Guy Beahm, aka Dr Disrespect, made his return to streaming in August on YouTube, roughly a month after his very high-profile ban from Twitch. It appears to be going well—most of the videos he's posted since his comeback have drawn well over 1 million views—but despite that, he said yesterday that he's been struggling with anxiety since losing his channel on Twitch.
Beahm opens the video saying that throughout his time in sports—he played NCAA Division 2 basketball at California State Polytechnic University—and as a very high-profile streamer, he'd never had to deal with anxiety before. But the loss of his Twitch channel, which he maintains happened without explanation or recourse from the platform, has had a major effect on his mental health.
"To have that taken away from you, and to not know why, and to not know anything about it, not to be told, nothing—boom, taken, grabbed, everything we built, all the eggs in one bucket, boom, taken away," he says in the video. "The fact that I am here live on YouTube, it's been a fantastic return, I'm telling you. It is. But my anxiety levels, it's something that comes in these huge waves, and I'm having a hard time dealing with it. I'll be honest."
"A lot of people think the numbers are fantastic. Yeah, the numbers are nuts, crazy, which is fantastic. We've come back before through adversity, we've come back, because you know why? It was on me. I accepted the responsibility. It was on me. But there was an opportunity to come back, right? How do I—what do I accept in this case? I don't accept anything, and there's nothing I can do about it, you know?"
I can't say that I expect to see a more thoughtful, reflective Dr. Disrespect going forward—the bulk of the video is dedicated to in-character PUBG gameplay, which I have to admit is kind of entertaining—but it's an unexpected acknowledgment from a guy whose whole deal is parodic hyper-masculinity. And while Beahm doesn't go into great detail, to me it feels like a heartfelt admission.
"It comes in waves, just so you know. So there might be days where the Doc seems off, feels off. We're trying to learn, we're trying to learn the dark alleyway, man," he says. "So to think that I'm here and I'm just kind of moving on, I'm not. I can't. How can I? I'm trying. But how can I?"
It's also interesting that he still insists he has no idea why he was banned from Twitch, which seems extremely strange given that, as he says in the video, the not-insignificant streaming empire he'd built on the platform was very suddenly taken away from him, apparently without any avenue of appeal. When he was first suspended from Twitch I assumed (like most people, I imagine) that the reason would come out in short order, but at this point I'm starting to think it could remain a mystery forever. Unless someone at Twitch wants to spill the beans...
