Answer Addiction

Tag: celeb memoirs

  • "Full House" Star Andrea Barber Details Anxiety Struggles In Memoir

    "Full House" Star Andrea Barber Details Anxiety Struggles In Memoir

    “I thought there was something wrong with me. I just thought I was this idiot who couldn’t get it together.”

    Andrea Barber, who played the lovable, sassy next-door neighbor Kimmy Gibler on Full House, is opening up about her experience with postpartum depression and anxiety in her new book, Full Circle: From Hollywood to Real Life and Back Again.

    In the memoir, Barber describes how she became a child star by accident, becoming a mother and her lifetime battle with depression and anxiety.

    “I am an introverted, anxious, quiet person who plays a very extroverted, confident, loud character on television. And often, during the eight-year run of Full House, I would go to the bathroom before tapings to vomit,” Barber revealed in the book that hit shelves on Tuesday.

    The First Signs

    “At the time, I thought getting sick before performing was something everyone did,” she added. “I didn’t realize that these were the first signs of a lifelong battle with anxiety and depression, something I would hate about myself for years to come.”

    Barber spoke to USA Today about how depression brought her life to a standstill.

    “It was several months of this long slow spiral of my vomiting every morning at 3am getting worse and worse and taking longer and longer to get out of bed. And I slowly stopped eating,” she said.  “It was when I made that 5am phone call to my dad and said, ‘I need you to come pick me up. I don’t know how I am going to get through the next minute of this day, much less the whole day.’ “

    “I Thought I Was An Idiot Who Couldn’t Get It Together”

    Anxiety has a variety of symptoms that can present differently in each indiviuual. Symptoms range from agitation, restlessness and lack of concentration to fatigue, loss of memory and vomiting. 

    Vomitting was a persistent symptom for Barber.

    “I would spend an hour in the bathroom in the toilet,” she said. “I thought there was something wrong with me. I just thought I was this idiot who couldn’t get it together. That’s honestly how I felt. And it makes me sad to think that now.”

    By sharing the personal details of her struggle, Barber believes she can help others become more open to sharing their experience with mental health issues.

    “I’m hoping to create a culture of sharing stories, and it’s not just sharing a hashtag,” Barber said. “It’s more important when you’re ready to share your own personal story. Writing my story was very cathartic, but sharing my story – even a glimpse – people respond. And it creates this culture of openness and this tribe of people with this shared experience and shared pain that we’re all in this together and we can heal.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • 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

  • Elton John: Sobriety Lit The "Pilot Light In My Soul"

    Elton John: Sobriety Lit The "Pilot Light In My Soul"

    “I so wish I’d never taken a drug. But in the end, unless I’d have got sober, I wouldn’t be the person I am today,” John told CBS News. 

    Legendary singer/songwriter Sir Elton John told CBS News that he wished he’d never taken drugs, but also acknowledged that he would never have achieved the personal happiness he has attained since gaining sobriety 29 years ago, including marriage, children, Academy and Tony Awards, and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

    New Autobiography

    John, who was promoting his recent autobiography Me, said that his dependency on drugs and alcohol at the height of his fame in the 1970s and 1980s “nearly destroyed his soul,” but discovered by admitting that he needed help, he was able to reignite the “pilot light in [his] soul.” 

    Speaking with CBS correspondent Tracy Smith, John recalled the first time he used cocaine, which took place in 1974. The experience made him physically sick, but as John noted, “I wanted to join in so much and be part of the gang, [so] I went back and asked for another line.”

    “Isn’t that crazy?” he said. “But that’s what being a drug addict is – crazy.”

    His Friendship With Ryan White

    Drug dependency – one of several addictions that John battled, including alcoholism, eating disorders and sex addiction – left John with a spiritual center that felt “black, like a charred piece of steak,” as he told CBS News. But his friendship with Indiana teenager Ryan White, who contracted AIDS via a blood transfusion in 1984, helped him find the strength to regain direction for his life.

    “I had the luck to meet Ryan White and his family,” John said at Harvard University in 2017, where he was honored with the Peter J. Gomes Humanitarian Award for his work with the Elton John AIDS Foundation. “I wanted to help them, but they ended up helping me much more. Ryan was the spark that helped me recover from my addictions and start the AIDS foundation. Within six months, I became sober, and clean.”

    “I said, ‘I need help,’” John recalled to CBS News. “And suddenly, a little pilot light in my soul came along, going, ‘Yes, I’m still here. I’m still here. I’m still here. I can be rescued.”

    John’s career in the nearly three decades since that date has been as remarkable as the height of his pop stardom, which included worldwide sales of 300 million albums, 27 Top 10 hits and nine No. 1 singles. Knighted in 1998 for his charitable work – which has raised more than $450 million – John also netted three Oscar nominations, including a 1995 win, a Tony Award for “Aida” in 2000, and joined the ranks of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Songwriters Hall of Fame (with Bernie Taupin), Grammy Hall of Fame, and received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2004.

    “I so wish I’d never taken a drug,” said John to CBS News. “But in the end, unless I’d have got sober, I wouldn’t be the person I am today.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Rob Lowe: Demi Moore Inspired Me To Get Sober

    Rob Lowe: Demi Moore Inspired Me To Get Sober

    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.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Debbie Harry's New Memoir Highlights Past Drug Use, Friendship With Bowie

    Debbie Harry's New Memoir Highlights Past Drug Use, Friendship With Bowie

    The iconic punk pioneer leaves no stone unturned in her new memoir, Face It.  

    Debbie Harry, the platinum-blonde frontwoman of Blondie, has come out with a new memoir. In Face It, out Tuesday, Harry matter-of-factly recalls her life as a young artist trying to make it in New York City.

    Excerpts from her book shed light on the role that drugs played in the iconic singer’s young life.

    Harry wasn’t a fan of weed, but would sell it to earn some money. “I couldn’t handle it at all,” she wrote, according to Page Six. “I’d find myself either floating above my body in a state of catatonia or in complete paranoia.”

    Cocaine With Bowie And Iggy Pop

    Cocaine was not her favorite indulgence, either. “I didn’t care for coke too much—it made me jittery and wired and it affected my throat,” she wrote.

    But she had it on hand while on tour with David Bowie and Iggy Pop, giving them a gram when they couldn’t get it elsewhere.

    To thank her, Bowie “pulled out his c—k, as if I was the official c—k checker,” Harry wrote. “David’s size was notorious, of course, and he loved to pull it out for men and women. It was so…sexy.”

    While her longtime boyfriend, Blondie guitarist Chris Stein, was in the hospital being treated for pemphigus vulgaris (an autoimmune disorder), Harry supplied him with heroin to help him get by.

    “I kept him supplied with heroin. He was on heroin the whole time he was in the hospital (three months),” wrote Harry. “It kept him relatively pain-free and mentally less tortured.”

    She added, “I was most certainly indulging, too, staying as numb as possible… The heroin was a great consolation. Desperate times, desperate measures, as the cliché goes.”

    Assault & Robbery

    When Harry and Stein were living on First Avenue and First Street in downtown Manhattan, a man forced his way into their apartment with a knife, tied the couple up and gathered his haul—Stein’s guitars and cameras.

    They offered him the LSD they kept in the freezer, but he declined. Then he forced Harry to have sex with him.

    Harry recalled that losing their belongings was more painful at the time. “I’m very glad this happened pre-AIDS or I might have freaked,” she wrote. “In the end, the stolen guitars hurt me more than the rape. We had no equipment.”

    Harry, now 74, is still the iconic singer of Blondie, which released its 11th studio album, Pollinator, in May 2017. The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Demi Moore: Sobriety Lets Me Experience Life

    Demi Moore: Sobriety Lets Me Experience Life

    The “Ghost” actress details her journey to sobriety and her mother’s battle with addiction in her new memoir. 

    Actress Demi Moore is able to fully experience life now that she’s sober, according to the cover story of the October issue of Harper’s Bazaar.

    In the interview, she revealed that she has struggled with substance abuse for a long time, first getting sober in her 20s, but found herself struggling again in her 40s. In 2012, a woman called EMS on behalf of Moore, who seemed to be having a seizure after smoking an unknown substance.

    “She smoked… something… It’s not marijuana but it’s similar to incense,” the panicked woman said in the 911 call.

    Now, in her 50s, she is back on the sober train.

    “In retrospect, what I realized is that when I opened the door [again], it was just giving my power away,” Moore explained. “I guess I would think of it like this: It was really important to me to have natural childbirth because I didn’t want to miss a moment. And with that I experienced pain,” she added. “So 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.”

    Childhood Trauma

    Moore is set to release her memoir, Inside Out, soon. In it, she writes about her traumatizing experiences growing up with her mother who struggled with her own substance abuse problems. In the book, Moore recounted a time in which she was forced into a position where she had to revive her own mother after an overdose.

    “The next thing I remember is using my fingers, the small fingers of a child, to dig the pills my mother had tried to swallow out of her mouth while my father held it open and told me what to do,” Moore wrote. “Something very deep inside me shifted then, and it never shifted back. My childhood was over.”

    Breaking The Cycle

    Now sober, she credits her three children, Rumer, Scout and Tallulah, and their father, ex-husband Bruce Willis, for helping her get her head on straight.

    “My daughters offered me an opportunity to start to change the generational pattern. To be able to break the cycles,” she revealed.

    Last year, she spoke at a Women’s Recovery House event where she was being honored.

    “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.

    “And this self-destructive path, it very quickly brought me to a real crisis point… Two people, who I barely knew, stepped up… and they presented me with an opportunity—that was more like an ultimatum—unless I was dead, that I better show up.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Demi Moore To Address Addiction In New Memoir

    Demi Moore To Address Addiction In New Memoir

    Moore’s upcoming memoir will examine the “real crisis point” that led her to enter rehab.

    Actress Demi Moore will tackle a host of issues, from her career and famous husbands and offspring to her struggle with addiction and body image issues in a new memoir, Inside Out.

    The book, which will be released by HarperCollins on September 24, 2019, promises to detail what Moore described in a 2018 speech as a “real crisis point” that sent her to rehabilitation.

    As Harper executive editor Jennifer Barth noted in a press release for Inside Out, the book is “first and foremost a woman’s story; that the woman in question happens to be one of the most celebrated actresses of our time only makes her journey of vulnerability, strength and self-acceptance all that more resonant.”

    Though Moore has yet to speak publicly about the contents of her book, People quoted a speech she gave in 2018 at an annual awards luncheon given by Peggy Albrecht Friendly House, a sober living facility in Los Angeles.

    Moore, who had been named woman of year by Friendly House, spoke about her return to sanity and sobriety from what she described as a “path of real self-destruction.”

    “No matter what successes I had, I just never felt good enough,” she said at the event. “This self-destructive path, it very quickly brought me to a real crisis point. And it wasn’t clear at the time the reason—maybe it was divine intervention—but two people who I barely knew stepped up and took a stand for me, and they presented me with an opportunity.”

    As Moore described it, the opportunity was more like an ultimatum. “Unless I was dead, I better show up,” she explained. “They gave me a chance to redirect the course of my life before I destroyed everything. And I’m so grateful because without that opportunity, without their belief in me, I wouldn’t be standing here today.”

    In 2012, Moore was hospitalized after collapsing and experiencing a seizure-like reaction. Though the incident was initially written off as exhaustion, a recording of the 911 call from Moore’s home suggested that the actress had smoked something before going into convulsions. After her hospital stay, Moore entered rehabilitation at Cirque Lodge in Utah.

    Moore, who has resumed her acting career with appearances in Rough Night, Fox’s Empire series and the upcoming Corporate Animals, said that confronting her substance issues gave her the strength to address other, more deep-rooted problems.

    “In a moment of great struggle for me, I reached out to a wise teacher and expressed my fear that I wasn’t good enough,” she said at the 2018 event. “And she said, ‘You will never be good enough but you can know the value of your worth. Put down the measuring stick.’ So today, I put down the measuring stick.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy Discusses Addiction in New Memoir

    Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy Discusses Addiction in New Memoir

    In his new memoir, “Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back),” the singer-songwriter details his struggles with alcoholism and Vicodin.

    Jeff Tweedy, singer and guitarist in the band Wilco, has penned a new memoir, Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back). In it, he recounts his descent into addiction and eventual decision to get clean.

    Tweedy’s troubles began young.

    “I honestly do not remember a time in my life when I didn’t have headaches,” he wrote. “I think I was six when I learned they were called migraines and that it wasn’t something that happened to everybody.”

    Tweedy suspects the migraines are hereditary as he remembers his mother and sister also suffering from them. The severity and frequency also tipped him off they were linked to an undiagnosed mood disorder, which ran in his family as well.

    “Every school year I’d end up missing many, many days because of migraines. In addition to the pain, I’d get sick to my stomach and end up vomiting so much I’d have to sleep by the toilet…” he recounted. “One year I missed 40 consecutive days of school because of my migraines and vomiting.”

    On top of the migraines and mood disorders, alcoholism was yet another hereditary hurdle Tweedy was saddled with. His grandfather on his father’s side died in a bar before Tweedy ever got to know him. He was frequently left in the care of his grandfather on his mother’s side, who he says never did not reek of alcohol. But perhaps the greatest impact on young Tweedy was his father.

    “My dad was a lifetime drinker. He’d come home from work every day and drink a 12-pack of beer. That was his standard beer consumption,” remembered Tweedy. “If it was a day off or a weekend when he wasn’t on call, he could down a case of beer. This wasn’t just over the course of a rough year or two, this is how he subsisted for the majority of his life.”

    Eventually, his dad was able to quit drinking, but in doing so allowed his mood disorders to manifest again.

    “He got sober at 81 years old, on the advice of his doctors, and he did it on his own, without rehab or any type of AA support group. He had to stop, so he stopped,” wrote Tweedy. “Then he started having panic attacks for the first time since he was young.”

    Tweedy himself picked up the bottle despite promising his mother he would never drink. Breaking a vicious cycle of guilt, he was able to quit drinking at 23, but soon found himself chasing new addictions. He started with Diet Coke and cigarettes, but in seeking avenues to medicate his anxiety—and migraines—he was led to Vicodin. Soon he was seeking out the pills wherever he went, but they eventually his migraines and anxiety outpaced the drugs.

    Tweedy attempted to quit cold turkey, but became a wreck.

    “Five weeks later—theoretically, I was clean by virtue of the fact that I wasn’t on drugs—I suffered a serious mental collapse,” Tweedy remembers. “My brain chemistry crashed, and my body was revolting against me.”

    His wife took him to the hospital, where he begged nurses to put him in a psych ward. Today, Tweedy is clean with his memoir set for release on November 13, 2018.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Michael Caine Details Alcoholism In Memoir: I Drank Two Bottles A Day

    Michael Caine Details Alcoholism In Memoir: I Drank Two Bottles A Day

    The iconic actor credits his wife with helping him overcome his alcoholism.

    Actor Michael Caine owes a lot to his wife of over 40 years, he says. The British star, famous for his cockney accent, was in a difficult place when he met model and actress Shakira Baksh.

    “By an immense stroke of good fortune, Shakira arrived in my life just in time,” he writes in his new book Blowing the Bloody Doors Off: And Other Lessons in Life.

    “The empty feeling vanished and she got on my case. Then, to top it all, she got pregnant and I was given a second go at fatherhood, and soon I got myself straightened out.”

    Around the time they met, Caine was in his forties and drinking too much. “I was never bombed on set, but I thought that a small vodka for breakfast was nothing to worry about, and in the early 1970s I was drinking two bottles of the stuff a day,” he wrote.

    Meeting Baksh was life-changing for the film veteran, now 85. “I gave up alcohol entirely for a year and now I never drink during the day, and with dinner it’s just wine. Shakira literally saved my life.”

    The couple married in 1973. The Italian Job actor also discussed his past life as a heavy drinker in a previous interview with the Radio Times in 2016. “I was a bit of a piss artist when I was younger. I used to drink a bottle of vodka a day and I was smoking several packs a day,” he said at the time.

    His habits were fueled by anxiety over working in film. “Am I going to get another picture? How will I remember all those lines? I’ve got to get up at 6 a.m. and I hope the alarm works.”

    Baksh was able to calm him down. “Without her, I would have been dead long ago. I would have probably drunk myself to death.”

    As for non-alcoholic vices, according to the Telegraph the actor didn’t care much for them.

    “He smoked a spliff once at a London party during the Sixties and got the hysterical giggles so badly, no taxi would take him home. He had to walk from Mayfair to Notting Hill and swore he’d never do drugs again,” the Telegraph reported.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Gisele Bundchen Details Panic Attacks, Suicidal Ideation In New Memoir

    Gisele Bundchen Details Panic Attacks, Suicidal Ideation In New Memoir

    “I always considered myself a positive person, so I was really beating myself up…I felt like I wasn’t allowed to feel bad.”

    In an upcoming memoir, Gisele Bündchen reveals that her life as a supermodel was far from perfect, despite how it appeared on the outside.

    Behind the scenes, the Brazil native, who retired from the runway in 2015 after 20 years in the business, struggled with panic attacks and suicidal thoughts, People reports.

    In a new interview, the 38-year-old mother-of-three said she is ready to share the pain she struggled with as she went from small town life to global stardom as a young woman.

    Bündchen was 14 when she got her first taste of modeling in Brazil. The rest was history. 

    “Things can be looking perfect on the outside, but you have no idea what’s really going on,” she told People. “I felt like maybe it was time to share some of my vulnerabilities, and it made me realize, everything I’ve lived through, I would never change, because I think I am who I am because of those experiences.”

    As a young model, Bündchen suffered her first panic attack in 2003 during a bumpy plane ride. She struggled to accept the pain she was feeling while at the height of her success.

    “I had a wonderful position in my career, and I was very close to my family, and I always considered myself a positive person, so I was really beating myself up… I felt like I wasn’t allowed to feel bad,” she told People.

    The model said she felt “powerless.” In her memoir, Lessons: My Path to a Meaningful Life, she described feeling like an “animal trapped inside” a cage. “I couldn’t see a way out, and I couldn’t stand another day of feeling this way,” she said, according to Page Six.

    Unable to make sense of her emotions at the time, her anxiety only worsened.

    “The idea swept over me then: Maybe it will be easier if I just jump. It will be all over. I can get out of this. When I think back on that moment, and that 23-year-old girl, I want to cry. I want to tell her that everything will be all right, and that she hasn’t even begun to live her life. But in that moment, the only answer seemed to be to jump.”

    The former Victoria’s Secret model was prescribed Xanax by a treatment professional, but wasn’t enthusiastic about receiving medication for her problems.

    “The thought of being dependent on something felt, in my mind, even worse, because I was like, ‘What if I lose that [pill]? Then what? Am I going to die?’ The only thing I knew was, I needed help,” she said, according to People.

    Since then, she made some changes to her lifestyle—like cutting sugar and relieving stress with yoga and meditation—that she said were the building blocks to her recovery.

    “I had been smoking cigarettes, drinking a bottle of wine and three mocha Frappuccinos every day, and I gave up everything in one day. I thought, if this stuff is in any way the cause of this pain in my life, it’s gotta go.”

    View the original article at thefix.com