Christina Applegate Says of Ongoing Depression After MS Diagnosis: “I Don’t Enjoy Living”

Christina Applegate at the 2023 Emmys.

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Christina Applegate is getting candid about her struggles with depression caused by her multiple sclerosis diagnosis.

On the latest episode of her podcast MeSsy, which was recorded back in January but was released on Tuesday, Applegate told co-host Jamie-Lynn Sigler that, at the moment, she was “in a depression.”

“A real, fuck-it-all depression — like, a real depression, where it’s kind of scaring me too a little bit because it feels really fatalistic, it feels really ‘end of’,” she continued. “I don’t mean that, but I’m trapped in this darkness right now that I haven’t felt in probably 20-something years.”

“I don’t enjoy living,” Applegate added. “I don’t enjoy it. I don’t enjoy things anymore.”

She then told Sigler that she called her therapist, “which was a big thing for me to do,” and made an appointment for the next week.

Applegate told listeners that she has avoided therapy since she was diagnosed with MS, because she was “so afraid to start crying” and would “not be able to end” the crying. The Dead to Me alum noted that instead, she’s dealt with her diagnosis with self-deprecation as a way to “make people feel more comfortable about it.”

The Married… with Children actress previously opened up about her depression while appearing on Dax Shepard’s podcast Armchair Expert, in an episode released in March. Shepard said that with a diagnosis like MS, where you’re aware it’s going to get progressively worse, it’s difficult to wrestle out of depression knowing the facts about the disease.

“It’s the worst tattoo,” Applegate responded. “It sucks. I’m not going to sit here and be like, ‘Oh my God, cancer was the best thing that’s ever happened to me.’ Like, you had a pretty shitty life if that’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you.’ But this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me in my entire life.”

She continued, “I hate it so much. I’m so mad about it. You can’t overcome it.”

Applegate was diagnosed with MS in 2021, but said during a recent Good Morning America appearance that she believes she had it for “six or seven years” before then.

When speaking to Shepard, Applegate explained how her and Sigler connected over their diagnoses and would talk on the phone for hours — an experience she called “healing” — and realized their conversations could help other people.

“We always talk about, if she and I could go together as one person, we would be the most perfect disabled person,” she said. “Because she’s really like, ‘We’ve got to find the light and we’ve got to move forward,’ and I’m like, ‘Fuck this.’ But if we came together, we’d be perfect.”

Applegate opened up in her visit to Armchair Expert about the physical pain she experiences (“it hurts the second my feet hit the carpet in the morning”) and how hard it is for her to bounce back after pushing herself like, for example, when she went to the Emmys in January, and how that impacts her disposition.

“I’ll do it, but then I’ll be in bed for five days,” she said. “I make jokes. I made jokes at the Emmys. I couldn’t even say the word ‘disability.’ I make these jokes because if I don’t, I will suffocate. I’m not ready for the healing yet and I’m being very honest. I will get there. But when someone says, ‘have you accepted this as your new normal’? No, fuck you, absolutely not.”

Applegate also spoke about her Emmys appearance, which she referred to as “the television thing” but it was clear from what she and Sigler discussed that she was speaking about the Emmys, on MeSsy.

“That was like the hardest day of my life. It started at 11 o’clock in the morning and I didn’t get home until 9:30 [p.m.],” Applegate said on MeSsy. “I think I slept for two days straight. I couldn’t function.”

And referencing her disability joke, Applegate said she “slurred the word.”

“I was so disabled that I slurred the word disabled,” she said. “I literally blacked out as I was walking out — that thing where you just get white in the face.”

She also spoke about how MS is treated with B-cell treatments, which are infusions of Ocrevus or Kesimpta, explaining that she has 30 lesions on her brain, while others have them on their spine. “My biggest one is behind my right eye, so my right eye hurts a lot,” she said. “What it does is it just affects the nervous system. So we all kind of have the issue with mobility. It’s different per person. How it shows up on Jamie is very different than how it shows up on me.”

She said her hand can get “weird” and she’ll get a “seizurey feeling” sometimes in her brain. She also cited a recent Harvard study that suggested a correlation with MS and someone who has a combination of Epstein-Barr virus with hypothyroidism and herpes, all three of which Applegate has (“not on the vagina, I get a little cold sore,” she clarified).

“This is a disease forever for us,” she said. “Back before they had the B-cell treatments, people just died from it. So, we’re prolonging life with these treatments now. It doesn’t mean I’m going to be around in 10 years, I don’t know. So that’s the scary thing about MS. There is no end game.”

Adding, “It’s a disease of progression, and you just get progressively worse.”