Ian Somerhalder, Paul Wesley faced "insane anxiety issues' filming 'Vampire Diaries'

Los Angeles [US], March 26 : 'Vampire Diaries' star Ian Somerhalder recently took a stroll down memory lane and recalled how he and Paul Wesley faced anxiety issues while filming the first season of the show.

In conversation with Page Six, Somerhalder, who played Damon Salvatore on the CW series, shared that the cast actually used "iced tea" when they were pretending to drink whiskey during a scene.

"We had the most insane anxiety issues because there was so much caffeine," the actor, 44, said at a party for Brother's Bond Bourbon, which he and Wesley co-founded, and the Tennis Channel at the JW Marriott Marquis in Miami.

Wesley, who played Somerhalder's brother, Stefan Salvatore, recalled doing "take after take" with copious amounts of tea.

"You're drinking 20 to 30 cups of tea, so by the end of the day you're, like, 'Ahh!," Somerhalder added, making a jittery hand gesture. "We didn't [sleep]."

Fortunately, the cast and crew ultimately put two and two together after filming a full season and realized a solution to their problem since they couldn't drink actual booze while shooting their show.

"We switched to decaf, so we felt a lot better," Wesley, 40, said at the event with Somerhalder adding that they drank "herbal tea."

The supernatural teen drama, which aired from 2009 to 2017 and launched several spinoffs, followed Stefan and Damon, two vampire brothers in love with the same girl, Elena Gilbert (Nina Dobrev). While torn between the two of them, Elena finds herself in a world she never could have imagined that's full of love and passion but also death, danger and mystery.