By Cindy Locke May 16, 2005, 17:00 GMT
After all the news surrounding Dave Chappelle and the suspension of the third season of his Comedy Central show, Chappelle’s Show, he finally spoke out and told Time Magazine, “I’m not crazy, I’m not smoking crack.”
It was reported Chapelle flew to South Africa last month to enter into a psychiatric hospital. Chapelle, who was paid $50 million for two seasons of the show, said, “I’m definitely stressed out, but I’m not in a mental facility.” He says he went to Durbin, South Africa for a “spiritual retreat.”
"You hear so many voices jockeying for position in your mind that you want to make sure that you hear your own voice," he said. "So I figured, let me just cut myself off from everybody, take a minute and pull a Flintstone – stop a speeding car by using my bare feet as the brakes."
He added that he does not have a drug problem and fled to Durbin to be with friends because he wasn’t happy with the direction of the show. “There's a lot of resistance to my opinions, so I decided, 'Let me remove myself from this situation,'”
He says he will start up the show again, though he did not indicate when. “If you don't have the right people around you, and you're moving at a million miles an hour, you can lose yourself,” he said. “Everyone around me says, 'You're a genius, you're great, that's your voice,' but I'm not sure that they're right.”
Comedy Central president Doug Herzog says the star has “complete creative freedom.”
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