce.
Thank you for being here.
Thanks for having me.
I appreciate it.
Very exciting.
What's exciting for me as well.
Cool.
I'm sitting there backstage looking at that picture and I just yelled, hey, pay attention, in 20 years you wake up broken in jail.
Nothing different's gonna happen, it's just gonna happen.
It wasn't obvious then, was it?
No, it wasn't obvious.
That kid has the world by the tail.
That kid's got it going on.
It gets rough after that.
I heard you say once that being a childhood star, a TV star, that's great.
Being a former child star, if I use your word correctly, that sucks.
That's exactly what I said.
Being a child star is awesome.
I mean, I will tell you, and I don't know if everybody gauges success the same way I do, but I was a fat little kid, and I ended up taking two cheerleaders to the prom.
That's success in my world.
But try getting a date next year, and the year after that, and the year after that.
So what does happen?
You're this superstar TV actor, still a child.
You go from being on top of the world to being homeless.
You're living out of your car.
Well, I'll tell you, and this is my own fault.
I don't blame show business for everything.
I love show business.
I'm in the same business as Cary Grant, and I'm honored to do it.
You know, I'm a broadcaster now.
I'm in the same business as Edward R. Murrow.
I'm honored to do it.
But the problem with the TV show and the fame is nobody bothered to say, hey, you're going to need a skill.
You're going to need to learn how to do something.
I found myself running out of money completely at the age of 19. And when I went to go to work, I didn't know how to do anything.
And times got real rough for a couple of years.
Careers do go on.
I just assumed mine would, and I was wrong.
What do you think about today's child actors?
Are they more protective, or are they actually more exposed?
Here's the problem with today's child stars.
They haven't learned anything from me.
They haven't learned anything from my friend Todd Bridges.
They haven't learned anything from my good and departed friend Dana Plato.
You should look at those kids and go, hey, that could and most likely will happen to me if I don't settle down.
I will tell you, I think this, Dr. Oz, I think the fame is so overwhelming in what it does.
Like I said, my friend Dana Plato, there's no reason she should have died.
She should have persisted.
She should have gotten on a new sitcom or learned a skill and said, I've had enough TV. But you should have paid attention to the tale that was laid out before you.
When you come back, the unusual steps, Stan, he's taken to stay sober.
They are fascinating.
Stay here.
Next, Daddy talks about what it took to finally get clean.
And it wasn't rehab.
It's a hot rehab to go to, and I had a drink on the way home.
I didn't make it the whole afternoon.
The surprising treatment he found that's keeping him sober.
Next.
He says you've been dieting all wrong.
We show you how to fix it fast.
All new odds.
That's coming up tomorrow.
I'm so excited, ba-da-da-da-do.
It is 5.45 on Danny Baladucci.
This is KZOK. Good morning.
We're back with Danny Baladucci.
Danny's wide awake at 5.45 in the morning.
The former child star of the Partridge family.
Now it's a daily radio show in Seattle.
He says it took him 25 years to get clean and sober and several stints in rehab.
What was rehab like for you?
Did it help?
Oh, it was awesome.
No, it didn't help at all, but it was a good time.
No, I'm not kidding.
I went with the most famous people you could ever imagine.
I've met more people in rehab, famous people, than I did at an awards dinner.
Oh my goodness.
So why didn't it help you?
I don't know.
No, because it was the big famous one you saw on TV. It was the hot rehab to go to.
It was $40,000 for the 28 days.
It's now $100,000 for a month to go there.
And I don't know why it didn't help me, but it's in Malibu, and I had a drink at Duke's Beach Bar on the way home.
I didn't make it the whole afternoon.
And I'm not alone, so I thought I was the weakest person in the whole world, but I did some research into it.
Rehab, even the best of them, had, at least that year, 20 years ago, a 4% success rate.
Four.
That translates to a 96% failure.
Imagine buying a $40,000 new car and it's only going to start three out of ten times.
You wouldn't buy that car.
I am not.
I don't think that rehab and AA, as much as I think they're a good idea, work on their own.
And I just want to say this before I get a bunch of letters.
If you think you need to go to rehab, you do.
If you think you need to go to AA, you do.
I met most of my friends in AA. I love those people.
But I don't think it's enough.
I think modern medicine is the answer.
So what has worked for you?
Well, you know, you go to AA and they tell you, you've got a disease just like cancer.
And I say, well, if anybody told me I had cancer, I wouldn't think, oh, well, I'd better run to a room full of strangers and discuss it.
I'd take medicine, hardcore medicine.
So I take a pill called Antabuse.
And I'm sure you know what it is, but for those of you that don't know, what it does is it gives you an outlandish, possibly fatal allergy to alcohol.
If you took your anti-abuse and took a hard drink on top of it, from what I hear, you could die.
I've only taken a few sips because I'm a drunk and that's what you do, and it was awful.
It was horrible.
Okay, come on over here.
Let's show everybody how this anti-abuse works.
Well, this is great because I'll tell you, Doctor, I don't know how it works.
I just know that it does work.
Well, it's interesting to me, I've been on the air seven years now doing this show, and I've never really talked about anti-abuse.
Okay.
And I never thought about your metaphor either, that if someone gave you a cancer diagnosis, you wouldn't go sit with strangers.
By the way, there's a huge value in sitting with strangers.
I agree, I agree.
And it has to be part of the solution.
But the answer is not, hi, my name's Danny, and I have cancer.
It has to be more than that.
If we have the opportunity, and today's show is getting into that, and you guys have taught me a fair amount about this, it should be at least a quiver.
Your arrow in the quiver should have it.
Okay, here's your body, right?
Normal body's over here.
This is what happens if you take that pill, that anti-abuse pill.
Think of it, anti-abuse.
It's to stop abuse.
I never thought about that.
Normally, your body, the Antibusy's body is here enjoying itself.
Go ahead and put a drink in there.
Okay, so this is booze?
This is booze in your mouth.
Alright, booze in my mouth.
And it is actually real booze.
It goes in there, your body converts it to a very toxic substance.
That looks bad.
That's a normal body?
Normal.
And then, boom, your body converts it to something that's safe.
So you don't get a bad reaction.
You get the high, then you get too much of it, you'll get a little bit of a hangover, but it goes away pretty quickly.
Now, if you take the Antibus, put it in Danny's mouth.
Sweetheart, open mine.
Then you take the wine, and guess what happens now?
Very different reaction.
The Antibus prevents your body from metabolizing the alcohol correctly, so it stays as toxic material.
That's a reasonable metaphor for what's happening in my body?
Yes.
Normally, your alcohol has to be broken down several times.
It prevents that from happening, and literally inside your body, you have a toxic reaction, so you feel like you're going to die.
Oh, like you're going to die, Doc.
Yeah, you're not going to actually die, but the things you've been describing, this is it.
You can pray for death.
All right, now...
I'm demonstrating.
And by the way, you know, basically you're doing this, right?
You're smoking your insides away.
You don't make this mistake too many times.
No, you don't.
You don't.
That's the thing.
You think you can, and you're wrong.
So come on over.
All right.
You don't just do that.
You actually, like Jeremy mentioned, take the naltrexone little insert as well.
Is that correct?
Well, I have the naltrexone implants right here.
Can we see that?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I listen to you in 8 to be thin.
Okay.
Here they are right here.
They're right there.
There's a scar right there.
That's the scar.
A little bit of a scar right there.
And they put more than one in you.
Oh, they put, they're broken down, I believe.
Now, there's the doc right there.
I heard I have 22 implants.
Could that be true?
Is that possible?
There's probable.
There's different people that make the implants, and some make them smaller, extended string of beads, more or less, that Danny has.
Obviously, Jeremy, it's changed your life, right?
You've got two different ways of treating even the same problem.
But I'd love to get your comments on the bad things that happened to child actors.
I was sort of caught by your fairly strong sentiment.
I actually thought he was a child actor when I met him back.
He was so adorable with those blue eyes.
My God!
Everybody's all on Twitter with you, Doc!
Did you think about the bad things that happened to Danny when you were taking your first drinks?
Did you ever think twice about what you were doing?
Truthfully, I didn't.
It didn't cross my mind.
I had heard the stories Danny and I had met.
We had talked.
He himself told me, don't screw around with this stuff.
It just didn't even, especially at that age.
No, it doesn't.
It's that late teen years.
You feel invincible.
It's not going to happen to me.
You know, and again, like I said, with my family, it was so normal that I just didn't see anything, you know, I didn't see it leading down this road.
Let's talk about your family.
All right.
You've got kids.
Yes, I do.
Who are trying to figure out what they're going to do in their lives.
How do you talk to your children about their struggles with addiction?
Well, um...
Potential struggles with addiction.
My children get to grow up in an interesting area because not only do they know daddy's an addict, but they got to see what happens when daddy's an addict.
That show, Breaking Bonaduce, exists.
You can find it online.
I've never seen a single moment of it.
I sobered up to go do the promotion for it.
Oh my God, I'm so ashamed of my behavior.
So I would never watch it.
But my kids have seen it.
And then finally, I had to tough it out and go in and be a real dad and sit down.
And they almost didn't want to hear it at first because...
To be honest with you, a lot of people would not want to take real advice for the guy they've seen.
It's shameful what they've seen.
But, you know, when I say, hey man, this too could happen to you.
They've seen so much bad stuff in their short little precious lives.
They don't believe it.
They said, no dad, we'd have to be crazy.
And neither one of them, I don't even think, dabbles.
My daughter's 21 now.
She's a legal drinking age.
We had a 21st birthday party.
I didn't see her order a drink.
Good for her.
I just don't think it's a thing she does.
I think she's seen enough.
When we come back, everyone loves Raymond Coaster, Sullivan and Madeline Sweetens, and the day their lives changed forever.
We'll be right back.
Next, the Sweetens grew up on the set of Everybody Loves Raymond.
Happy childhood careers until the show came to an end.
Back to the real world, Sullivan's twin brother Sawyer took his own life.
Now, for the first time, his family speaks out.
Next.
Today we're asking the question, from drug addiction to alcohol, what happened to America's sitcom kids?
Less than one year ago, we were hit with headlines no one ever wants to see.
When Everybody Loves Raymond, child actor Sawyer Sweeten committed suicide at age 19.
If you love the classic sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, then you probably love Sawyer Sweeten.
He and his twin brother Sullivan, along with their real-life sister Madeline, played Raymond's adorable kids.
Sawyer began his career at the ripe old age of one, after he and Sullivan moved to California to join their sister on the show.
The Sweeten kids were known for always remaining professional on set.
No easy task in the grown-up world of TV production.
After Everybody Loves Raymond ended its nine-year run in 2005, Sawyer Sweeten went back to the real-life world of growing up.
Ten years passed, and then in April 2015, at the age of 19, without apparent warning, Sawyer Sweeten took his own life, shooting himself while visiting family in Texas.
Today, nearly one year after his tragic death, Sawyer's mother, sister, and twin brothers speak out for the first time on daytime television.
Sawyer's mom, Elizabeth, and her siblings and co-stars, identical twins Sullivan and older sister Madeline, are here.
It's been almost a year.
You guys doing okay?
I think so.
Better.
Getting better.
It's hard.
I think it's hard to watch.
It's hard for me to watch everybody else.
And pain.
Yeah, thankfully we've been coping okay.
We did a lot of things together after.
We did holidays really big.
We just all stayed together, so that helped.
The amount of people that came to the house once the news came out, you couldn't even walk through the first room.
I'm sure so.
We had a lot of support from a lot of people.
Solomon, your brother and you were identical twins.
You spent nine years together making the show.
What was that like?
It was mostly just like a game.
I didn't really think that it was anything different.
It was just something that I did.
Madeline, your mom says you actually loved being a star.
You were the first one cast.
You were the one that was making it all possible.
What was so great about it?
Well, it's like what you guys were talking about earlier.
I was just fun and energetic and I liked to talk to people, so we just got to be on set with adults all day.
It was so fun.
Did Sawyer feel that way?
I think Sawyer was a little more frustrated with being on TV. Later.
During it, as we said, it was so much fun.
Afterwards, he had a bit more of a cynical attitude towards it.
Was it not fun or you didn't enjoy having done it?
No.
We both definitely enjoyed being on the show.
I think it was afterwards when we realized how much school we missed and how little we got to socialize with other kids and just how much it affected me.
I still have trouble talking to people.
You know, just on a regular day-to-day basis.
I think he kind of blamed Hollywood for that a little bit, but he definitely had a more cynical attitude.
It's hard to adjust when every waking moment of your life has been pulled together in that same direction for all those years.
Elizabeth Sullivan is an identical twin to Sawyer.
You're a nurse.
So you know that the genetics of this are somewhat concerning.
Yes, I do.
He gets very annoyed with me because I'm constantly saying, are you okay?
Is your head okay?
Will you make sure you tell me if it's not?
He promises me he will.
Would you ask Sawyer that question?
I did ask Sawyer that question, yes.
Unfortunately, I think at the point when we finally realized something was wrong, he didn't understand what was going on.
He had kind of gotten past that point of being able to understand what was going on with his thoughts, and he was very delusional.
But yet, it wasn't so much so that it was alarming to us as parents.
It was just like little small things, like said that You know, the people around him, his roommates and all, were that he felt like they really hated him or they didn't like him and they were covering up their anger with him through laughter.
And so, of course, you know, looking back on that, I can analyze it and say, okay, he wasn't thinking straight.
But at the time, I just thought, oh, his roommates are, you know, they're giving him hell.
I'm going to kick him out.
You know, I'm going to fix this.
You know, I didn't understand that it was up here.
I thought that they were doing something to upset him, you know.
In Sawyer's eulogy, you wrote a beautiful piece that you read.
You talked about your belief that your beautiful children were given to you on borrowed time.
You had borrowed time with them.
Why that phrase?
With him.
I mean, with the twins, especially, more especially.
I don't know.
I just knew...
I just knew from the time I was pregnant with them that one of them would be leaving me or leaving the other one at some point.
It just was this, I can't explain, it was like a nagging thing that would come up once in a while.
You know, as a parent, you don't like to think about those things, so I would just keep pushing it away and pushing it away.
I mean, if I have to think about it now, deep down I knew someone was going.
And I knew one of them would be without the other one, just didn't know which one, and I didn't know when.
I kind of always felt like it would be a little bit later in their life.
But it made it very difficult to watch things.
I would see twins without twins, and they would do shows and talk about it, and I would have to turn it off because it was just like a thing that I just...
Innately new or dreaded.
I don't know.
I just can't really explain it.
We don't always understand things.
We have feelings.
We have premonitions.
Right.
When we come back, I want to talk to you a little bit about those last days.
Because I think it's so important for people to understand what you're witnessing so they can intervene in their own lives.
Yes, very.
We'll be right back.
Coming up next, the Growing Up on TV contribute to Sawyer's suicide.
Sawyer's mom and twin brother weigh in and share what happened in the days leading up to his death.
It's so terrifying.
You know, I never would have imagined facing this.
Coming up next.
He says you've been dieting all wrong.
We show you how to fix it fast.
All new odds.
That's coming up tomorrow.
I'm back with the family of Sawyer, Sweden, the 19-year-old, everybody loves Raymond Acker, who took his own life less than a year ago.
Sullivan, if you can go back and decide whether you'd be on the show or not be on the show.
What would you decide?
You know, that's kind of a hard question for me because I'm still trying to figure out how much of what happened was because of how we grew up and how much was because of what happened afterwards.
Mom, do you have thoughts on this?
On letting them be a part of the show.
I don't really think, I personally don't believe that's what happened to Sawyer, so I don't believe it really played a role.
What happened to Sawyer?
I think Sawyer probably had an underlying mental health disorder of some sort that we just didn't, you know, that what didn't present in the typical clinical ways.
And, you know, Sawyer was always, I always thought he was just a little quirky.
Occasionally he would, he would seem Looking back, he may have presented with some very mild signs of bipolar or something that I just didn't really understand or didn't really see because they weren't what you read and what you're taught in nursing school.
Even with suicide, they're going to give away all their belongings and all those things and say their goodbyes.
No, it doesn't always happen that way.
So, of course, you need to be aware that it can happen a lot faster than you think.
Sullivan, your parents described you guys as peas in a pod.
You'd finish each other's sentences, as many identical twins are, very close to each other.
What's it like being without your brother?
It's definitely hard.
I think the most obvious thing I can say is that I lost a piece of myself.
That's not really anything that I'm questioning.
I'm not the same person that I was.
It definitely changed me.
I used to be...
After the show ended even, like during the show and after it ended, I was always smiles 100% of the time.
And now I have days where I can't bring myself to.
I don't care to anymore.
And I think it scares a lot of people.
And it's hard for me to kind of say I'm going to be okay.
Because I just, I don't care to say it.
I don't, I don't know.
I just kind of become dull, you know, apathetic to a lot of things.
Have you gotten any help?
I've spoken to a therapist, but it's been some time.
So I probably need to go and speak to someone.
We just had this conversation yesterday.
We've all gone and seen someone to make sure that we're handling things correctly because the grieving process is different for everybody.
So you have to just make sure that you're doing it correctly.
You're not drinking to numb the pain.
You're just using positive outlets.
Their younger sister, the one that is just under them, she's had probably the roughest time as far as just, you know, adjusting.
She just dropped out of school, dropped out of all her sports, got depressed.
You know, she ended up having to take some medication, and she's much better now.
But, you know, for a while there, you know, the phone calls to her were, okay, now I'm worried about Mesa.
I don't know what to do about Mesa, you know.
It's overwhelming.
It's so terrifying because, you know, I never would have imagined facing this.
I don't...
It's never happened in my family.
I've never lost anyone.
So it's just...
That's the big problem, is I don't think a lot of people expect anything like that.
I don't think before this happened I'd ever had a frank discussion with somebody about suicide.
It was all jokes and, you know, off-the-cuff comments about it, but I'd never talked to somebody about it, and that is so important.
So parents have to, have to, have to talk to your children about this.
You are not going to give them the idea.
It's not going to happen.
You're not going to make a suggestion to them and then they're going to end their life.
If you talk to them about it and it's there, it's been there.
So parents need to be saying, are you having suicidal thoughts?
Because they're treatable.
You need to start talking to your kids when they're young.
If you ever start feeling like your head's not right, That can be treated.
You need to talk to me.
You need to tell mommy.
You need to tell dad.
Find someone to tell that will listen to you and we can get you some help.
What's the second leading cause of death?
Yes.
Great service you've done.
Good luck to you.
Thank you for being here.
We'll be right back.
This May on Dr. Oz.
The truth comes out.
The biggest food truths exposed.
The biggest weight loss trends.
Waste training disasters.
And botched surgery.
This May on Dr. Oz.
This May on Dr. Oz.
But child stars aren't the only kids at risk for extreme psychological distress.
I recently sat down with Brian Gibb.
He's a director of public education at the National Council for Behavioral Health.
He's a national trainer for mental health first aid.
It's a course that I had the privilege of taking with him.
I asked him for the signs all parents should watch out for in their own children.
Take a look.
What we teach is how to develop noticing skills like isolation, changes in behavior, sleep patterns, eating patterns, as well as things like the dramatic change in mood, which can be a warning sign that somebody's at risk for suicide.
So be concrete about it.
A lot of these sound like pretty typical adolescent behaviors.
I live with this.
Watching kids walk out of the room when I didn't think I said anything that was all that...
Invasive to what they wanted to do with their life.
Well, you know, so adolescents oftentimes will be more private, and that's part of typical adolescents, but being secretive or hiding things is maybe a sign of possible pathology.
A young person who is changing from childish pursuits to teen pursuits is pretty typical.
Part of adolescent behavior, but really kind of leaving those other interests and then not replacing them with new ones is a sign of isolation or could raise our warning signs.
How do parents keep those lines of communication open?
Well, the key is to have open communication.
And I think that one of the things we teach in the Mental Health First Aid course is non-judgmental listening.
And that's about saying, I'm concerned about you.
I care about you.
Here's what I've noticed that concerns me.
Brian Gibb has put together a one sheet with a list of questions you should be asking your teen if you think that they are at risk.
You can find that at dros.com.
Thank you all for being here today.
And remember, happy and healthy, it starts at home.
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