Tragic Details About Adam Devine's Health Issues

A month before welcoming his first child with wife Chloe Bridges, Adam Devine was scared he wouldn't live past his son's first six years of life. In 2024, the "Pitch Perfect" star received terrible health news from doctors, who fortunately turned out to be wrong about his diagnosis.

After suffering lasting injuries from getting hit by a cement truck at 11 years old, Devine was left with tight pain and unexplainable spasms all over his body. "For a while, they told me I was dying," he recalled on an April 2025 episode of the podcast "In Depth with Graham Bensinger." According to the actor, he was initially diagnosed with stiff person syndrome (SPS). John Hopkins Medicine defines it as an uncommon autoimmune neurological disorder that causes muscles to stiffen and spasm, which can worsen over time — it's the disease Celine Dion suffers from. In his interview, Devine noted that eventually, one's heart — because it is a muscle — will stop beating.

The "Righteous Gemstones" actor remembered receiving the diagnosis right before becoming a father. He was told that the average life expectancy of someone diagnosed with stiff person syndrome is only six years. "So I'm like, 'Oh great, now I'm gonna die, and [my son is] going to be six years old. He's only going to know a crippled father.'"

The fatal prognosis was a hard pill to swallow for Adam Devine, who spoke about it on Theo Von's podcast "This Past Weekend." He told the comedian: "I wasn't sleeping, I was sleeping like three hours a night. I was just going online, sitting on the toilet watching TikTok videos of like people with [stiff person syndrome]." Devine continued: "I'm like, 'This is going to be me dude ... my wife is just going to have to like wheel me into the living room as I watch my little son walk for [sic] his first steps.'"

Fortunately for Devine, the doctors were wrong. He was eventually advised to see the expert who "coined the phrase stiff person syndrome," per his interview with Graham Bensinger. "So, I went and saw him, and he's like, 'You don't have it. You do not have it,'" he said. The doctor explained to Devine that his symptoms were likely from his childhood accident, which meant the actor was not dying.

Devine has a possible explanation for his tight muscles: too much cycling. He told Bensinger that he was "so bored" during the COVID-19 lockdown that he would rack up miles upon miles on the bike machine, then finish with a CrossFit workout. "I think I just got so tight, and so tightly wound ... that I just sort of snapped," said Devine.