Even though some of these celebrities relapse during their journey to sobriety, it doesn't stop them from sharing their stories and encouraging others who experience similar things to get help.
- Jun 16, 2019
AceShowbiz - Being addicted to drugs and alcohol is not a praiseworthy thing to be open about, especially when you work in the entertainment industry where common people can judge you whenever they like. However, there are some celebrities who aren't afraid to be candid about it as they want to bring awareness to their fans about how dangerous it is.
While some have been keeping their hands off drugs and alcohol for many years after surviving, some others are not so lucky and relapse. As embarrassing as it might be, these celebrities still put a strong front as they continue to speak up about their journey to sobriety. After all, getting rid of an addiction is not an easy thing to do and a lot of people understand that.
Below, we have listed several celebrities who aren't afraid to speak about their addiction. Let's check it out!
1. Drew Barrymore
Getting addicted to drugs when you are still in childhood is not something that people want to talk to others, but Drew Barrymore doesn't have any problem with that. The actress said that she started drinking and smoking pot when she was only 10 years old. She quickly moved on to marijuana and cocaine because she found drinking and smoking pot boring later on.
"Well, if smoking pot is cute, it'll also be cute to get the heavier stuff like cocaine," she said. "It was gradual. What I did kept getting worse and worse, and I didn't care what anybody else thought." Drew spent her teenage years trying to overcome her addiction and has since enjoyed success as an actress and producer after getting sober.
2. Pink
Pink once shocked the world when she admitted that she spent her teenage years selling hard drugs like crytal meth and that she suffered a massive overdose when she was just 15 years old. That experience changed her life, and she claimed that she never used drugs again afterward.
"It wasn't to the point of going to the hospital, but I remember getting up off the floor in the morning and that was the last time I ever touched a drug again," she said in an interview. Her experience with drugs abuse was also the reason why she accepted to take the role of a recovering sex addict in "Thanks for Sharing", because she understood addiction and she believed it would help someone.
3. Kelly Osbourne
Kelly Osbourne opened up about her addiction in her memoir "There Is No F***ing Secret: Letters from a Bada** B***h", recalling the first time she got addicted to Vicodin at 16 years old. 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 in her memoir.
But she fortunately pulled through it and got off drugs again, penning all her experience in her book. "Now, I manage pain through creativity, friendship and self-care," she wrote. "The crazier my life gets, the more focused I become on the things that make me feel good."
4. Ben Affleck
Ben Affleck has been very open about his addiction to alcohol. Even though he tried to quit drinking in 1997, he continued to struggle with the addiction and eventualy completed a 30-day inpatient program at an alcohol rehab center in 2001. His drinking habits settled down following his marriage to Jennifer Garner in 2004, but he returned to rehab in 2017 to continue working on his recovery. He recently completed a 40-day stay at a treatment center.
Opening up about the issue to his Instagram followers, he called his battle with addiction a "lifelong and difficult struggle." He added, "I am fighting for myself and my family. So many people have reached out on social media and spoken about their journeys with addiction. To those people, I want to say thank you. Your strength is inspiring and is supporting me in ways I didn't think was possible. It helpes to know I am not alone. As I've had to remind myself, if you have a problem, getting help is a sign of courage, not weakness or failure."
5. Robert Downey Jr.
Robert Downey Jr. is now one of the most highest-paid actors in show business. But not so long ago, he was practically unhireable due to his drinking and drug misuse, not to mention the time he spent in prison due to his addiction. Fortunately, he finally got to the point where he realized that he couldn't continue being addicted to the substance.
He said of his decision to get sober in an interview, "I reached out for help and I ran with it, you know? Because you can reach out for help in a half-a**ed way, and you'll get it, and you won't take advantage of it. You know? It's really not that difficult to overcome these seemingly ghastly problems. What's hard is to decide." Robert has now been sober for more than ten years, thanks to his wife Susan Downey and his friends.
6. Bradley Cooper
Bradley Cooper opened up about his relationship with alcohol and drugs misuse back in 2012, revealing that he made the decision to get sober at the age of 29 after an incident that resulted in him cutting his head open on a concrete floor. And he was so grateful that he managed to get rid of his addiction because if he "continued it, I was really going to sabotage my whole life."
Now, with over a decade of sobriety under his belt, Bradley has received an Oscar nomination for his role as struggling musician Jackson Maine in "A Star Is Born", a role that hit too close to home for him. "Anytime you're trying to tell the truth you need to go to places and use things that have happened to you, or you've read about or experienced," he said. "And that's all part of the beauty of turning whatever things you've gone through into a story. I find that to be very cathartic."
7. Elton John
Elton John has one thing that he really regrets, and that is his past addiction. The British singer said that he felt a lot of regret that he had spent ten years absorbed in alcohol and cocaine misuse when he learned of his friend Ryan White's death in 1990. Calling it a "bad disease," he said in his memoir, "When you take a drug and you take a drink and you mix those two together, you think you're invincible. I came out of this HIV-negative. I was the luckiest man in the world."
"I was consumed by cocaine, booze and who knows what else. I apparently never got the memo that the Me generation had ended," he added, before promising to make up for what he had done in the past. "There is so much more to be done," he said. Besides getting candid about his substance abuse in his memoir "Love Is the Cure", the issue was also documented in his biopic "Rocketman".
8. Dax Shepard
Even after being 14 years sober, Dax Shepard continues to use his platform to speak out about his journey to sobriety, which he claimed was not an easy one. In an interview with Playboy, he revealed that his addiction often put him in dangerous situations, including fights as well as a car accident in Hawaii. "I got lucky I didn't go to jail," he recalled.
He eventually found recovery through 12-step therapy, which he advocated for on his Twitter account, and got sober in 2004. Since then, he has been helping other people who are battling the same addiction through various platforms. Most recently, Dax launched a podcast series where he opened up about his recovery experience and brought in experts to talk about the issue.
9. Russell Brand
Starting to get addicted to drugs as a teenager, Russell Brand has now been in recovery for about 15 years and has become very open about breaking the grip addiction had on his life. He even released a book called "Recovery: Freedom From Our Addictions", which was a tribute to the traditional Alcoholics Anonymous-based 12-step program that helped his recovery.
Talking about the book in an interview, Russell said, "I have written this book about how I dealt with my addiction and continue to deal with it. The idea is that it uses different language to describe the processes around abstinence-based recover. Staying clean one day at a time. It puts it in plain language." Besides releasing a book, Russell also got candid about his journey to recovery through a podcast series and a Netflix special titled "Re:Birth".
10. Eminem
It's no secret that there are a lot of rappers who do drugs, but Eminem isn't one of them anymore. The rapper got sober in April 2008 after overdosing on methadone in the previous year. Even though he no longer consumes the dangerous substance, Em still continues to speak about it and details his journey to recovery.
"It's no secret that I had a drug problem. If I was to give you a number of Vicodin I would actually take in a day? Anywhere between 10 or 20. Vallum, Ambien, the numbers got so high I don't even know what I was taking," he said in 2009, noting in another interview that his biological daughter Hailie and two adopted daughters Lainey and Whitney were central for his motivation to get sober. "I love [my kids] so much, and they've helped me through so many things," he said.
11. Lamar Odom
Lamar Odom's tumultuous rise, fall and miraculous survival has played out in the media as publicly as possible, including his battle with drug addiction. His battle with the substance was a tough one, with him almost losing his life after overdosing on cocaine back in October 2015. He also recovered once, only to relapse in 2016 before eventually entering rehab facility to seek help. The basketball star has now been sober since 2017, but continues to speak publicly about his health struggles, his cocaine addiction and his recovery.
Most recently, he got candid about it through his memoir "Darkness to Light", saying, "When you're present, you kind of understand the consequences and repercussions of what you do, and therefore I have no will to do any drugs that isn't marijuana. I understand the consequences and repercussions of getting high." He added, "I'm trying to go forward and trying to move forward. If I do drugs, that's moving backwards. If I live moving backwards, that means I'm living to die."
12. Demi Lovato
Demi Lovato has always been really vocal about her journey to recovery from drugs addiction, entering rehab at the age of 18 for drugs, self-harm and an eating disorder. She publicly got clean in 2012, only to relapse six years later. Months after announcing that she'd relapsed, she was hospitalized for drug overdose and went on to enter rehab once again to get sober.
In her first statement since her overdose, Demi admitted that addiction is "not something that disappears or fades with time. It is something I must continue to overcome and have not done yet." She added, "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 I came out on the other side." Demi got out of rehab in late last year.
