- Alec Baldwin opened up about experiencing symptoms of Lyme disease for 20 years.
- He was bedridden with cold sweats, joint pain, soreness, and exhaustion following multiple tick bites. He still gets “inexplicable” joint pain today.
- An estimated 476,000 people contract Lyme disease every year in the United States.
Alec Baldwin dreams of enjoying a summer outdoors without fearing Lyme disease. But after getting bit by a tick 20 years ago and enduring long-term symptoms of the condition, he just can’t shake the anxiety.
The 30 Rock star recently opened up about his experience with the illness on the Hypochondriactor podcast hosted by Sean Hayes and Priyanka Wali, M.D., but first mentioned his struggle with Lyme in a 2011 interview with The New York Times.
“I think twice that I had it, I got bit twice and I probably had it four times over five years where it came back at the exact same time,” he explained. Each time, he says he was bedridden with cold sweats, joint pain, soreness, and exhaustion.
“August of one summer I was standing on my friend’s porch at night, and it was a cool evening—it wasn’t a hot steamy evening—and I felt literally this wave go over my back and over my shoulders and kind of wrap around me like a chill, and I got just attacked. It came like someone snapped their fingers and put a spell on me,” the actor recalled. And the symptoms returned in following summers.
“I had the same thing each August,” he said. “I got bit, and then I had it again the following August, and I got bit again. I had it the following August and it just kept coming back.” He added that even today he occasionally has “inexplicable” joint pain.
Lyme disease, caused by B. burgdorferi bacteria spread through the bite of an infected blacklegged tick, is often signaled by a bullseye-shaped skin rash at the site of the bite, but not always. Flu-like symptoms like fatigue, fever, headaches, and body aches, are also common. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a blood test is usually required to confirm a diagnosis.
In most cases, symptoms clear within three to four weeks with the help of antibiotics. But in an estimated 10 to 20% of others, they may linger and resurface, known as post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome (PTLDS). In PTLDS, patients were officially diagnosed with Lyme disease—meaning they experienced a tick bite or the bullseye rash—and treated with antibiotics, but struggle with lasting symptoms.
However, Baldwin believes he suffers from chronic Lyme. This differs from PTLDS because it can be used to describe cases where a B. burgdorferi infection was never officially diagnosed, according to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID).
Because this definition is so broad, many doctors don’t back chronic Lyme as a diagnosis. “It’s super controversial whether it actually exists,” Dr. Wali said on the podcast. “This is the most common tick-borne disease in the United States. There’s close to 300,000 people that get this every year and then many of those do not recover. This is a real phenomenon that’s occurring.” (The CDC recently updated that estimate, which is now closer to 476,000.)
Despite the skepticism and controversy, Alec and his wife Hilaria aren’t taking any chances, especially when it comes to their six kids. The family lives in the Hamptons, New York where Alec says it’s “tick central” every summer.
“When we have a very mild winter out here, the ticks are beyond,” he explained. “My wife finds one tick on one of my kids and she’s like, ‘That’s it. Hiking season is over.’ She just terminates hiking season.”
He wishes things didn’t have to be that way. “I want my kids to grow up riding horses and bikes and enjoying themselves every day and not have to spend every day with us going over them with a magnifying glass to make sure they don’t have any ticks on their body or their dogs, but that is part of the lifestyle of where I live,” he admitted.
According to People, the actor works with the Bay Area Lyme Foundation to raise money for disease research in hopes that one day, he can get more answers.
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