Opening up about the darkest corners of personal struggle takes immense courage, and KJ Apa is holding nothing back. During a recent appearance on the Wildmen podcast, hosted by Dylan Sprouse and Brendan Columbus, the 29-year-old Riverdale alum got intensely candid about his journey toward sobriety, revealing the extreme behaviors that previously defined his battles with food and addiction.
Reflecting on his personality and how he navigates his tendencies today, Apa was remarkably transparent from the jump.
“I’ve been sober a year and a half. Anything that makes me feel good, yeah, I will abuse. It’s something that I’ve learned about myself,” KJ began to explain.
“I mean, even eating—my relationship with eating, especially on that show, was bad…I used to eat donuts all day long. Go back to my trailer, throw up. Let me tell you the story. This is gnarly. This is a gnarly story,” he then went on to say. “But it’s honestly the perfect way to explain that addictive quality that I had, that I will always have.”
“I’ve identified it. I know what it is, and now I know how to talk to it. So I was quarantining in Vancouver. I quarantined like three times, dude, which means I had to stay in my apartment for two weeks. I wasn’t even allowed to go outside, which, by the way, is gnarly enough for addictive people…for one week of that, I think one of them I didn’t even sleep. I was awake. I was awake doing things I shouldn’t have been doing,” KJ said.
The actor went on to recount a specific, startling incident during a high-stress production quarantine that vividly illustrated the relentless nature of his eating disorder and obsessive mind:
“And then this one time I was quarantining. I was in a house with two of my friends on the show, and I was trying to be sober. And not, you know, smoke weed or anything. And I remember I was so hungry. I was also trying to lose a lot of weight because I was going back to work. And when I’m on a vibe of, “I’m trying to get into shape,” I’m like beast mode. I’m obsessed about it.”
“I ordered all of this McDonald’s. I ordered like three Big Macs, a bunch of McNuggets and stuff, fries, a milkshake, and I ordered it. It’s like 2:00 a.m. I’m about to beast mode this thing. I slam like half of it, and immediately it’s like… (sighs) the regret just hits in. Why did I do that?” KJ recalled.
Desperate to stop himself from consuming the rest of the high-calorie meal, Apa took desperate measures—measures that ultimately proved no match for his psychological distress.
“I piss on the rest of the food…I took it outside. I pissed all over it. I go throw up all the food that I ate. I’m not done,” he continued.
“I go back outside about 20 minutes later after lying there in bed being like, I’m hungry again, because all the food is now out of my body. And when you do that, you get hungry again really quickly. I went downstairs. I go outside. It’s there, right? And I start eating around the piss. I ate the rest of the food and left the soaking piss food there. I could have just ordered more food. You know what I mean? I needed to have it right now.
“But I’ve got heaps of stories like that,” he admitted.
By laying bare such raw, uncomfortable realities, Apa sheds crucial light on the chaotic, often misunderstood cycles of eating disorders and addictive compulsions. Today, with eighteen months of solid sobriety under his belt, his willingness to speak so openly stands as a brave testament to his ongoing healing and self-awareness.
