Adam Devine got candid about his ongoing health battle, which he said has been “a nightmare.”
“They don’t really know [what’s going on]. I was having spasms all over and I still kind of do,” Devine, 41, said on a Wednesday, April 2, appearance on In Depth With Graham Bensinger. “For a while, they told me I was dying. Literally within this last year, they told me that.”
The Pitch Perfect star shared that he was told he had a rare neurological disorder called stiff-person syndrome, which he explained occurs “when your muscles get so tight that you can no longer walk, you can no longer move — then your heart will stop beating because your heart is a muscle.”
“It gets too tight to beat, and then you die,” he continued of the condition. “And so essentially the average life expectancy is six years for someone that has that. They told me that I had that, literally a month before my son Beau was born.”
Devine, who welcomed son Beau in 2024 with wife Chloe Bridges, recalled thinking, “Oh great, now I’m gonna die.” Devine said that his son would be 6 years old and “only going to know a crippled father.”
Devine, who had two hip surgeries and received stem cells in Colombia, was later told by doctors that he might not have stiff-person syndrome after all — but six months went by and his situation “wasn’t getting much better.”
“I could only walk a few blocks before I’d get so tight that I couldn’t really move anymore and they’re like ‘We actually do think you have it,’” Devine said, recalling that he was recommended to see an expert in the field.
Ultimately, the expert told Devine that he didn’t suffer from the same condition that Celine Dion has. (The singer, 57, was diagnosed with stiff-person syndrome in 2022.) Instead, the expert suspected that Devine’s symptoms were stemming from an accident he had as a child. (Devine shared that he was hit by a cement truck as a child and broke “all the bones” in his leg.)
“[The expert said], ‘The spasms are a little unexplainable but it could just be you got so tight that your body doesn’t know what to do with it so you’re misfiring a little bit,’” Devine recalled.
Devine — who said his body has “all these things that are a little wonky, a little wrong with it” — said he had been exercising “constantly” during the pandemic and his body “just sorta snapped.”
Now, the actor shared he still suffers from symptoms but is in a good place.
“It hurts to sit for too long, it hurts to stand for too long, it hurts to walk for too long. I have to foam roll two-three times a day, I have to do stretches two-three times a day,” Devine said. “I’m the best I’ve been now for the past three years. I’m the best right now, I think, is the best I’ve been.”
While Devine initially wanted to be a comedic action star, he has since changed his tune. “Now I’m like, ‘I’m gonna be the comedy guy in the action movie with the action star and he does all the action stuff,’” Devine said. “I really wanted to be the guy that does it all ‘cause I like doing stunts. I think it’s cool. But now I’m sort of trying to walk that line and see what I can do and what I can’t.”
