Stephen Colbert recalls his anxiety and Xanax past, defends Jimmy Fallon and explains why Trump's actions haven't surprised him

Rolling Stone

The Late Show host said in an extensive Rolling Stone Q&A that he'd have severe anxiety and panic attacks early in his career, when he was 29. "I was actually medicated. I mean, in the most common, prosaic way," he said. "Xanax was just lovely. Y’know, for a while. And then I realized that the gears were still smoking. I just couldn’t hear them anymore." Colbert said he stopped taking Xanax after nine days and decided to just suffer through his anxiety. Colbert also stuck up for his friend Jimmy Fallon's infamous Donald Trump hair-tousling incident. "I think that’s a completely unfair critique of Jimmy Fallon’s show," he says. "You do not go to Jimmy Fallon’s show for political satire or even political discussion. He’s an entertainer and he’s brilliant. People blame his ratings on that. But I think people just have a different appetite right now for political comedy. I think it’s highly overblown, that hair-ruffling thing." As for Trump being elected president, Colbert said: "I was shocked, and I was dismayed, but I will say this: There is nothing that has happened since Trump became president that wasn’t in my fear matrix about him. Now, all the horrors that you can see dawning on my face on that Showtime special have only been borne out. Nothing about Trump and Putin, nothing about his caging children, nothing about him saying, 'There’s good people on both sides.' Nothing about his handing the reins of power over to just a rogues’ gallery of anti-regulation, pro-pollution, anti-union, anti-women (officials) in any way surprises me. It’s all what I thought would happen. Which is why I was truly horrified."