The Parks & Rec actor discussed Demi’s influence during a recent interview on The View.
Rob Lowe said Demi Moore inspired him to get sober in the ‘90s as his career was taking off.
During an appearance on The View on Monday, Lowe recalled that his St. Elmo’s Fire (1986) costar “was the first person I ever knew who got sober.”
“She was a huge inspiration to me,” he said. “It was the ‘80s, we were all doing our thing. I just remember thinking, ‘If that girl can get sober, anybody can.’”
The two also starred in the 1986 romantic comedy About Last Night…
Rob’s Sober Journey
Seeing Moore do it first paved the way for Lowe to follow. He became sober in 1991 following his sex tape scandal which he called “the beginning of it all” in a 2014 interview with The Fix. He celebrated 29 years of sobriety in May.
“Everybody has that person in their life where they go, ‘That’s a great example.’ So it was very helpful,” he said on The View.
Lowe recalled rehab being a positive experience, which gave him the “answers that I didn’t have” about life. “It was like going to school to learn how to live your life with tools that nobody ever taught me,” he said. “Here’s one of the great ones I learned: Never compare your insides to someone else’s outsides.”
Moore Tells All In New Memoir
Moore’s memoir, Inside Out, has caught a lot of attention since it was released in late September for her writing about her marriage to Bruce Willis, Ashton Kutcher, and growing up with her alcoholic mother.
She wrote about relapsing after nearly 20 years of sobriety because she wanted to be “ a fun, normal girl” for ex-husband Ashton Kutcher.
She also shed light on the 2012 incident that landed her in the hospital when she suffered a seizure at a party, where she smoked synthetic marijuana and inhaled nitrous oxide.
“In retrospect, what I realized is that when I opened the door [again], it was just giving my power away,” she said in a recent interview with Harper’s Bazaar. “Part of being sober is, I don’t want to miss a moment of life, of that texture, even if that means being in some pain.”
She has re-committed to sobriety since that time. Last October, she was presented with the Woman of the Year Award by Friendly House, a women’s recovery program in Los Angeles.
“Early in my career, I was spiraling down a path of real self-destruction, and no matter what successes I had, I just never felt good enough. I had absolutely no value for myself,” she said at the event.
When she was given the opportunity to change by “two people, who I barely knew,” she took it.
“It gave me a chance to redirect the course of my life, before I destroyed everything. Clearly they saw more in me than I saw in myself, and I’m so grateful, because without that opportunity… I wouldn’t be standing here today.”