The Tragedy Of Carson Daly

Father's death He's one of the most affable hosts  on TV, but behind the scenes, Carson   Daly has been struggling with debilitating  conditions and serious family tragedies. Carson Daly's first encounter with  a significant tragedy happened quite   early in his life. When he was only  5, his father James died from bladder   cancer. He'd previously recovered from the  disease around the time that Carson and his   sister were born. But then unfortunately,  the cancer eventually returned. Carson   didn't exactly find it easy to navigate  the loss of a parent at such a young age. "I get pictures mixed up with  actual memories, and I remember,   being a teenager, actually  feeling guilty for that." In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic presented  an opportunity for Daly to find closure.   He recreated a vintage photo of his father  pouring drinks soon before his death. The   project was executed with precision, involving  green screen mastery and the works. Daly even   slipped on the blue UCLA jacket that  his father wore in the original picture. "In a weird way, it's given me some sort  of closure. It got me closer to him,   and that's something I feel like  I really had been yearning for." Living with anxiety Daly has emerged as a leading morning show  voice on mental health and the normalization   of therapy. His own encounters with anxiety began  at a young age, as he considered himself to be a   bit of a "worrywart kid." During a personal  segment on an episode of Today in 2018,   he explained what it was like living  as a public figure who doesn't exactly   have perfect control of his own mental  state when he's in front of a camera. "This is the way I was born. This  is the way I'm hardwired. This is   kind of the downside of the way God made me." Daly has been diagnosed with generalized  anxiety disorder, a condition that affects   over 3 percent of the American population.  But less than half ever seek professional   treatment. Daly has sought out cognitive  behavioral therapy and made it a part of his   self-care routine. On busier days, his anxiety  is worse. As he wrote in an essay for Today, "My mind starts racing and I  start to spiral a little bit." His coping techniques include  talking freely about his anxiety,   which has helped to destigmatize the condition. With decades of experience, Daly is quite the  seasoned TV personality. Whenever he's in front   Panic attacks of the camera, he's pretty much the picture  of laidback confidence. But that presentation   isn't always as effortless as it may seem. And  it turns out that in addition to his anxiety,   he's also experienced panic attacks while on  the job. As he admitted to USA Today in 2022, "On The Voice, when I'm live on  Monday nights, most of the time,   my right hand is in my right pocket,  and I'm literally gripping onto the   flesh of my thigh because I'm waiting  for a high-panic moment to pass." Daly has also experienced panic attacks while  with family and even in relaxed settings like   playgrounds. His open conversations about  mental health have been a prominent feature   of his on-air personality, including a  segment called "Mind Matters." While Daly   is now an influential voice on the subject, the  first time that he experienced a panic attack,   he didn't even know what was actually happening.  As he revealed during an episode of Today, "I had a hard time breathing. I was terrified  for no apparent reason. At times, I feel like   there’s a saber-toothed tiger right here and  it’s going to attack me and kill me. I’m scared   as if that’s really happening. You feel like  you’re dying — in fact, I went to the hospital." In his early TV presenter days, Daly dated  some of the most high-profile names in   Difficult breakup showbiz. One of them was Jennifer Love Hewitt.  The two of them coupled up in the late '90s,   after a two-second meeting during his MTV  days. Their frequent collaborations for   the music network brought them closer, and they  kicked off a relationship that spanned many red   carpet appearances over the course of several  months. As Hewitt told Rolling Stone in 1999, "I think we deserve a huge round  of applause. I think we've done   a really good job — it's been almost a year now." But before the year was over, the relationship had  run its course. Daly apparently found out about   the split in the most unsavory way imaginable,  with shock jock Howard Stern announcing it on   the radio. During an interview with People  Magazine, Daly recalled telling Hewitt, "If we were going to break  up officially like this,   maybe we could have just talked about it. I  don't see why you had to tell your publicist." Five years later, the pair reunited on TV  on an episode of Last Call with Carson Daly,   as they looked back at their romance fondly and  a little awkwardly. Daly didn't mince his words   about how he felt, though they did seem to finish  up on good terms with a quick peck on the cheek. "It ended a little weird,  I gotta be honest. It did." "It did, but that doesn't matter." "A little weird. Well." "It doesn't matter." "Well, all right. It doesn't  matter. It doesn't matter." Life dealt Daly another tough hand in 2017. That  year, he lost both his mother and his stepfather   Mom and stepdad's deaths in quick succession. Like her son, Pattie Daly  Caruso was a longtime media personality with a   show of her own. She died at her California home  in September following a heart attack. And then   just five weeks later, Daly's stepfather Richard  Caruso also died, from bone cancer. Daly was   exceptionally close to both of them. In a touching  tribute on Instagram, he wrote of his stepfather, "The greatest man we ever knew.  He exemplified great faith,   loyalty to family & hard work. He provided  us all with so much. We’re grateful." After losing his biological dad when he was 5,   Daly was lucky enough to live with a strong  father figure in Caruso, though it took some   time for the young Carson to warm up to  him. As Daly revealed to Kingdom Magazine, "He never tried to force anything in creating  a relationship with me and my sister." Eventually, they found a shared interest  in golf, which helped to deepen their bond. A heartbreaking letter Daly's commitment to raising cancer  awareness is obviously quite personal,   as the disease claimed the lives of both  his father and stepfather, and almost his   mother's as well. Pattie Daly Caruso had a  bout with breast cancer that she recovered   from decades before she died in 2017 of a heart  attack. The family then unearthed an old letter   that she wrote back in 1998 when she was dealing  with the cancer. As her son wrote on Instagram, "She clearly thought she might  not make it. We never knew." His mom's bout with cancer was especially  tough for Daly because he was also living   in the opposite end of the country at  the time. And her death was shocking   and sudden considering that only  a few hours before she passed,   she'd been tending to her husband  while he was living with cancer. In 2021, on the anniversary of his mother's  death, Daly shared his final heartwarming   text exchange with her, in which she called him  "the best son on the planet earth" and also said,   "Thanks for all you did and do to make our  lives better and to make us so proud of you." "She died at 73, but she lived a life passionately  twice as much, so she really died at 146." Reevaluating his relationship with his kids Losing his parents within weeks of each  other also had a profound impact on Daly's   relationship with his own four children.  As he shared during an episode of Today, “My parents were overly proud. I sometimes  try to love my kids, I think, less,   almost on purpose, because I'm so scared of  loving them too much. Because my parents,   my mom especially, loved me so  much, it was almost too much. " The death of Daly's mother familiarized him with   the idea of love translating  to grief. As he explained, "It hurt so much because I'm so bummed  that that love isn't there anymore,   and that's a byproduct of her love for me." This all led Daly to examine how he loved his  own children the same way. In his household,   mental health isn't a taboo topic,  and his children have witnessed his   own experiences with it firsthand.  As he wrote in an essay for Today, "The most important thing for me is  that my kids see from my example that   if there is something I can't control, I  get help. My kids have seen the work I've   put in with being open about my own mental  state and also mental health in general." "Can you tell at 12 days what  Goldie is going to be like?" "She's heading towards professional beer  drinking because she burps all the time." Christina Grimmie's murder In 2016, singer Christina Grimmie was shot to  death at the age of 22. This tragedy hit plenty of   people especially hard, including Daly, who knew  her from her time as a contestant on Season 6 of   The Voice. She was meeting fans after a concert  in Florida when her attacker fired at her before   shooting himself to death. She was rushed to the  hospital but died within hours of the incident. The outpouring of grief from Grimmie's  fans and the wider music world was   profound. Daly paid her tribute during  an episode of Today, as he recalled, "She would walk in a room and have an  infectious laugh. She was determined;   she was confident. But she  was so incredibly sweet." Daly clearly had a soft spot  for Grimmie, as he'd expressed   surprise that she hadn't emerged as the  winner during her season of The Voice. The death of Stephen "tWitch" Boss in December  2022 at the age of 40 rocked the entertainment   Mourning another friend industry. The dancer-slash-DJ had cultivated  a huge following over the years, and among   his friends and fans was Daly. As it turned out,  tWitch was keen on following in his colleague's   footsteps and hosting his own talk show. As  Hoda Kotb revealed on an episode of Today, "He said, 'Do you think I can do  it?' This was a person with dreams   and hopes and a lot of things. [...] So  you don't know. You really don't know." Autopsy results confirmed that tWitch died by  suicide on December 13, 2022. Daly weighed in   on the importance of sensitivity about what his  friend went through, unsurprising considering   his own history with mental health.  As he put it on an episode of Today, "I think people have to just stop assuming  that when you see people on television,   when you see them on social media, that  they're okay. Especially with the dancing,   and dancing is such a symbol of freedom  and happiness and joy. We have to stop   assuming It's taking us away when we sit on  our phones and go, 'She's okay, she's okay.'" "Everybody's propping up  the best part of themselves,   and it's taking away from  real conversations happening." Chronic back pain Carson Daly hasn't just struggled with  his mental health, he's also endured   some serious physical issues as well. He  struggled with back pain for a long time,   which he told his fans about in his  trademark candid manner. It all traced   back to a snowmobiling accident that he  had back in 1997. The issue continued   to plague him for decades and even landed  him in the hospital on multiple occasions. Daly underwent surgery twice in 2022, a  journey he chronicled on TV and social   media. This included an anterior lumbar  interbody fusion operation, which is a   procedure that essentially combines problematic  vertebrae. As the host recounted on Instagram, "Before surgery my world was getting smaller  & darker due to chronic back pain. Now,   the future is bright again & I'm excited  to get back to being the active dad I   used to be. [...] Now it's time to rehab  physically & continue my wellness mentally." The surgery brought Daly considerable relief,  considering how deeply his chronic back pain   had invaded multiple aspects of his life.  And the post-surgery recovery proved to be   quite the comprehensive process for the host.  As he admitted during an episode of Today, "When I say, 'I'm feeling better,' I'm feeling  better in a multitude of ways. Mentally,   physically. The future is bright, but  there's still a lot of work to do." If you or someone you know  is struggling or in crisis,   help is available. Call or text  988 or chat 988lifeline.org