Actor and comedian Eddie Murphy has shared insights into his journey with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
Murphy, who once famously impersonated James Brown on stage with the singer himself, discussed a particular habit that hinted at a larger issue.
The 64-year-old star spoke frankly about his battles with the challenging mental health condition in the new documentary Being Eddie. He disclosed that he became aware of his OCD as a child.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is often misunderstood. It involves compulsions to repeatedly perform certain actions and experience intrusive, distressing thoughts.
These compulsions often serve as a way to alleviate the anxiety caused by unwelcome thoughts.
In the Netflix-released film, Murphy discussed a habit he didn’t recognize as a symptom at the time.
“I used to have that OCD when I was a kid. I didn’t know what it was. I would go and check the stove in the kitchen and make sure all the gas was off in the kitchen,” he shared.
“And I’d lay down for about, you know, five minutes, and I would get back up and go back in the kitchen and look at the stove again and check all the gas, and then I’d go back in the bed and lay there for about five, 10 minutes and then get back up and go look at it and look at the stove and make sure all the gas was off.
“Then go back to bed, lay there for another 10 minutes and get back – and this went on for maybe like an hour. And I did that every night.”
Murphy mentioned that nobody had realized this might be indicative of a larger issue.
“Every night. And I’d just say, ‘That’s just some weird s**t that I do’,” he explained. “My mother, nobody knew this was going on.”
It was a news segment about OCD that made him realize the symptoms matched his own experiences.
He stated: “It was like, ‘Oh, that’s what I – I be doing s**t like that’. I said, ‘Oh’. I was like, ‘Oh, mental illness?’… And when I saw that it was like some mental illness s**t, I made myself stop doing it.
“I was like, ‘I’m not – I’m not doing it no more. I thought I was weird. I ain’t know I had some mental illness. F**k that. I ain’t have no mental illness. Mental illness, my ass’. And I forced myself to stop doing it.”