Prince Harry Admits He Experienced a Serious "Adrenaline Crash" and Depression After Stepping Down as a Senior Royal
“It was as if I needed stress in order to get the adrenaline to make my brain function because I became useless around the house."
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle left their Windsor home in 2020 for a new life in North America, and in a new MasterClass on grief, the Duke of Sussex revealed that he crashed emotionally once they moved.
The Sussexes relocated to Vancouver Island, Canada before buying their home in Montecito, California, and Prince Harry noted that he didn’t realize how much he was relying on “stress” to power through until he stepped down from his royal role.
“We moved to Canada to get some space away from everything, just to be able to think,” he said, per People. “Being in Canada, away from the stressful environment where presumably my body was just pumped full of adrenaline, within two or three days, I experienced this adrenaline crash—something that I’d never experienced before.”
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are pictured carrying out their last royal appearance with Prince William, Princess Kate, King Charles and Duchess Sophie in March 2020.
The Sussexes are pictured during one of their final public events in the U.K. before they moved to Canada.
The Duke of Sussex said that being away from the pressures of royal life felt like a shock to the system. “It was as if I needed stress in order to get the adrenaline to make my brain function because I became useless around the house,” he admitted. “I actually slipped into depression for about two weeks and I felt like I couldn’t function without adrenaline.”
Through therapy, Prince Harry has been able to address his unresolved feelings of grief from losing his mother, Princess Diana, when he was just 12. Part of this involved figuring out why he leaned on adrenaline to get through life, and he admitted that joining the military was "the perfect distraction."
“And for 15, 20 years, when I was being asked, ‘Are you okay?’ My response was, ‘I’m fine.’ It was numbness, emotional shutdown,” he said. “And without knowing it, adrenaline was pushing me, was driving me. It was the driving force of what took me to joining the military at the age of 20."
While he's been able to come to terms with many of his feelings, the Duke of Sussex said that from time to time, he feels the same driving force. “There are some public engagements that still involve adrenaline,” he shared. “I’m not gonna lie there.”
