In a new ABC News interview, the former 'Suddenly Susan' star blames the aftermath of her infamous 2017 photoshoot featuring Trump's mock-severed head for her developing a painkiller addiction.
- Aug 3, 2021
AceShowbiz - Kathy Griffin struggled with a painkiller addiction and considered suicide during the COVID lockdown last year (2020).
The comedienne, who has also revealed she's battling lung cancer, admits her 2020 crisis was linked to the aftermath of an infamous 2017 photoshoot, which featured Kathy holding a severed head that resembled then-U.S. President Donald Trump.
In a new ABC News interview, the 60-year-old says she received "legit death threats with everything" online, including "Google pictures of the house, the address."
She adds, "I mean, folks showed up to my husband's parents' house. They tracked my sister down when she was dying of cancer in the hospital and called her... I picked up the call and heard it myself because I happened to be visiting her."
The drama turned Griffin to painkillers. "I take a couple pills now and again, who doesn't?" she told ABC. "Also, my age was a big part of it. I mean, who bottoms out and tries to take their life at 59? It's almost a joke, right, and by the way, someday, this will all be comedy. Trust me... I was laughing to stay alive."
"What I found is I felt like, if I can't make others laugh, then there's no purpose for me to live. There's no reason for me to live."
"I started thinking about suicide more and more as I got into the pill addiction and it became almost an obsessive thought. I started really convincing myself it was a good decision. I got my living revocable trust in order. I had all my ducks in a row. I wrote the note - the whole thing."
She has since detoxed and is celebrating one year of sobriety.
"The detox was nasty," Kathy explains. "I mean, it was months. I mean, the tremors... and the flop sweat, and I was so unsteady. Like, when I would brush my teeth, my husband had to hold my hips so I wouldn't fall over."
"I would go to, like, two Zoom meetings a day, and the sober clinicians would come over every single day and they would pee-test me. And every day, my goal was to... test clean."
