Tag: getting sober

Gary Busey Reflects On Cocaine Addiction, Becoming Sober

Busey says he stopped using cocaine on May 3, 1995, and has been sober ever since.

In addition to his busy and prolific career as an actor, Gary Busey has earned a reputation for philosophical aphorisms that he calls “Buseyisms” – words of wisdom drawn from the letters of a word that he said reveal a new definition in its “deeper, dimensional meaning.”

The Academy Award nominee has compiled many of these life lessons in a new book, Buseyisms: Gary Busey’s Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth (itself a Buseyism, which stands for “Bible”). In addition to a wealth of Buseyisms, the new book also details the actor’s battle with cocaine addiction, which nearly ended his life before he gained clarity through a spiritual outlook.

In a conversation with NBC News Digital’s Think page, Busey recalled how he became addicted to cocaine shortly after earning an Oscar nomination for his performance in The Buddy Holly Story.

“A fellow who looked like a Beverly Hills cowboy showed up at my door,” he recalled. “He told me that he was going to be my manager, and he had a gift for me. It was a blue box from Tiffany’s and, in the box, was a rock of cocaine as big as a 50-cent piece, and thick, with my initials in it.”

The dealer told Busey that the drug would help him be “more creative,” and as Busey recalled, “I got hooked bad.” His drug use led to an overdose, followed by an unpleasant realization: “What have I been doing? I’ve been dancing with the devil in a circle that’s very tight, and the devil always leads the dance.”

According to Busey, he stopped using cocaine on May 3, 1995, and has been sober ever since.

To summarize his 25 years of sobriety, Busey has an aphorism: “F-R-E-E-D-O-M stands for ‘facing real exciting energy, developing out of miracles.” Busey expounded on the notion by adding, “The best freedom you can have is knowing you’re a miracle. So, be yourself, and live in the harmony of what God gave you to be when you were born. Think on that; feel that about yourself. And you won’t need to abuse substances or alcohol or needles or pills.”

Busey remains sanguine about the challenges of chasing sobriety. He freely admitted that those who follow his advice and give up their substance of choice may actually come to hate him for such a suggestion. “But that’s okay,” he noted. “Hate is an emotion that comes with growth.” But the payoff, he said, is worth the effort. “Everything you’ve done in your life, even though some of it was hard, is good, because you go through it to get better. And that’s why we’re on earth.”

View the original article at thefix.com

15 November 2018
Goo Goo Dolls Singer John Rzeznik Reflects On Getting Sober

The “Iris” singer has been sober since 2014.

The Goo Goo Dolls, the multi-platinum rock group best known for hits like “Iris” and “Name,” are still going strong both on the road and off. And lead singer John Rzeznik is living the family life he had never previously imagined before he got sober.

Rzeznik recently reflected on his hard upbringing and journey to sobriety to Buffalo News. The singer grew up in Buffalo, New York with a “pretty serious drinker” for a father.

“I have no idea how he survived as long as he did.” Rzeznik recalled his relationship with his father as “distant… That’s the mark of an alcoholic—the distance. It’s a very lonely disease. It’s a disease of loneliness.”

As Rzeznik told the Press of Atlantic City in 2016, “I was wearing my father’s clothes. My father was a brutal alcoholic, just crazy. I thought that was my destiny as well. I finally got slapped in the head hard enough to go get help.”

Rzeznik lost both his parents in the early ’80s, leaving him on his own when he was 16. He took refuge in music, but he was still trying to deal with serious mental and emotional demons.

“I had no idea what was going on inside my head,” he recalled. “I didn’t understand it, that what I was feeling was depression, and it was very, very hard.”

On November 16, 2014, Rzeznik had a meltdown in New York, and drank himself into a blackout. When he came to, he called his manager and said, “I’m not doing anything for the next three months. I’ve got to take care of this, because I’m going to die.”

Rzeznik then checked into rehab for three months, and adds, “I wish I could have stayed for six months. I went to a very serious place, where they don’t do yoga and massage. They concentrate on triangulating treatment, where it’s like therapy and 12 step and some spiritual work.”

Rzeznik now has a sobriety calendar on his phone, and as of September 10, he racked up 3.81 years, 45.79 months, 1,395 days, and 33,467 hours sober to his credit.

Rzeznik’s wife Melina confessed that she was thinking of leaving him before he went into rehab. Once he hit his one-year sober milestone, they started a family and had a daughter, Lili, who was born in December 2016.

Today the singer says, “I’m paraphrasing someone else, but kids turn you into the person that you should have been the whole time.”

View the original article at thefix.com

15 October 2018
Lisa Marie Presley Discusses Past Addiction Struggles

“I was not happy. The struggle and addiction for me started when I was 45 years old. It wasn’t like it was happening all my life.”

Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of Elvis Presley, recently spoke on the Today show about her personal struggles with addiction.

Presley spoke with Jenna Bush Hager at Graceland on the eve of the release of Where No One Stands Alone, a new compilation album of her father’s gospel songs. (She co-produced the album and sings a posthumous duet with her father on the title song.)

Lisa Marie, who is now 50, said that her struggles with addiction began five years ago.

“I was not happy,” she said. “And by the way, the struggle and addiction for me started when I was 45 years old. It wasn’t like it was happening all my life. I have a therapist and she was like, ‘You’re a miracle. I don’t know how you’re still alive.’”

In a 2003 interview with Paper magazine, Lisa Marie credited Scientology for getting her clean after one last bender.

“I was on a 72-hour bender,” she said. “Cocaine, sedatives, pot and drinking—all at the same time. I never got my hands on heroin, but it’s not like I wouldn’t have taken it. I just couldn’t be sober. I don’t know how I lived through it.”

In 2016, Us Weekly reported that Presley checked into a high-end rehab for an addiction to painkillers.

Along with her father’s iconic music career, Elvis was also legendary for his own struggles with addiction. Lisa Marie was nine years old when her father died of a heart attack on August 15, 1977 at the age of 42.

Elvis’s death was a big shock at the time, and is still a strong cautionary tale against the excesses of fame and prescription drugs. Elvis had a personal doctor, Dr. George Nichopoulos, who came under fire for prescribing too many drugs to the singer, and after several medical board inquires his medical license was permanently suspended in 1995.

According to Biography, the toxicology report from Elvis’s death showed he had high levels of Dilaudid, Quaaludes, Percodan, Demerol, and codeine in his system.

Yet in the depths of her despair, Lisa Marie reached out to the spirit of her father for help. “I’m not perfect, my father wasn’t perfect, no one’s perfect,” she told Today. “It’s what you do with it after you learn and then you try to help others with it.”

When Hager asked what she would ask her father, Lisa Marie said, “I would want to know he’s there. Yeah, it would be pretty much, ‘I could use your help right around now.’”

View the original article at thefix.com

14 August 2018
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

2 July 2018