Answer Addiction

Tag: adult children of alcoholics

  • Demi Moore Says She Was Addicted To Ashton Kutcher

    Demi Moore Says She Was Addicted To Ashton Kutcher

    “I wanted to be something other than who I am. It was literally about giving my power away,” Moore revealed.

    Demi Moore spoke in-depth about her addictions to alcohol and her ex-husband Ashton Kutcher on a recent episode of the Facebook Watch series Red Table Talk.

    Moore, who was joined by her daughters Tallulah and Rumer, discussed how her rocky relationship with the That 70s Show star put her in a downward spiral.

    “The addiction and the co-dependency… like my addiction to Ashton — that was probably almost more devastating because it took me seriously away emotionally,” Moore said.

    Living With Ashton

    Moore’s youngest daughter Tallulah opened up about how sharing a home with her mother and Ashton during what would be the final years of their marriage left her feeling vulnerable and hurt.

    “Watching the behavior with Ashton, those years, because everyone had left the house and it was just me living there. I felt very forgotten and I feel like I developed and nurtured a narrative where she didn’t love me and I truly believed it,” the 25-year-old explained. “I know that she does, 100% but in that moment you’re hurt.”

    Red Table Talk host Jada Pinkett-Smith asked Tallulah about being estranged from her mother for three years following her relapse. 

    “What happened was, she relapsed when I was 9 and no one in my family spoke about it and I had no idea what was going on, she had been sober my entire childhood,” she said. “And then she drank and then I just knew that I was scared and that she was unsafe and there were many years of saying she was sober and she wasn’t and we couldn’t trust it. And all of the adults around us, in an effort to protect us, were protecting her. So if she wasn’t sober, they would tell her she was.”

    An Intervention For Tallulah

     

    Tallulah, who has been sober since 2014, says she began to spiral after her mother’s 2012 overdose. She described a scary incident where she lost consciousness after taking drugs and was discovered by her sister Scout.

    “I had taken a bunch of codeine, and I had done a bunch of cocaine that morning,” Tallulah revealed. Soonafter, her sisters held an intervention at Demi’s house. At the time she and her mother had not spoken for three years. The intervention brought them closer and Tallulah entered rehab.

    Prior to her relapse, Demi had been sober for most of her adulthood. Though she relapsed during their marriage, the actress doesn’t blame Kutcher for it.

    “I was great sober,” she said. “I wanted to be that girl. I made my own story up, that [Ashton] wanted somebody he could have wine with and do stuff. He’s not the cause of why I opened that door, I wanted to be something other than who I am. It was literally about giving my power away.”

    Demi details her journey to sobriety and her relationship with Kutcher in her new memoir, Inside Out. 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Andie MacDowell Details How Her Mother's Alcoholism Affected Her Life

    Andie MacDowell Details How Her Mother's Alcoholism Affected Her Life

    “I think I’ve felt responsible all my life. But I’m good at it. I’ve been in training for a long time,” MacDowell said.

    Actress and fashion model Andie MacDowell spoke on growing up with a mother who was addicted to alcohol and how that affected her own desire to consume intoxicating substances in a recent interview with The Guardian.

    The 61-year-old star of film classics such as Groundhog Day and Sex, Lies, and Videotape recalls being a young model in New York and being introduced to cocaine. Thankfully, she was not a fan.

    Cocaine Was Ubiquitous In Her Modeling Days

    “There was a lot of cocaine around,” she said. “I had a small experience at the very beginning and hated it. I hated it! It was only, like, a month. I really didn’t like the way it felt. It didn’t make me feel good and I couldn’t sleep.”

    The use of cocaine among models at the time was so common, and sober individuals so rare, that MacDowell almost ended her career at age 21, telling her agency that she wanted to go home. Instead, they introduced her to champagne heir Olivier Chandon de Brailles, who also didn’t care for drugs and alcohol, and the two started dating.

    “I don’t know if they prearranged the whole thing, but it sure did work out well for me. I started working non-stop and my whole life opened up.”

    As A Young Child, She Took Care Of Her Mom 

    MacDowell’s distaste for drugs and alcohol began at a young age, as she watched her mother, Paula Johnston, struggle with alcohol addiction. According to the actress, she would often wake up late at night to check to make sure her mom’s last cigarette was out all the way. 

    “There was this old-fashioned can opener attached to the wall and she’d be in the kitchen drinking and I’d clean the oil off the can opener and talk to her and ask: ‘Why do you drink?’” she remembered.

    “There were burn marks all over the floor and on the couch; it’s amazing we didn’t burn down,” she recalled. “That’s a lot of responsibility for a child, I say. I think I’ve felt responsible all my life. But I’m good at it. I’ve been in training for a long time.”

    However, she says she “always felt loved” and that she and her mother had a good relationship.

    At age 17, MacDowell appealed to doctors for help with addiction treatment, but options were limited. One doctor’s decision to prescribe Valium only made the problem worse.

    “That was a bad decision because then I couldn’t communicate with her,” she said. “And I communicated really well with her.”

    Her mother did finally get to a better place just one year before she died of a heart attack at age 53. 

    “She said she had quit drinking and that she was so proud of me. That was the last year of her life and I didn’t really get to be around it, which was super sad.”

    As a mother of three herself, MacDowell was fine with her daughters getting into the acting business in spite of the not-so-hidden drug culture within, trusting that they are as disinterested in that kind of lifestyle as she is.

    “We’re really kind of boring people. We barely want to go out… I’m a home body and I do yoga and I hike, that’s kind of it. No drugs and rock and roll!”

    View the original article at thefix.com