Jamie Lee Curtis opened up in an interview with Variety about her former struggle with addiction to Vicodin, and how at the time, “no one knew at all”.
Jamie Lee Curtis has gone public about her former struggle with addiction to Vicodin in a recent interview with Variety.
For those of you that don’t know, Vicodin is a commonly prescribed medication used to treat moderate to severe pain. However, can easily be abused and used recreationally.
She first revealed exactly how she became acquainted with Vicodin in the first place:
“I had a routine plastic surgery because of a cameraman,” she said. “I naturally had puffy eyes. If you see photographs of me as a child, I look like I haven’t slept.”
“We were shooting a scene in a courtroom with that kind of high, nasty fluorescent light,” she continued.
“And it came around to my coverage in the scene, and [the cameraman] said, “I’m not shooting her today. Her eyes are too puffy.”
“I was so mortified and so embarrassed and had just so much shame about it that after that movie”.
“I went and had routine plastic surgery to remove the puffiness. They gave me Vicodin as a painkiller for something that wasn’t really painful.”
“I was the wildly controlled drug addict and alcoholic. I never did it when I worked. I never took drugs before 5 p.m.”
“No one knew at all. Not one person knew except the people I would get [the painkillers] from .”
But that was all about to change. On a night like any other, as she was making dinner for her family, she popped five Vicodin pills and washed them down with wine.
Little did she know, a friend of her’s who had been staying at her house, had spotted her from the next room.
“I heard this voice: ‘You know, Jamie, I see you. I see you with your little pills,'” she said.
“‘You think you’re so fabulous and so great, but the truth is you’re dead. You’re a dead woman.’”
At that point, “the jig was up,” Jamie recalled.
“Now I knew someone knew. I had been nursing a secret Vicodin addiction for a very long time — over 10 years.”
Even though Jamie’s cover had been compromised, she wasn’t quite ready to kick her bad habit.
A few weeks later, her sister, who had recently been prescribed Vicodin for an injury, was visiting and staying in Jamie’s home.
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Jamie explained that her sister wasn’t quite as big of a fan of Vicodin as she was — she didn’t like the side effects — so, she tossed the full bottle of medication in her suitcase.
It wasn’t long before Jamie was sneaking into her room to steal it.
“But then when she was moving out, I knew she was going to find the empty bottle,” she said.
“So I wrote her a letter and I said, ‘I’ve done a terrible thing, and I’ve stolen your pills from you, and I’m sorry.’”
“When I came home that night, I was terrified that she was going to be so angry at me.”
“But she just looked at me and put her arms out and hugged me and said , ‘You are an addict and I love you'”.
“‘But I am not going to watch you die.’ That’s it. She didn’t wag her finger at me,” she went on.
“She didn’t tell me anything else.”
About two months later, Jamie stumbled upon a copy of Tom Chiarella’s story about his addiction to painkillers called, “Vicodin, My Vicodin.”
The story inspired her and jumpstarted her recovery.
And thanks to that, Jamie is now 20 years clean and sober — something to be very proud of!
Let us know what you think of Jamie’s interview with Variety and owning up to the public about her past struggles with addiction.
