Alec Baldwin opened up about his experiences of having Lyme disease. The actor hasn’t spoken about it publicly since 2011.

“They had me hiding in the bushes over there at a Lyme disease benefit,” he said at the Bay Area Lyme Foundation’s LymAid benefit. “I have ticks all over me. I’m joking.”

According to People magazine, Lyme Foundation’s executive director, Linda Giampa, has been trying to get Alec to attend their event for years before he finally agreed to do it.

“We had already sold out the event for 350 people on that night when I was told. I asked if he would do it the next night and he graciously agreed,” Giampa said. “I think he just felt the time was right to talk about it.”

Alec explained he believed he had the disease well before he was officially diagnosed. He’d been bitten 17 years ago and received a shot. Then was bitten again a few years later: “I got the classic Lyme disease (symptoms) for each successive summer, for five years, every August, like this black lung, flu-like symptoms, sweating to death in my bed,” he explained. “The first round (was the worst), and then it diminished, at least that’s how I perceived it.”

He continued: “The first time was the worst of all. And I really thought this is it, I’m not going to live. I was alone, I wasn’t married at the time, I was divorced from my first wife. I was lying in bed saying, ‘I’m going to die of Lyme disease,’ in my bed and ‘I hope someone finds me and I’m not here for too long.’”

His wife, Hilaria, checks their kids for signs of tick bites: “I want my kids to grow up riding horses and bikes and enjoying themselves every day and not have to spend every day with us going over them with a magnifying glass to make sure they don’t have any ticks on their body or their dogs, but that is part of the lifestyle of where I live.”

After the audience groaned after making a joke that New York was a “red state,” Alec replied: “I have Lyme disease. A little sympathy here.”