Answer Addiction

Tag: celebs & sobriety

  • Jack Osbourne Celebrates 16 Years Of Sobriety

    Jack Osbourne Celebrates 16 Years Of Sobriety

    The son of heavy metal legend Ozzy Osbourne took to Instagram to celebrate his sober milestone. 

    Jack Osbourne, son of legendary metal madman Ozzy Osbourne, and his sister Kelly, have been open about inheriting the struggle of addiction from the family genes. Now Jack has hit social media to celebrate 16 years of sobriety.

    On his Instagram, Osbourne posted the image of an overcast blue sky, with the following stats:

    Twelve Steps

    You’ve been sober for: 16.00 Years, 192.00 Months, 5,845 Days, 140,263 Hours.

    Osbourne, who also lives with MS, wrote, “By far this has not only the toughest year of my life, but also the toughest year of my recovery. I have learned so many things about myself. Some good, some not so good. But I continued to do it sober even in the face of legit pain and sadness.”

    Osbourne went through a divorce from Lisa Stelly, his wife of seven years, had to adjust to raising three young girls as a single dad, and had to be there “for my family when they have needed support at the post.” (Papa Ozzy recently had a bout with pneumonia and has canceled all concert appearances for the year.)

    Jack went to rehab at the age of 17 for an OxyContin addiction, and as he continued in his Instagram post, “If at 17 someone told me where I’d be at 33 with 16 years of continual sobriety, I would have laughed and told you to fuck off. Even though this last year of sobriety was filled with so much pain it all led to some fantastic personal growth.

    “I would love to tell you I managed this by being some kind of spiritual giant who roams the halls of recovery meetings, but it’s not the cast,” Osbourne continues. “I’m here writing this today sober because of the friends in my life who showed up for me when I needed support the most. I will be grateful for all you did.”

    Looking back on going in to rehab at 17, Osbourne told Blabbermouth, “I took myself out of the picture for a second and I looked around at every single person in the room, at who they were, how old they were and what they had going on in their lives. A lot of them were near 30, unemployed, living off their parents. They were heroin addicts, they were the world’s biggest couch potatoes. And it was like, ‘I don’t want to be like that. I don’t want my life to be controlled by a drug…I was really loaded and I just sat on my mom’s bed and said, ‘I am going to go pack my bags, I’m in, I’m ready to go. I want to go, I need to go.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Eminem Celebrates 11 Years Of Sobriety

    Eminem Celebrates 11 Years Of Sobriety

    The iconic rapper took to social media to celebrate his sober milestone.

    Hip-hop superstar Eminem marked a milestone of sobriety on Instagram with an image of a medallion and the tag “11 years-still not afraid.”

    The rap veteran has spoken in depth about his struggle with and recovery from a dependency on prescription medications, which he described in 2013 as “dark times… mostly due to taking a lot of pills and f—king drooling on myself.”

    Since then, he has rebounded both personally and professionally, as evidenced by the reception for his most recent album, 2018’s Kamikaze, achieving the highest U.S. sales for a hip-hop album and ninth best-selling album globally for that year.

    Eminem told Rolling Stone in 2011 that his dependencies on Vicodin, Ambien and Xanax began while he was filming the semi-autobiographical, Oscar-winning 8 Mile in 2002.

    “We were doing 16 hours on the set, and you had a certain window where you had to sleep,” he recalled. Ambien “knocked [him] the f—k out,” which led to a prescription and constant use combined with the opioid painkiller Vicodin.

    “I was taking so many pills that I wasn’t even taking them to get high anymore,” he told Rolling Stone. “I was taking them to feel normal. I want to say that in a day I could consume anywhere from 40 to 60 Valium. And Vicodin… maybe 20, 30?”

    In 2007, Eminem tried methadone, which he was told was “just like Vicodin, and they’re easier on your liver.” He soon began consuming large quantities of that drug as well. “My doctor told me the amount of methadone I’d taken was equivalent to shooting up four bags of heroin,” he told People in 2009.

    In late December of that year, Eminem suffered a catastrophic overdose that left him unconscious for two days. 

    But after only a week in the hospital, Eminem returned home, where weakness and exhaustion led to a torn meniscus, which in turn led to a relapse, seizure and a return to the hospital. “That’s when I knew,” he recalled. “I could either get help, or I am going to die.”

    With the aid of a rehab counselor, a rigid exercise schedule and the support of friends and fellow addicts like Elton John, whom Eminem described as “like my sponsor,” he gained sobriety and in 2018, celebrated a decade of clean and sober living. 

    The experience has given Eminem perspective on the addictions that have run throughout his family – his ex-wife, Kim Mathers, was involved in a 2015 DUI, and her sister, Dawn Marie Scott, succumbed to a heroin overdose in 2016 – and his career, which remains both prolific and successful.

    “Rap was my drug,” he told People. “It used to get me high, and then it stopped getting me high. Then I had to resort to other things to make me feel that… now rap’s getting me high again.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Country Star Brantley Gilbert Is Enjoying Sobriety And Family Life

    Country Star Brantley Gilbert Is Enjoying Sobriety And Family Life

    In a recent interview, Gilbert joked that he is “allergic” because it causes him to “break out into handcuffs.”

    Country music star Brantley Gilbert talked sobriety and spending time with people who drink in a recent interview with PopCulture.com. Gilbert, like many musicians, found himself pulled into substance abuse and addiction as he gained fame and fought hard to reclaim control of his life after years of alcoholism and prescription drug abuse.

    Today, he’s seven years sober and is not only able to spend time around people while they drink, he says he enjoys it.

    “It’s just one of those things where I’ve decided it wasn’t for me,” he said. “It’s just a thing that’s just not a part of my life any more. It’s around everything I do, and my career is around it. I enjoy being in the environment, I enjoy being around people that drink.”

    This includes his wife “when she’s not pregnant,” Gilbert says. He also joked that he’s “allergic” to alcohol, saying it causes him to “break out into handcuffs.”

    The singer has joked being arrested multiple times in the past. In an interview with Taste of Country, he responded to a question about Spring Break by saying that his police record in Panama City says he’s been there, “but I don’t recall it.”

    “My arrest report says I’ve been to Panama City a few times,” he said, laughing.

    All jokes aside, Gilbert’s addiction disorder likely would have killed him if he hadn’t gotten the support and treatment he needed.

    In an interview with PEOPLE last year, he revealed that in 2011 his doctors told him that if he didn’t stop drinking, he would be dead within a year. Even then, he didn’t take recovery very seriously.

    “I still put it off and was trying to slow down on my own, like, ‘All right I’m only gonna let myself take two pills today. I’m only gonna drink this much of my bottle and make a mark on the bottle.’ And it would work a couple days —  and then somebody throws a party.”

    Thankfully, fellow country music singer Keith Urban gave Gilbert an unexpected boost of inspiration when he needed it, explaining that creativity could still thrive without alcohol. Now Gilbert is enjoying a growing family with his wife, one-year-old son, and their yet-unborn baby girl. He’s only worried about one day having to explain his addiction disorder to his children.

    “It’s one thing now for me and my career,” he said. “It’s another thing when these little ones get old enough to hear stories. They’re gonna know I’m not a super-hero like most kids do. We’ll cross those bridges when we get to them.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Anne Hathaway Talks Giving Up Drinking

    Anne Hathaway Talks Giving Up Drinking

    Hathaway said that she was surprised about the media attention her announcement to give up drinking has garnered.

    Anne Hathaway says that she is giving up drinking for the next 15 or so years, until her three-year-old son Jonathan is out of the house, because the hangovers she gets can affect her parenting.  

    “I didn’t put [a drink] down because my drinking was a problem; I put it down because the way I drink leads me to have hangovers and those were the problem,” Hathaway told Boston Common magazine. “My last hangover lasted for five days. When I’m at a stage in my life where there is enough space for me to have a hangover, I’ll start drinking again, but that won’t be until my kid is out of the house.”

    In January, Hathaway mentioned her sobriety, and said that she was surprised about the media attention to something that she feels is a personal decision, not a principle stance. 

    “I just want to make this clear: Most people don’t have to do such an extreme thing. I don’t think drinking is bad,” she said. “It’s just the way I do it—which I personally think is really fun and awesome—is just not the kind of fun and awesome that goes with having a child for me. But this isn’t a moralistic stance.”

    Hathaway first mentioned her sobriety on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, according to USA Today. 

    She said, ”I don’t totally love the way I (drink) and (my son is) getting to an age where he really does need me all the time in the mornings. I did one school run one day where I dropped him off at school, I wasn’t driving, but I was hungover and that was enough for me. I didn’t love that one.”

    Hathaway told Boston Common that while she doesn’t want to tell other people what to do, she does want to be public about things that are helping her live a healthier life.  

    “I’ve recently been on a streak where things are just starting to work, so I can share that with people, and they can take from it what resonates and ignore what doesn’t,” she said. “I am not some relentless self-improver, but I am trying to learn to live in the world with as little pain as possible.”

    She also mentioned the changes that are coming to Hollywood because of the #metoo movement. 

    “There are moments of seismic change, and I can’t imagine going back. The people that get it really get it,” she said. “The biggest obstacles at this point are people who claim to get it but haven’t done the work. I think it’s going to take everyone examining how much privilege they have and how it is being used and taking responsibility for creating equality. It’s going to take everyone.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Pierce Brosnan's Son Talks Sobriety

    Pierce Brosnan's Son Talks Sobriety

    The 35-year-old says his life turned around when he got married and had a child.

    There are many sons and daughters of the rich and famous who have suffered from addiction, and Sean Brosnan, son of Pierce Brosnan, is one of them. Now he’s sober and looking back on the long hard road he traveled to get there.

    As People reports, Sean went through a devastating loss when his mother died at the age of eight. “I remember the day my dad told me she passed, and it was a few days after Christmas,” he explained. “He started to cry, but I didn’t cry. I was comforting him at eight. It wasn’t until maybe six months later where I was in school and realized while I was walking to class, she is never coming back. That is when it transitioned into anger.”

    Sean first started taking drugs in middle school, and when he got into a major car crash at the age of 16, he got hooked on painkillers. Sean’s friend was driving drunk.

    “He had a couple of beers and was over the limit,” he said. “I broke my back and shattered my tailbone, my pelvis in five places, my left femur. I took opioids for the first time in the hospital.”

    Sean recalled after the accident that he became “a drug connoisseur” but his drug of choice was alcohol. He tried to get sober when he was about 25, and survived several suicide attempts. “I wanted help and I was once again in no man’s land.”

    Sean was later dealt another terrible blow, losing his half-sister Charlotte to ovarian cancer, which also killed his mother. “After she died, I drank on the plane on the way there. The insidious part of the disease was that I almost used it as an excuse. Which sounds terrible to say but that is my addict in me saying, ‘Yes, I can drink, and no one can blame me.’”

    Sean says his life turned around when he got married in 2014 and had a child in 2015. He’s since left Hollywood behind and works in the healthcare field, which he finds much more fulfilling.

    Sean is currently a residence advisor at a treatment center, and is working towards becoming a psychologist. “In the last two years, I sort of started not finding as much meaning in what I was doing in the film industry,” he explains. “The only thing I knew besides the film industry was addiction.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Emilio Estevez Discusses Brother Charlie Sheen's Road To Recovery

    Emilio Estevez Discusses Brother Charlie Sheen's Road To Recovery

    Estevez touched on his brother’s recovery in a recent interview.

    Post-HIV diagnosis, Charlie Sheen remains committed to staying sober and doing well, according to his brother.  

    In an interview with People Now, Emilio Estevez, star of Mighty Ducks, stated that he’d like to work with his brother in the future and implied that a new project may even be in progress. He added that Sheen was doing well with his recovery from substance use disorder, post-HIV diagnosis.

    “He’s great,” Estevez told People. “Amazing. I mean, he’s very public about where he’s at right now and we’re just proud of him.”

    The hosts of People Now also brought up the fact that Sheen had recently been on the cover of Maxim U.K., to which Estevez responded, “It’s good work if you can get it.”

    Sheen first announced his HIV diagnosis on Today in 2015, stating he had been diagnosed four years earlier. 

    “It started with what I thought was a series of crushing headaches,” he said at the time. “I thought I had a brain tumor. I thought it was over.”

    According to Today, Dr. Robert Huizenga, Sheen’s physician, spoke to the importance of the actor maintaining sobriety so he could manage his diagnosis and take his medications. 

    “We’re petrified about Charlie. We’re so, so anxious that if he was overly depressed, if he was abusing substance, he would forget these pills and that’s been an incredible worry,” Huizenga said. 

    However, some time after his diagnosis, Sheen relapsed. Prior to his diagnosis in 2012, Sheen had been sober for 11 years. But in the aftermath, he returned to leaning on substances to cope for a period of time. 

    “It was to suffocate the anxiety and what my life was going to become with this condition and getting so numb I didn’t think about it,” Sheen told Dr. Oz at the time. “It was the only tool I had at the time, so I believed that would quell a lot of that angst. A lot of that fear. And it only made it worse.”

    Sheen also told Dr. Oz that while using, he was “hammered, fractured, crazy,” but in recovery he remains “focused, sober, hopeful.”

    Now, Sheen found his way back to recovery. In December 2018, the actor announced on Twitter that he was celebrating one year of sobriety. 

    “So, THIS happened yesterday! a fabulous moment, in my renewed journey. #TotallyFocused,” the tweet read. 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Jenna Jameson Credits Sobriety With Weight Loss

    Jenna Jameson Credits Sobriety With Weight Loss

    “Sobriety is a game changer, not only are you bright, clear and capable… your gut says bye bye!” Jameson said in an Instagram post. 

    Adult film star Jenna Jameson shared a “Transformation Tuesday” picture on Instagram this week, showing how sobriety and a renewed focus on health have transformed her body. 

    “It’s important we talk about the aftermath of new sobriety,” she wrote on an Instagram post. “Raw feelings, fear, unsure how to deal with all the changes. The good far outweighs anything, that’s for sure. But this shows the effects of alcohol on your body. Sobriety is a game changer, not only are you bright, clear and capable… your gut says bye bye! #Sobriety and #keto for the win!”

    Last fall, Jameson posted a similar side-by-side photo to celebrate three years sober. She has also been open about her 80-pound weight loss. 

    “Today is an important day for me in my recovery. 3 years. I can’t begin to explain what sobriety has brought to my life. But I will try,” Jameson wrote in September. “Yes, I’m not the intensely self centered ‘the world owes me something’ woman anymore. I am now the ‘What can I do for the world’ woman. Sobriety has taught me a lot about myself, my coping mechanisms that I ignored came bubbling to the surface quickly after getting sober.”

    She continued, “That scared me. Everything I knew was wrong. Everything I believed in was hurting me, not helping. Meetings and leaning on my Sober friends… made things bearable the first year. I was surviving. Sober. It was shocking at first, but now it’s my new normal.”

    She said that sobriety and a keto diet have helped her transform her body after giving birth to her daughter in 2017. 

    “My weight loss has solidified my toughness and strength,” she wrote last year. “I know I am capable of beautiful things and these are the qualities I want to teach my daughter. No matter what life throws at you, you can overcome and flourish. 3 years. 3 whole years. I am grateful. Just for today.”

    Jameson hasn’t been very open about her addiction, but there are reports that she abused alcohol and pills. Her Instagram posts include the hashtags #AA and #NA, suggesting that she’s part of a 12-step fellowship. 

    Throughout her weight loss and recovery journeys, Jameson has learned to use healthier coping mechanisms rather than relying on substances. 

    “I think back to the way I used to run… run as far and as fast as I could, and I pray to God I never feel that emptiness again,” she wrote. 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • "Teen Wolf" Star Colton Haynes Marks Sober Milestone

    "Teen Wolf" Star Colton Haynes Marks Sober Milestone

    “Teen Wolf” star Colton Haynes turned to substance abuse after falling on hard times but is now cleaning up his act.

    Colton Haynes has achieved six months sober after going on a week-long bender to help cope with his divorce as well as the death of his mother in the same year. Recently, he told Attitude Magazine about his sober journey, which included four months of rehab.

    Haynes’ week-long bender came after he divorced Jeff Leatham, his husband of less than one year, and his mother, Dana, dying of cirrhosis of the liver within 2018. However, his struggles with substance abuse began long beforehand, as early as 2016 when he came out as gay.

    “I came out, and in a way, my downward spiral started,” Haynes said. “I felt extremely free but at the same time the amount of attention I was getting was making me spin out of control.”

    But he really hit bottom in 2018.

    “At that point, I fell apart. My brain broke,” Haynes recalled. “I was doing a massive comedy for a studio, showed up to work and got fired on the first day. They said I looked as if I had ‘dead in my eyes’ and I did.”

    He continued to spiral into darkness.

    “I was drowning in my own s–t,” Haynes confessed.

    He hit his rock bottom during his week-long bender.

    “I locked myself in a hotel room at the Waldorf Astoria in Beverly Hills for seven days and was found in my room with these insane bruises all over my body,” he recounted. “It looked as if somebody had beaten the s–t out of me. I couldn’t walk, so I was falling everywhere. I almost ruptured my kidney, ended up in the hospital, ended up in 5150 psych hold. I was on such a destructive path that I could not function.”

    He ended up with partial vision loss in one eye and suffered two seizures, which inspired him to seek treatment.

    “I’m always going to be in recovery,” he said. “There are so many people struggling out there, but not a lot of them talk about it. Life is much more beautiful than I could have imagined.”

    In the past, Haynes has revealed his struggles with mental health in his published diary entries.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Kristin Bell Celebrates Dax Shepard’s Sober Birthday

    Kristin Bell Celebrates Dax Shepard’s Sober Birthday

    Shepard says Bell “spoils the hell” out of him on his sober birthday.

    Each year Dax Shepard knows he can expect a great gift from his wife, not on his actual birthday, but on the day he got sober. 

    “The nicest presents she’s gotten me are always on my sober birthday. In fact, my real birthday … still haven’t gotten a present,” Shepard told People, adding that Bell “spoils the hell out of me” on his sober birthday. 

    Bell, who has two daughters, ages 4 and 5, with Shepard, said that she prioritizes his sobriety milestones because that is what allows them to be a family. 

    “I’m very happy he was born so I celebrate his birthday, but I’m extraordinarily [happy] that he has stayed sober because that’s what allows me to have him in my life as a husband and as a father,” she said. 

    She also knows how much effort Shepard puts into maintaining his recovery, even after 14 years. 

    “I know how much effort has to be put into staying sober. I don’t mean that to be like, I come home and see him shaking and looking at a whiskey ad or something, [but] there are different elements you have to deal with when you’re staying sober,” Bell said. “It’s a ton of mental control and evolution.”

    Bell and Shepard have been together 12 years, so she wasn’t his partner when he was actively using. Still, the couple has spoken openly about how Shepard’s sobriety has shaped their family life. 

    Last year, Bell wrote a touching public tribute to Shepard’s sobriety, which she shared on Instagram on his 14th year sober. 

    “I know how much you loved using. I know how much it got in your way. And I know, because I saw, how hard you worked to live without it,” she wrote. 

    This week, Shepard joked about how the post went viral, overshadowing his accomplishment of 14 years sober. 

    “I scrape together 14 years of sobriety, and she writes a little flowery thank you. Now there’s headlines all over the country about Kristen’s accomplishment of writing this letter. I’m like, ‘Just like you to steal my thunder!’” he said. “I’m the one that went to 10,000 AA meetings. At no point was the message of any of the stories like, ‘Good job, Dax.’ It was like, ‘Can you imagine being loved by a woman like Kristen Bell?’”

    Joking aside, Shepard said that the message of support “was crazy sweet and I loved it.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Lena Dunham Praises "Sober Queens"

    Lena Dunham Praises "Sober Queens"

    Dunham has been sober since May 2018.

    Actress Lena Dunham, who has been sober since May 2018, went on Twitter to acknowledge the celebrities who had recently opened up about their sobriety. 

    “First Lala Kent and now Wendy Williams—so proud of all these strong sober queens,” Dunham wrote on Twitter. “It’s a bumpy path for us all, but admitting you need help is the beginning of true freedom. Sometimes it’s stronger to be weak for a moment.”

    Last week, talk show host Williams announced that she is living in a sober home. 

    “For some time now, and even today and beyond, I have been living in a sober house,” she said on The Wendy Williams Show. “And you know, I’ve had a struggle with cocaine in my past and I never went to a place to get the treatment. I don’t know how, except God was sitting on my shoulder and I just stopped.”

    Also this month, reality television star Lala Kent of Vanderpump Rules publicly said that she was in a 12-step program for alcoholism. She had previously mentioned that she was getting sober, but didn’t talk about having a substance use disorder. 

    “Five months ago, I came to the realization that I am an alcoholic, and I am now a friend of Bill W., which you will never know how much this program means to me [and] has given me new life,” Kent wrote on Instagram. 

    Dunham, writer and director of the HBO series Girls, is familiar with the struggles of early sobriety. She spoke on Dax Shepard’s podcast Armchair Expert in November about how she has been adjusting to life without anxiety meds. Initially, she said, the medications made her feel “like the person I was supposed to be.” 

    “I was having crazy anxiety and having to show up for things that I didn’t feel equipped to show up for. But I know I need to do it, and when I take a Klonopin, I can do it,” she said. 

    However, over time, she realized that her drug use was becoming problematic. 

    “It stopped being, ‘I take one when I fly,’ and it started being like, ‘I take one when I’m awake,’” she said at the time. “It stopped feeling like I had panic attacks and it started feeling like I was a living panic attack. During that time I was taking Klonopin, it wasn’t making it better but I just thought, ‘If I don’t take this, how much worse will it get?’”

    At the time, she said her brain was still adjusting to its new normal. 

    “I still feel like my brain is recalibrating itself to experience anxiety,” she said. “I just feel, literally, on my knees grateful every day.” 

    View the original article at thefix.com