MIAMI – Andrew Gillum, the 2018 Democratic Party nominee for governor of Florida, used Instagram to release an 11-minute-long statement about his struggles with depression and alcoholism.

Gillum’s statement comes a few months after officers and paramedics reported he was in a Mondrian Hotel room with a naked man in Miami Beach. There were bags of crystal meth in the room, police said.

Gillum said he had struggled with shame and suffering in silence.

“All of us are struggling and trying and clawing at trying to be something else when we really ought to be trying to be at home in ourselves,” he said. “And that is really the journey that I am on right now … not having to be one thing in one place and one thing somewhere else.”

Gillum also said that it was tough not to be politically active amid the coronavirus pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the upcoming November elections.

“I can’t be what I would love to be for you and for myself and for my community at this time,” Gillum said. “I hope you know that I couldn’t be those things because I couldn’t be what I needed to be for me first.”