Jeremy Jackson Went Into “Full-Blown F*** It Mode” While Descending Into Meth Addiction On ‘Baywatch’: “I Was Spiraling Down”

After Baywatch: Moment in the Sun isn’t all bathing suits and bead bods. The new ABC Studios doc on Hulu details the highs and lows of the smash ’90s soap, including a very personal story of pain from Baywatch star Jeremy Jackson, who played the son of David Hasselhoff‘s Mitch Buchannon for eight seasons.

Jackson ultimately left his role as Hobie Buchannon in 1998 at age 18, right when his drug addiction was worsening, he says in the doc.

“That was a crazy time. I was in full-blown fuck it mode. That drug had a hold of me and i was just spiraling down, for sure,” Jackson recalls. “I was very stuck there and I didn’t have the power to abstain.”

The young actor began using meth at 18 years old on his final season on Baywatch, and while his co-stars sensed something was wrong, they didn’t know how much trouble Jackson was really in.  

“I remember [Hasselhoff] saying, ‘Are you smoking pot or something?’ I was like, ‘Jesus, they think I’m smoking pot.’ I mean, I could never tell them the truth. What would they think?” Jackson says. “When you haven’t slept for five days and you’ve been smoking crystal meth, having somebody look you in the eyes and say, ‘Dude, are you OK?’ is like the worst thing that can happen.”  

Director and EP Matthew Felker remembered Jackson’s struggles, saying, “That’s how it starts. And then by the time the show ended, he was a full-blown drug addict.”

In one particularly harrowing instance, Jackson had been awake for five days when he arrived on set to film Baywatch.

“I couldn’t even really speak. It was like marbles were in my mouth,” he says. “My tongue wouldn’t work right, I couldn’t pronunciate right, I kept messing up, kept forgetting…I got so embarrassed. So embarrassed that I had fallen from my ability to perform, fallen from one-take Jeremy to like, what’s going on with this guy?”

Jackson then quit, leaving set and walking to his car with his middle finger in the air.

“I just said, you know what, I’m out of here and I literally put my middle finger up in the air and I told everybody to fuck off and I just walked away with my middle finger in the air … Took off, that’s when I … went dark,” he says. “My life slipped through my hands like sand. Started hanging out with gang members, thieves, criminals and prostitutes and drug dealers. That became my whole world. I don’t know how or why, I just pulled the curtain on one life and I just stepped into this other life completely.”

While Jackson publicly struggled with addiction for years, he has since successfully completed a rehab program. In one touching scene from the Baywatch doc, he reunites with Hasselhoff at his 40th birthday party, where the two embrace and Hasselhoff of course dishes out some fatherly advice to his TV son.

After Baywatch: A Moment in the Sun is now streaming on Hulu.

If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, call the SAMHSA National Helpline at 1-800-662-4357.