Answer Addiction

Tag: sober celebs

  • 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

  • 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

  • “The Situation” Celebrates Three Years of Sobriety

    “The Situation” Celebrates Three Years of Sobriety

    The Jersey Shore star is giving back to the community by co-sponsoring an addiction treatment scholarship and sharing his story with recovery groups.

    Reality television star Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino marked his third year of sobriety by bringing holiday meals to individuals in recovery. The Jersey Shore mainstay issued the news via his Instagram page on December 22, where a photo of Sorrentino at Phoenix Recovery House in Eatontown, New Jersey was posted. 

    Despite an impending stay in prison for tax evasion, which will begin in January 2019, Sorrentino has emphasized the positive on his own social media as well as that of the Discovery Institute for Addictive Disorders, a treatment center with which he’s partnered to form a scholarship for individuals battling substance dependency.

    Sorrentino, who struggled with dependency on prescription medication in 2012 and 2015, underwent inpatient and outpatient stays at the Discovery Institute and has continued to work with the non-profit as a speaker at recovery groups. He is also the co-sponsor of Giving Tree, a scholarship program for individuals who lack the funds to go to treatment for drug or alcohol dependency.

    Sobriety was hard fought for Sorrentino at the height of his heyday on the MTV reality series. “I was known to be one of the bigger partiers on Jersey Shore,” he said on a video posted on Discovery Institute’s Instagram page.

    “I’ll be honest. I hated everything about addiction treatment,” he said at a support group meeting earlier this year. “But I wanted better for myself and I was going to be do whatever it takes to get there.”

    With the support of his wife, Lauren Pesce, whom he married in November 2018, Sorrentino has remained sober after his return to television with Jersey Shore: Family Vacation. “Being sober really taught me how to just be at peace,” he said in a 2017 E! News interview. “I live my life today at peace. . . . I mean, everything in my life has changed.” 

    Sorrentino will begin an eight-month prison sentence for tax evasion on $9 million in income on or after January 15, 2019; the sentence also comes with two years of supervised probation.

    After receiving the sentence in October 2018, Pesce addressed the issue in a post on her Instagram page. “Thank you for all of your messages of love and support,” she wrote. “We are happy to put an end to this chapter and excited to move forward in our future.” 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • "Sex And The City" Star Kristin Davis Credits Acting For Sobriety

    "Sex And The City" Star Kristin Davis Credits Acting For Sobriety

    “I don’t think I would be alive. I’m an addict. I’m a recovering alcoholic. If I hadn’t found acting…acting is the only thing that made me want to ever get sober.”

    Kristin Davis, best known for her role as Charlotte York on the hit HBO series Sex and the City, revealed in a recent interview that she credits her acting career with helping her beat alcoholism.

    Davis discussed her sober journey on the Origins With James Andrew Miller podcast, Entertainment Weekly reports.

    “I don’t think I would be alive,” without her career. “I’m an addict. I’m a recovering alcoholic. If I hadn’t found acting…acting is the only thing that made me want to ever get sober. I didn’t have anything that was that important to me other than trying to dull my senses.”

    Davis said she started drinking when she was young.

    “I didn’t think I would live to be 30,” she said. “Luckily I quit very young, before any success happened, thank goodness.”

    With her acting career, Davis realized she had “something that was more important to me than just drinking.”

    As a teen growing up in Southern California, Davis drank to help calm her insecurities.

    “I’m kind of shy normally, so I felt like I needed help,” she explained. “One thing led to another, and I was drinking.”

    Davis then turned to acting, but then she started showing up to her classes hung over, and she knew she had to make a choice. She told The Week, “I thought, It’s going to be one or the other. I can’t really have both.”

    After attending rehab, Davis confessed she would miss drinking on occasion. “Every once in a while, I’ll be with friends and they’ll be drinking red wine, and I’ll think, in a really innocent way, ‘Oh wow, that’s such a wonderful glass of red wine. Wouldn’t it be fun to drink it?’ Maybe it would be fine, but it’s really not worth the risk.”

    At the same time, Sex and the City made the Cosmo a very popular drink, and as Davis told Health in 2011, “It’s caused a lot of confusion out in the world. I get sent many a Cosmo! I never drink them. I believe [alcoholism] is a disease. I don’t think you can mess with it. There was a time when people who didn’t know me well would say, ‘Couldn’t you just have one glass of champagne?’ And I would say, ‘No.’ I’m doing well. I still have occasional bad days. Why risk it?”

    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

  • Demi Lovato’s Mom Says Singer Is 90 Days Sober

    Demi Lovato’s Mom Says Singer Is 90 Days Sober

    Lovato’s mother, Dianna De La Garza, discussed the singer’s early recovery in a recent interview.

    Demi Lovato has been very open with the public about her struggles with sobriety and mental health, and on July 24, she raised serious concern among her fans when she was taken to the hospital for a suspected overdose.

    Now, Lovato’s mother, Dianna De La Garza, has announced that her daughter has been sober for 90 days.

    As De La Garza said on Maria Menounos’ Sirius XM show, “She has 90 days. I couldn’t be more thankful or more proud of her because addiction being a disease, it’s work. It’s very hard. It’s not easy, and there are no shortcuts.”

    Menounos asked De La Garza if she knew what triggered her daughter’s relapse. She said, “I can’t really say for sure. I really don’t know. It can be any number of reasons.”

    Before her overdose, Lovato released the single “Sober” in June, where she apologized for falling off the wagon. De La Garza admitted, “I knew that she wasn’t sober. I didn’t know what she was doing because she doesn’t live with me and she’s 26.”

    De La Garza found out about her daughter’s overdose when she received a text that said, “I just saw on TMZ and I’m sorry.”

    “Before I could get to TMZ, I got the phone call from her assistant and she said, ‘We’re at the hospital.’ So then I knew, OK, she’s not gone. She’s here. And I said, ‘What’s going on?’ And the words that I heard are just a nightmare for any parent: ‘Demi overdosed.’”

    When she got a call from her daughter’s assistant confirming the news, “I said, ‘Is she okay?’ And she stopped for a second and said, ‘She’s conscious, but she’s not talking.’ I knew at that point that we were in trouble,” De La Garza told Newsmax TV.

    On August 5, 12 days after her overdose, Lovato released a statement on Instagram telling the public:

    “I have always been transparent about my journey with addiction. What I’ve learned is that this illness is not something that disappears or fades with time. It is something I must continue to overcome and have not done yet… I now need time to heal and focus on my sobriety and road to recovery. The love you have all shown me will never be forgotten and I look forward to the day where I can say that I came out on the other side. I will keep fighting.”

    View the original article at thefix.com