Lukas Gage’s New Memoir: The Biggest Bombshells

Lukas Gage always wanted to write a book. But it wasn’t until the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike that the prospect became more than just a pipe dream. “The combination of having that free time gave me the confidence or the push to just finally do it,” Gage, 30, tells PEOPLE.

For Gage, who has found stardom from roles in The White Lotus, You, Euphoria and more, penning his debut memoir I Wrote This for Attention (out Tuesday, Oct. 14 via Simon & Schuster) also proved to be some much-needed catharsis. “I also was going through a hard time where I felt like I had a lot to get out and wanted to just reflect on some things that were going on,” he recalls.

Throughout the heartfelt and hilarious tome, Gage digs into his fractured family upbringing, addiction struggles, borderline personality diagnosis, sex and trauma. He doesn’t hesitate to dive into some of the most harrowing moments of his life, like his brother’s heroin addiction, distant relationship with his father, getting sent to a troubled teen wilderness program and the impact of queerbaiting allegations on his psyche.

But Gage feels confident in what he wrote. “The people that I care about the most have read the book and are okay with it, even some of the stuff that they don’t love that I’m sharing,” he says. 

Ultimately, the Overcompensating star feels lucky to have an amazing support system of friends and family. “We have been through a lot with each other,” says Gage. “All of us have had our own shortcomings and our own achievements, but through it all, we’ve really stuck together and always have each other’s backs.”

From being molested by a camp counselor to his first encounter with Jennifer Coolidge, here are the biggest bombshells from I Wrote This for Attention. 

His brother Cory’s heroin addiction deeply affected him

Growing up, Gage idolized his brother Cory. But as he got older, it became clear his brother was struggling with a serious heroin addiction, which ultimately had an impact on Gage. “For me, the root of my issues, it was not my own addiction, it was my brother’s addiction that was really the thing that was weighing me down,” he says. Over the years, Gage deeply struggled with regulating his emotions and his “impulsive behavior.”

Since he experimented with substances at a young age, drugs aren’t his vices today. “Love and sex are my drug of choice now,” Gage explains. “So I have to watch myself to not lean into addictive behaviors with relationships.”

During summer camp, Lukas was molested by a counselor

When Gage was 11, he attended a summer camp in Lake Arrowhead that fostered his passion for acting. After the premiere of a zombie film he had been making, he and his crush, Nina, retreated to the woods to spend time together in a tent. While they were making out, an Australian camp counselor in his twenties unzipped and entered the tent and began instructing Gage and Nina to be physical with one another. As Gage disassociated, the camp counselor ejaculated on his sleeping bag. “I always felt like there was a willingness to that situation because I just plowed through it, went on autopilot and let it happen,” Gage tells PEOPLE.

It wasn’t until he was 27 and getting treatment at a mental health facility that he confronted that he was molested. “For so long, I felt like I was an active participant in it or wanting it for some reason as a child,” he recalls. However, his therapist helped him understand it wasn’t his fault. “You can’t ask for that,” he says. What Gage found was “a lot of understanding for that kid” and was able to rid himself of guilt.

He was taken in the middle of the night and sent to a troubled teen wilderness program at 13

While staying at his dad’s house after spending Father’s Day with him, a 13-year-old Gage was taken in the middle of the night by two men in a white van and driven to a troubled teen wilderness program. Gage was resentful and didn’t understand why he was there, but eventually he confronted that he lied a lot and often had outbursts. “A lot of these places, they don’t build you up, they just take you down and tear you down,” he says.

At one point, Gage tried to escape from the program and used a vision board assignment to create his own help letter with his mom’s phone number. That resulted in him getting dropped off miles away alone in the middle of nowhere until the next day.

“It really messed with my idea of trust and safety,” he says of the experience. “As a kid, you look at your parents to keep you safe, to protect you, and to have that foundation just be fractured by a place like that and not believe what was going to happen to you really put me into a place where I didn’t trust anybody.”

In a way, Lukas rebelled against queerbaiting allegations with his marriage to Chris Appleton

After roles in The White Lotus, Love, Victor and You, Gage was faced with queerbaiting allegations from internet trolls. In 2022, he responded to insults with an X post saying, “u dont know my alphabet.” Less than a year later, he embarked on a whirlwind romance with celebrity hairstylist Chris Appleton and married him in a Las Vegas ceremony officiated by Kim Kardashian. (He filed for divorce from Gage months later in 2023.)

“With my very public relationship, I think I was rebelling in a way, because I felt scrutinized by people that I was either hiding this big secret or that I was taking roles from people that deserved it, that were queer,” says Gage. For him, being “so public-facing” in his relationship with Appleton was a way to get people to stop talking about it.

“It was an act of defiance to be so, so loud about it — almost to the point of sharing ad nauseam about this relationship and life I was living in. I went from being very quiet and secretive to being loud and oversharing because I was so affected by these trolls online,” he says.

He was in a hyper-manic episode during wedding to Appleton

When Gage — who has been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder — watched his nuptials air on The Kardashians, he realized that he had been in and out of hyper-manic episodes. “I was acting off of every impulse,” he says. “There was no reasoning, and there was no awareness to take my time. It felt very good to be in love, and it felt very good to be in this situation, but there was no rationale to anything.” But according to Gage, it was a combination of being “an impulsive love addict” and being on a “wrong cocktail of medication.”

An ex gaslit him into thinking he had a penis infection from “Malibu bacteria”

After filming You, Gage went to stay with an ex at his Malibu beach house where they tried to rekindle their romance. One day, after getting out of the ocean, he noticed his penis was tingling and red. When he showed it to his ex later that night, he asked if it could be a bacterial infection from the water.

In doing his own research, Gage realized that was not likely and confronted his ex about the possibility of giving him an STI — which he denied repeatedly. Instead, the ex insisted it was probably “Malibu bacteria.” A doctor confirmed that Gage had not only one, but two STIs: gonorrhea and chlamydia.

Gage lied to impress Jennifer Coolidge the first time he met her

When shooting The White Lotus, Gage was thrilled about meeting his castmates. On his way to breakfast, the first one he ran into was Jennifer Coolidge, who noted she lost her phone already on the first day and was constantly misplacing it.

Gage was so starstruck, he lied and said he lost his all the time, despite always having his phone in-hand. But he was immediately struck by how warm she was. “She’s everything you want her to be and more. The kindest, most generous caregiver,” he says.

According to Gage, their relationship consists of mostly sharing memes and animal videos. “That’s our way of communicating with each other,” he says. Gage has loved seeing Coolidge “get her moment and get her crown” after such a long career.

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I Wrote This for Attention is out Tuesday, Oct. 14 and available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.