Adam Devine was recently told he was dying because he was hit by a cement truck as a child

Devine detailed several procedures he’s undergone over the past three years, as injuries sustained during his childhood began to cause him “so much pain.”

Adam DeVine.Credit: Kay Blake/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

Adam Devine recently opened up about the profound impact that getting hit by a cement truck as a child still has on him, including being told recently by a doctor that he may be dying.

The last three years of his life have “been a nightmare,” Devine revealed on Wednesday’s episode of In Depth With Graham Bensinger podcast. The Pitch Perfect star started “having spasms all over” and now experiences “so much pain.” His mobility is even worse, as it “hurts to sit for too long, it hurts to stand for too long, and it hurts to walk for too long.”

Though Devine said his doctors “don’t really know” what’s happening or why, they were at one point as alarmed as can be. “They told me I was dying, literally, within this last year they told me that,” he shared.

Devine detailed his childhood accident to Entertainment Weekly in 2016. After leaving a store with friends at 11 years old, “one buddy was across the street. He yelled ‘Come on!’” meaning “hurry up,” but Devine recalled he took it to mean, “‘The coast is clear!’” When he walked with his bike onto the road, he was struck by an oncoming cement truck.

“They say the reason I lived was the bike took the hit first,” he said. “I still slid 500 feet. Picked me up under the first two wheels and then spit me out.” Devine underwent 25 surgeries following the accident and still feels the impact of his injuries.

After ruling out hip problems following two surgeries, the actor said his doctors suggested he may suffer from a rare autoimmune disorder called stiff-person syndrome (SPS), a degenerative condition that causes muscle stiffness and spasms. (Music megastar Celine Dion announced in 2022 that she suffers from the disorder.) Though Johns Hopkins Medicine notes that death from SPS is rare, Devine said he was told that “the average life expectancy is six years for someone who has it, and they told me that I had that literally a month before my son Beau was born.”

Eventually, Devine visited “the guy who coined the phrase stiff-person syndrome,” who told the actor that his recent troubles more likely derive from his accident than any new condition. But he still called the spasms “unexplainable.”

Devine now believes that getting physically fit by cycling and visiting CrossFit gyms during the pandemic may have triggered the painful reactions throughout his body. “I think I just got so tight and so tightly wound, and my body has all these things that are a little wonky and a little wrong with it, that I just sort of snapped. I think I’m still dealing with it, but it’s been three years now,” he said.

Devine has been a fixture of comedy TV and films since he created and starred in the sitcom Workaholics in 2011. Scene-stealing comedic parts in the Pitch Perfect franchise and on series like Modern Family led to more physically demanding opportunities in series like The Righteous Gemstones.

Devine says that he was embracing that shift because growing up, “I was always like, ‘I want to be an action star,’ because those are the movies that I liked.” But “now, when I’m thinking about movies I want to do…I’m like, ‘I’m gonna be the comedy guy in the action movie with an action star, and he does all the action stuff.’ But I really wanted to be the guy that does it all, because I like doing stunts, I think it’s cool. But now I’m sort of trying to walk that line and see what I can do and what I can’t.”

Though the past few years have been a hard road, Devine is beginning to see the light at the other side. He says a stem cell treatment has left him feeling “the best I’ve been now for the past three years.”

Devine currently stars as the impetuous youth pastor Kelvin Gemstone on The Righteous Gemstones, which is now airing its fourth and final season on HBO. He will next provide voices to characters in the animated films Fixed and Hypergalactic.