Answer Addiction

Tag: celebs & sobriety

  • "Facts Of Life" Star Charlotte Rae Dies At 92

    "Facts Of Life" Star Charlotte Rae Dies At 92

    Rae had been sober for decades, after attending her first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in the early 1970s.

    Charlotte Rae, the actress who became famous as Mrs. Garrett on Diff’rent Strokes and The Facts of Life, died Sunday at 92. 

    Rae was diagnosed with bone cancer last year and was weighing how aggressively to treat the disease, according to People. She had previously been treated for pancreatic cancer, and was declared cancer-free after chemotherapy. 

    “So now, at the age of 91, I have to make up my mind,” she told People in April 2017. “I’m not in any pain right now. I’m feeling so terrific and so glad to be above ground. Now I have to figure out whether I want to go have treatment again to opt for life. I love life. I’ve had a wonderful one already. I have this decision to make.”

    Rae had been sober for decades, after attending her first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in the early 1970s, when she was filming a short-lived appearance as the mail lady on Sesame Street. Rae was in her 40s and said that alcohol had become her drug of choice and preferred sleeping aid by the time she realized that she needed help. 

    “After the wrap party for Sesame Street, I went over to a meeting,” she told Fox News last year. “I was expecting to see a bunch of bums with red noses and burlap flying around. No—I saw a lot of well dressed, beautiful people. At the end of the meeting, we all held hands and said the Lord’s prayer. And I wept. That was the beginning of my sobriety. I’m now 42 years sober.”

    Rae’s husband, composer John Strauss, also went to AA, and later confessed to his sponsor that he was gay. 

    “The sponsor said, ‘You have to tell your wife.’ So he did. When he told me, I thought I was going to faint. I couldn’t believe it. We were very, very close,” she said. However, the couple remained cordial. “It was tough, but I never, never said anything about John to my children. Never. We continued to be friends. It was very painful, but because of my support system and my admiration for him, I survived and went on.”

    In addition to her well-known roles on Diff’rent Strokes and The Facts of Life, Rae made appearances on ER, Pretty Little Liars, Sisters, and The King of Queens. She also starred in movies including Don’t Mess with the Zohan and Tom and Jerry: The Movie, and was the voice of “Nanny” in the animated 101 Dalmations: The Series.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Anthony Hopkins On Alcoholism: I Was Disgusted, Busted & Not To Be Trusted

    Anthony Hopkins On Alcoholism: I Was Disgusted, Busted & Not To Be Trusted

    “I still cannot believe that my life is what it is because I should have died in Wales, drunk or something like that.”

    It may be hard for some to imagine Anthony Hopkins as anything but a talented actor, but at a recent LEAP (Leadership, Excellence and Accelerating Your Potential) conference he shared how his alcoholism and lack of passion in acting could have left him a failure… or dead.

    He revealed to an audience of high school and college students that he is incredibly thankful he was able to stop drinking when he did. He explained why he started in the first place.

    “Because that’s what you do in theater, you drink,” he said. “I was very difficult to work with, as well, because I was usually hungover.”

    Hopkins described himself in this era as “disgusted, busted and not to be trusted.” But at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, a woman offered him what became life-changing advice: “Why don’t you put your trust in God?”

    After taking the words to heart, Hopkins said he lost all desire to drink. If not for these transforming words, Hopkins believes his life would have turned out drastically different.

    “I believe we are capable of so much,” he told the audience. “I still cannot believe that my life is what it is because I should have died in Wales, drunk or something like that.”

    He also revealed that he grew up an “uptight loner” who was bullied and “not all that bright” when it came to his studies. He even admitted he went into theater because “he had nothing better to do.”

    Despite all these struggles, he’s managed to become an Academy Award-winning actor. He posted about his life philosophy in a Twitter post that featured a photo of himself with Dr. Bill Dorfman, the founder of the LEAP Foundation: “Live life as if it’s impossible to fail.”

    This isn’t the first time Hopkins delivered this message to an audience. In a 2017 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, he expounded the virtues of persistence.

    “Keep going, never give up,” he said on the show. “We get questions in our head and little voices that put us down when we were kids. Get over that. That’s what I had to do—get over whatever troubles.”

    He mentioned that he keeps a photo of himself as a young boy on his phone, telling it, “We did okay, kid.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Simon Pegg Details Alcoholism, Depression Battle: It Was Terrible, It Owned Me

    Simon Pegg Details Alcoholism, Depression Battle: It Was Terrible, It Owned Me

    “It’s like you have grown a second head and all it wants to do is destroy itself, and it puts that ahead of everything else—your marriage, children, your job.”

    Now feeling secure in his recovery, British actor Simon Pegg is discussing the years he spent hiding his drinking problem and depression from his family and friends.

    “One thing [addiction] does is make you clever at not giving anything away. People think junkies and alcoholics are slovenly, unmotivated people. They’re not—they are incredibly organized. They can nip out for a quick shot of whisky and you wouldn’t know they have gone. It’s as if… you are micro-managed by it,” he told the Guardian, while promoting his new film Mission: Impossible: Fallout.

    But one can only hide it for so long, he cautioned. “Eventually the signs are too obvious. You have taken the dog for one too many walks,” he said.

    Pegg’s secret battle with alcoholism and depression—“It was awful, terrible. It owned me.”—was even hidden from his best friend and collaborator Nick Frost. The two have starred in many films together, including Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead.

    The actor, now 48, says he’s felt depressed since he was 18. He drank to self-medicate. “It’s like you have grown a second head and all it wants to do is destroy itself, and it puts that ahead of everything else—your marriage, children, your job,” he said.

    The worst of it—the “crisis years”—began during filming of Mission: Impossible III (2006).

    Even the birth of his daughter Matilda was not the turning point he’d hoped it would be. “It was the most cosmic experience of my life. I thought it would fix things and it just didn’t. Because it can’t,” he said. “Nothing can, other than a dedicated approach, whether that’s therapy or medication, or whatever.”

    That dedicated approach came a year later, when his drinking came to a head during a 2011 Comic-Con convention in San Diego. “I sort of went missing for about four days. I got back to the UK and just checked myself in somewhere,” he said in a June interview.

    At rehab, Pegg seized the opportunity to get well. “I got into it. I got into the reasons I was feeling that way. I went into AA for a while, too. I don’t think I would be here now if I hadn’t had help,” he told the Guardian.

    Now that he’s come out on the other side, he’s more comfortable discussing the times that he struggled.

    “I’m not ashamed of what happened. And I think if anyone finds any relationship to it, then it might motivate them to get well,” he said. “But I am not proud of it either—I don’t think it’s cool, like I was Mr. Rock ’n’ Roll, blackout and all that shit. It wasn’t, it was just terrible.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Kat Von D Celebrates 11 Years Of Sobriety

    Kat Von D Celebrates 11 Years Of Sobriety

    The Los Angeles-based tattoo artist took to social media to celebrate her sober anniversary.

    Tattoo artist Kat Von D celebrated over a decade sober by sharing her milestone on social media.

    “Today, I celebrate 11 years of sobriety,” she wrote across Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. “Every year I look forward to posting about my sober anniversary, in the hopes that someone out there in need of a way out from addiction might see this, and realize that you’re not alone. Sending you extra love today.”

    The Los Angeles-based tattoo artist, famous for appearing on Miami Ink and then her own show LA Ink, is vocal about her sobriety. She hopes that by putting herself out there, she can show that recovery is possible.

    “If anybody out there feels that they relate to me in any capacity and happen to be struggling, perhaps I can lead by example by showing that if I can do it, you can do it too,” she told The Fix in 2016. It’s her way of being of service.

    Here’s what she’s said about sobriety in past Fix interviews.

    Becoming sober in the limelight

    “I am grateful that I was on TV during the tail end of my drinking; the first season of LA Ink. I am glad that happened and that it was public because it shows people that you can change.”

    Change is possible

    “I definitely was a mess, but as human beings, we are all capable of change. We need to give ourselves that credit. I don’t look at a drug addict or somebody who has a drinking problem as hopeless. I believe everybody can evolve and find their path.”

    On creativity 

    “One of the biggest reasons for me to stop drinking was to preserve and protect my art… More than just having the chemical addiction, I was addicted to dysfunction. A lot of musicians and writers and poets from back in the day until now have used dysfunction as a muse. I don’t want to be that person anymore.”

    What it means to be sober

    “Looking back at my wild drinking days, I really never imagined that I would be excited about being sober. When you are on the other side of things, you have such a profoundly different perspective on life… Personally, being sober means that I operate better and I function better; I believe I am meant to be that way.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Kelly Osbourne Gets Candid About Sobriety, Relapse & Mental Health

    Kelly Osbourne Gets Candid About Sobriety, Relapse & Mental Health

    “What I’ve learnt is that no amount of therapy or medication is going to work unless you want it to.”

    Fighting off stigma and advocating for self-care, Kelly Osbourne opened up to a British tabloid about her ongoing reliance on weekly therapy to help her battle with addiction. 

    “I believe everybody should have therapy,” the 33-year-old told The Sun. “Your mind, body and soul are the full package. I try and go once a week.”

    The former reality star also spoke of her seven trips to rehab and two mental hospital stays, and what was different the last time, the thing that finally got her sober. “What I’ve learnt is that no amount of therapy or medication is going to work unless you want it to,” she said. “Until you want to be a good person, you will never be one.”

    Osbourne—whose father, rock legend Ozzy Osbourne, has also had very public struggles with addiction—also touched on public perceptions around mental health care. “There’s still a huge stigma, especially in this country,” she said. “You work out to keep your body good so you go to therapy to keep your mind good.”

    This isn’t the first time the perpetually purple-haired celeb has dished on her history of treatment and institutionalization; last year, she laid it all out in a book.

    The TV star first got into drugs as a teen, when she started taking Vicodin after having her tonsils removed. “I found, when I take this, people like me,” she later told People. “I’m having fun, I’m not getting picked on. It became a confidence thing.”

    Over the years, her drug use ballooned into a broader problem. “The only way I could even face my life was by opening that pill bottle, shaking out a few pills—or a handful—into my palm, and throwing them down my throat,” she wrote in her 2017 memoir, There is No F*cking Secret: Letters from a Badass Bitch.

    After multiple trips to rehab, she sobered up once—then relapsed while living in Los Angeles. “Every day, I was taking more and more pills, hoping that I wouldn’t wake up,” she wrote.

    But she pulled through it and got off drugs again, eventually going on to pen her book about it all.

    “Now, I manage pain through creativity, friendship and self-care,” she wrote in a final chapter titled, “Dear Rehab.” “The crazier my life gets, the more focused I become on the things that make me feel good.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Tom Hanks’ Son Chet: Parents Helped "Every Step Of The Way" To Sobriety

    Tom Hanks’ Son Chet: Parents Helped "Every Step Of The Way" To Sobriety

    The actor and rapper says parental support and the birth of his daughter gave him the motivation to get sober.

    Chet Hanks has struggled with substance use under the public eye but is now sober thanks to his parents.

    Chet Hanks, the son of Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, has had a long, public struggle with substance use disorder, but the musician says those days are behind him. His biggest motivator for getting his life together was becoming a parent.

    “It was the prospect of having a kid, and I knew that in nine months there’s gonna be a baby here,” Hanks said in an ET interview with Katie Krause on Tuesday. “That gave me the motivation to be like, ‘OK, I’ve had my time now, and I need to move on.’”

    Hanks said he had long known he had a problem and needed to get clean, but was unable to find the energy or motivation to do so.

    “There’s a part of you that knows that you need to make a change but you can’t really shut that door on your life and just move on to a new chapter,” he explained. “For me, it took something drastic happening, like becoming a father, for me to make the change.”

    His daughter, Michaiah, was born in April of 2016. While fatherhood served as an impetus to kick his habits, it was his own parents who gave him the support he needed to follow through. “They couldn’t be more supportive,” he explained. “Every step of the way… They’ve always been there for me and I’m really lucky.”

    His famous parents love being grandparents, and Hanks says they offer to babysit very often. “It’s awesome seeing them being grandparents as well, because I was really close with my grandparents and now my daughter gets to have the same experience,” Hanks said.

    Hanks’ sobriety has also provided inspiration in his rap career as his duo act, FTRZ, tackles the issues the pair has faced in their debut album, Ocean Park EP.

    “I feel a responsibility like to tell the truth… and be as open as possible, because there is such a bad drug epidemic going on,” Hanks explained. “It’s a bad problem and I feel like there should be no stigma around people who get sober, because you need to be open to help other people.”

    In sharing his experiences, he hopes to help others.

    “If you just get sober and try to keep it a secret, you’re not really helping anybody because there could be somebody that’s struggling really hard and if you can be an inspiration to that person to make the change for them to change their life, you can’t put a price on that,” he said.

    Hanks is also working with his father for the first time on an upcoming World War II movie called Greyhound.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Selma Blair Celebrates Two Years Of Sobriety

    Selma Blair Celebrates Two Years Of Sobriety

    “I prayed for a miracle at my lowest points. I am a living miracle. Thank you,” the actress wrote in an Instagram post.

    Actress Selma Blair had two reasons to celebrate this week: her 46th birthday as well as her second year of sobriety.

    Blair, who has starred in films including Hellboy and Legally Blonde, took to Instagram to announce her achievement.

    “2 years sober. 2 years feeling everything and nothing. 2 years of extreme gratitude and humility and grace,” she wrote in her post, which included a photograph of herself with a birthday cake. “I thank the lord and my friends. Thank you for the most special birthday week @fran.anania #amypines #arthursaintbleick.”

    Just last month, Blair admitted to having struggled with alcoholism, anxiety, and depression, but has been winning in her struggles as of late.

    “I prayed for a miracle at my lowest points. I am a living miracle. Thank you. Thank you. #birthdaygirl #almost46 #summersolstice #grace,” she wrote in her post.

    Blair hasn’t hid her struggles with depression and anxiety from fans. In a throwback post she wrote in May, she reflected on her career in Hollywood, including the highs and the lows.

    “For better or for worse. I want to have hope again. I want to thank you all for believing in me. I want to find the right work for me. And for me as a mom and as a woman who has come so far in personal ways,” she wrote in her May post. “I want to make us all proud. 21 years later. #heartonsleeve Opens a New Window. It’s a random Tuesday. Maybe miracles will happen.”

    The Cruel Intentions star once had a meltdown on an airplane flight, allegedly brought on by mixing medications with alcohol.

    “I made a big mistake yesterday,” said Blair after the incident. “After a lovely trip with my son and his dad, I mixed alcohol with medication, and that caused me to black out and led me to say and do things that I deeply regret.”

    A few months after the incident, Blair gained some new perspective on the incident.

    “Hopefully everyone on the plane is doing fine now too, because it was very destructive,” she said on The Talk. “I am someone who should never drink, and I rarely do, and I don’t drink anymore, but I was going through something. I had a glass of wine and someone gave me a pill that I thought was something that I’d taken before… it was something completely different… and I had a total psychotic blackout.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Simon Pegg On Past Drinking Struggles: "I Was Profoundly Unhappy"

    Simon Pegg On Past Drinking Struggles: "I Was Profoundly Unhappy"

    The actor recently revealed that a past battle with depression led him to self-medicate with alcohol.

    English actor and comedian Simon Pegg has had a busy year, appearing in Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi adventure Ready Player One, among others, and gearing up for the release of Mission: Impossible—Fallout.

    The prolific actor, screenwriter and producer is generally private about his personal life, but shared in a recent interview that he, like many others, struggled with depression and a drinking problem.

    “I was depressed. I had always been susceptible to it. But at the same time as I started to ascend into what would conventionally be regarded as a success, I was going down,” he told Empire magazine.

    The success of his TV and film career did not translate to happiness. “The more material success presented itself to me, the less I could understand why it wasn’t fulfilling me in any way. It wasn’t that it wasn’t [fulfilling] me, it was because I was depressed. It’s not a mood. It’s a condition,” he said.

    Drinking became a crutch, but that didn’t last. “I just drank more heavily… Eventually I crashed out. At Comic-Con in 2010—I’ve never told anyone this—we were promoting (the 2011 sci-fi film) Paul and I sort of went missing for about four days. I got back to the UK and just checked myself in somewhere.”

    That eventually led to the decision to put the bottle down. “I got well in 2010. I stopped drinking,” said the Shaun of the Dead actor. “I got a little bit of help. If you look at (the 2010 comedy) Burke and Hare, I’m bloated and fucking dead-eyed… I look at it now and think, ‘Fuck me, I was in a dark place then.’ I was drunk a lot of the time and I was profoundly unhappy.”

    Pegg credits the crew working on the Mission Impossible series, in which he has played the recurring role of Benji Dunn since 2006, with helping pull him out of his depression. “They took care of me and it helped me to get out of this dark place and realize that life was enjoyable,” he said. “By the time I finished Ghost Protocol (the 2011 Mission: Impossible film), I was better.”

    The next Mission: Impossible—Fallout is due for release on July 28.

    Pegg discussed the meaning of happiness in 2014 with the Los Angeles Times, while promoting his latest film at the time Hector and the Search for Happiness.

    “It’s taken a while for me to get there; it’s taken me a while to understand what it is, how to be it. My own route to it has been an interesting one, and I think the one thing the movie says very clearly is that you can’t be happy unless you’ve experienced every facet of emotion that there is,” he said. “To know what happiness is you have to be able to pick it out from the forest of emotions. So you have to be scared and upset and miserable. You have to get all that stuff in order to truly be happy. And at 44, I think I’m there.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • "Fear The Walking Dead" Actor Kevin Zegers Talks Sobriety

    "Fear The Walking Dead" Actor Kevin Zegers Talks Sobriety

    “Seven years ago, I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning. I was in such a bad state.”

    While Kevin Zegers started out as a child actor and now plays a villain on Fear the Walking Dead, the road hasn’t always been easy. Even talking about his recovery was hard at first.

    “Seven years ago, I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning. I was in such a bad state,” Zegers told Entertainment Tonight Canada in an interview. “I used to not talk about sobriety because it was like, ‘Oh, who cares,’ and it’s a little embarrassing.”

    But these days, Zegers is finding it easier to be open about what he went through, especially in hopes that it may help someone else.

    “The reason I go to an AA meeting on my birthday—the reason we’re urged to do that—is not for you, but you do it for others, to indicate it’s possible, which in the depths of addiction doesn’t feel possible,” he explained in the interview. “I think it’s our duty, even with, you know, a very small amount of fame, which I sometimes have, to go, ‘Oh s***, that guy suffers, too.’”

    Zegers credits his sobriety for landing him his part as Mel on Fear the Walking Dead as well as his marriage with his wife, Jamie, with whom he has twin daughters.

    “It’s the greatest accomplishment of my life and I don’t like to undermine it because I don’t think I have a wife, a family, I don’t think I’m on Fear The Walking Dead without that,” he said.

    Fear the Walking Dead is a prequel spinoff of AMC’s popular series, The Walking Dead. Despite being a member of the cast, Zegers is kept in the dark about plot twists as well as how long his villainous character will survive.

    “It’s an interesting villain because he’s not running around beating his chest, or trying to be intentionally scary or fear-provoking, but he just presents them with the facts,” he commented. “As an actor, you have to think, how do I make this work and what is it? How am I able to convey being frightening to somebody with what I have?”

    But his scariest moments come from raising his daughters.

    “There’s no easing into parenting if you have twins, but it’s the greatest thing I’ve ever done,” he said. “We think we’re self-aware and you go, ‘Oh, you know that I can get frustrated easily,’ or ‘I’m super self-conscious’ or, ‘I have a short temper,’ and then you see a physical embodiment of you at two-and-a-half, and they just have no filter and you’re like, ‘Oh my God, it’s me when I’m in traffic!’”

    View the original article at thefix.com