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The first time Marino had a panic attacked — while attending a concert — he didn’t know what it was, and neither did ER doctors. They suggested dehydration, he feared a heart attack, and the whole ordeal put him into a spiral that left him unable to leave the house. On the latest episode of Going There with Dr. Mike, the masked singer-songwriter behind viral hits “Devil in Disguise” and “I’m Doing Fine” traces how he came to identify what he was experiencing and learning to work through it. Listen above or wherever you get your podcasts, and watch the full episode on YouTube.
The pattern, he says, was avoidance. “Every single time one of these things would happen, I would try and not do what was causing it,” Marino explains, describing how he gave up concerts, then driving, and how eventually the attacks started arriving at home. “Everything that I stopped doing didn’t make things better. It just made it worse.” That period is what “I’m Doing Fine” captures, and it’s where he says “unfixable” became a feedback loop: “The more you say you can’t be fixed, the more you kinda actually start to believe that.” Getting out took therapy, medication, and about a year of slowly reintroducing normal life, including a panic attack in a Barnes & Noble that he stayed through. “I still have anxiety probably more than most people still to this day,” he adds, “but it has improved dramatically.”
The mask, he says, isn’t so much about the anxiety or panic, but about wanting the music to speak for itself. “I wanna be judged on just the music,” Marino says, pointing to the cyberbullying he’s watched play out online. But criticism found him anyway when “Devil in Disguise” became a TikTok trend that some people called corny. “One bad comment will erase every good comment before it in your head,” he says, admitting he started trying to please the people hating on the song and “almost started to lose my sense of self.” Dr. Mike’s advice: ask what your worst-case scenario actually is, and whether you could survive it.
It’s taken a lot of work, but Marino is learning to do just that. Listen to his full conversation on Going There with Dr. Mike above or wherever you get your podcasts, and watch the convo on YouTube.
Coming from the Consequence Podcast Network, Season 7 of Going There is presented by Johnson & Johnson, who believes that health is everything. Their strength in healthcare innovation empowers them to build a world where complex diseases are prevented, treated, and cured, where treatments are smarter and less invasive, and solutions are personal. Through their expertise in Innovative Medicine and MedTech, they are uniquely positioned to innovate across the full spectrum of healthcare solutions today to deliver the breakthroughs of tomorrow, and profoundly impact health for humanity. Learn more at www.jnj.com, and @JanssenUS and @JNJInnovMed on X.