I think he said that at a time that he didn’t know what was coming and we aren’t sure how far back the effects actually started.

Given that it takes between 5-20 years before it finally kills the person. It’s likely that it ramps up over a longer period and impacted his mental health in the decade or more leading up to his death.

There is actually a bit of reasoning behind this too.

TLDR: stop talking about it and do it, it’s messing up how your brain gages achievement.

People quit working when they receive a sense of accomplishment .

The shallow reward that they get from announcing their intentions is often enough of an ego boost to fulfill their sense of accomplishment,

They don’t actually put in all of the hard work to do the thing, because they have already gotten their pat on the back.

If you are one of those people that has difficulty finishing things, but loves talking about what you’re going to do, you might want to start using delayed gratification as a carrot.

When a lot of people want to rip them apart, I guess they got good at sticking together. I hope they've been happy years and I hope they have many more to come =)