Seth Rogen Details His 'Family Love Story' And Mother-in-Law's 'Brutal' Alzheimer's Battle
Seth Rogen with his wife, actress and writer Lauren Miller, earlier this year at the Vanity Fair Oscars afterparty. (Photo by Larry Busacca/VF13/WireImage)
Seth Rogen makes jokes about many things. But Alzheimer’s isn’t one of them. Why? Because he’s witnessing its devastating effects first hand, in his mother-in-law, Adele.
Rogen has penned a very personal essay for Glamour’s January issue, titled “My Family Love Story”, detailing the impact this illness has had on his family — his wife Lauren Miller, her father and brother, and Rogen himself.
"The truth is Alzheimer’s will ultimately kill Lauren’s mother," says Rogen. "It will take a long time, and things will slowly get worse and worse and worse, until it happens. And in our morbid moments, we know that Lauren could get this disease—it runs in her family."
Related: How to Spot Alzheimer’s In a Family Member
He puts into powerful words the feelings that more than 15.5 million Americans face every day as they put in 17.7 billion hours of unpaid care yearly for family members with Alzheimer’s and other dementias.
"Adele had been a teacher for 35 years and had to stop working. Her condition continued to deteriorate. I would go to visit their place, and she wouldn’t say much. She’d just wipe up in the kitchen for a long time, and they didn’t have that big a kitchen.
"She was getting lost in busy physical repetition, a common symptom, and it was more obvious something was off,"says Rogen.
Rogen has since become an outspoken Alzheimer’s activist. "The depressing thing about Alzheimer’s is you can’t do anything a lot of the time. But just sitting there, watching it happen, was emotionally brutal,” said Rogen in Glamour.
Together with Lauren he stared Hilarity for Charity to raise money for research and awareness.
Earlier this year, Rogen appeared in front of a Congressional panel to speak about the cause, asking the government to think harder about funding research in the fatal disease. “I dream of the day when my charity is no longer necessary and I can go back to being the lazy, self-involved manchild I was meant to be,” he quipped to the panel. The actor then publically lambasted the senate after only two of 16 invited members stayed for the entire presentation.
Watch Rogen’s opening statements to Congress in his speech on Alzheimer’s funding and research.
"I believe the biggest obstacle from where we are now to the disease being cured is the government not taking a more active approach to finding a cure," Rogen states in Glamour.
Related: The Best Jobs For Your Brain
Alzheimer’s is the number-six cause of death in the U.S., involved in killing as many as 500,000 people each year, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. Alarmingly, the number of cases is expected to triple by 2050.
Of the top causes of death, it’s also the least funded and the only one with no treatment.
"I’ve had scientists tell me that their students—researchers who could maybe cure Alzheimer’s someday—do not feel inspired to go into that field because of how underfunded it is," says Rogen.
"Doctors think Alzheimer’s is curable. I mean, they’ve prevented polio. There are a lot of smart people out there curing sh-t.
"Why not Alzheimer’s next?"
