Jamie Lee Curtis is sharing why she is “incredibly lucky.”
After celebrating 24 years of sobriety in February, the Oscar winner reflected on her past struggles with opioid addiction in a new interview on the Morning Joe — taped before the SAG-AFTRA strike began — stating that her “worst day was almost invisible to anyone else.”
Jamie Lee Curtis Says There Is ‘Always Hope’ When It Comes to Overcoming Addiction
“I’m lucky. I didn’t make terrible decisions high or under the influence that then, for the rest of my life, I regret,” she expressed. “There are women in prison whose lives have been shattered by drugs and alcohol, not because they were violent felons, not because they were horrible people, but because they were addicts.”
“I am incredibly lucky that that wasn’t my path,” she added.
Jamie Lee Curtis/ Instagram
The 64-year-old explained that sobriety made everything “crystal and clear” for her. “I was an opiate addict, and I liked a good opiate buzz,” she shared. “And if fentanyl was available, as easily available as it is today on the street, I’d be dead.”
Jamie Lee Curtis Says She Once ‘Did Cocaine and Freebased’ with Dad Tony Curtis Before Sobriety
Curtis’ addiction lasted until 1999. “I was ahead of the curve of the opiate epidemic,” she told PEOPLE in 2018. “I had a 10-year run, stealing, conniving. No one knew. No one.”
The Everything Everywhere All at Once actress, who is a mom of two daughters – Ruby, 27, and Annie, 36, with screenwriter husband Christopher Guest – added that her sobriety journey has allowed her to live an “incredible life.”
In that same interview, she expressed her sobriety is her “greatest accomplishment.”
“My sobriety has been the key to freedom, the freedom to be me, to not be looking in the mirror in the reflection and trying to see somebody else,” said the Halloween actress. “I look in the mirror. I see myself. I accept myself. And I move on because you know what? The world is filled with things we need to do.”
“I’m breaking the cycle that has basically destroyed the lives of generations in my family,” she said.
Curtis has a history of addiction in her family, including her brother Nicholas, who died of a heroin overdose when he was 21 years old, and her father Tony Curtis, who also abused alcohol, cocaine, and heroin.
“Getting sober remains my single greatest accomplishment,” she admitted. “Bigger than my husband, bigger than both of my children and bigger than any work, success, failure. Anything.”
If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, please contact the SAMHSA helpline at 1-800-662-HELP.
Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education