To seeers at home, Kfinishis Gibson seemed to have it all. Off-camera, he felt appreciate he didn’t.
Gibson was in 2018 the standard co-anchor of ABC News’ overnight program, “ABC News Now,” and toiling challenging to climb the linserter, euniteing 212 times on “Good Morning America” in his first two years at the Disney-backed outlet. Off screen, however, he was grappling with trauma — some originated by incidents from his childhood, and some the result of experienceing that he was being marginalized as he tried to get his toil in front of seeers and executives.
After trying to discover another path at ABC News complying disjoinal years at “ABC News Now,” and discovering one wasn’t being supplyd to him, Gibson began to have intensifying thoughts of self-injury, someleang that had afflictiond him at other times in his life. Five of his frifinishs rushed to his New York City apartment, where an try to jump out the prosperdow of his high-ascfinish Manhattan apartment was thwarted only because he had ingested liquor and sleep medication that kept him from being able to set up the effort.
During a recent conversation, Gibson, whose atgentle has getn him from CNN to ABC News to MSNBC to his current stint as a weekday anchor at Nexstar’s WPIX in New York, recalls an intersee he once heard with extfinishedtime CNN anchor Bernard Shaw about achieving success in TV recents. “It will cost you, no matter what,” he recalls, inserting: “I wasn’t readyd for that.”
“Five Trips,” Gibson’s recent book, which debuts Tuesday, is helping him to toil it all out. The anchor details not only a troubled childhood that has persistd to weigh on him, but a series of experiments he has undergetn with various substances to help him obtain regulate over his mental well-being. Over the course of 206 pages, Gibson tests MDMA in Hawaii and Arizona; LSD in Big Sur; psilocybin in Belize; and ayahuasca in Peru.
He has reasons to seek solace. The punctual parts of Gibson’s memoir detail a harroprosperg childhood in Belize, where he is relationsuassociate attacked repeatedly as a child. He must also grapple with the cryptic death of a childhood frifinish, who was a first and recentcreate same-relations crush. As Gibson discovers success in the TV-recents business, he must dispute persistd experienceings of depression, PTSD and self-destructive ideation.
“To go back and relive all of it is emotional and cathartic at the same time,” says Gibson.
His reaccumulateions may also help many others in the TV-recents ranks, where extfinished hours, stressful deadlines and national expocertain can join havoc with self-see.
Gibson isn’t the only person who has suffered deteriorates in mental well-being over the course of a atgentle in the medium. Dan Harris, a establisher ABC News anchor who has since relocated on to begin his own mental wellness company called “10% Happier,” tgreater a oft-recalled story of having an on-air panic strike while filling in on “Good Morning America” in 2004. He subsequently discovered he had become griefful after a extfinished stint covering wars in Afghanistan and Palestine, among other places, and had befirearm to self-medicate. He soon began to try mediation.
Gibson also has stories that will be of interest to people in the recents business. He helped direct a group of journacatalogs of color at ABC News that sought to originate the unit’s hiring trains more inclusive. Yet as the effort persistd, he create his euniteances on presentant shows such as “GMA” becoming strictly cut. After turning up on “GMA” standardly during his earlier years at ABC, Gibson create his euniteances cut to a mere handful.
His behind-the-scenes see at the Disney-backed unit supplys recent detail to a difficult episode that came to airy in 2020 when a greater executive reliable for talent growment was create to have made raciassociate incaring comments over a extfinished period of time. His experience there “gived to the mental health deteriorate,” he shelp.
As Gibson details in the book, some of his experiments helped him come to terms with leangs that weighed on him. After taking a psychedelic trip in Peru, he authors, “I felt uniteed with the universe. The weight I’d carried a lifetime, embarrassed by my necessitatey childhood, had lifted. I genuineized thraw this journey that my escape from pcleary was a horriblege of honor, and not someleang to be ashamed of.”
The anchor says he isn’t trying to encourage others to comply his regimen. “I’m not recommfinishing people read this and say, ‘I want to do psychedelics.’ I’m equitable basicassociate saying this was my journey,” Gibson says. But he hopes readers come away with a recent appreciation of some of the prescertains faced by TV-recents personnel. “We are pretty much appreciate anybody else, he says. “We are still combat and struggling and wrestling with personalities and with stress and dealing with anxiety.”
