Jamie Lee Curtis: I am a controlled addict
Jamie Lee Curtis has opened up about her battle with alcoholism, describing herself as a "controlled addict".
Jamie Lee Curtis considers herself to be a "controlled addict".
The 66-year-old actress is a recovering alcoholic, but Jamie insists that she's always retained some degree of control over her life, even when she was at her lowest ebb.
The Hollywood star told the Guardian newspaper: "I am a controlled addict.
"In recovery we talk about how, in order to start recovering, you have to hit what you call a ‘bottom’. You have to crash and burn, lose yourself and your family and your job and your resources in order to know that the way you were living didn’t work. I refer to myself as an Everest bottom; I am the highest bottom I know.
"When I acknowledged my lack of control, I was in a very controlled state. I lost none of the external aspects of my life.
"The only thing I had lost was my own sense of myself and self-esteem."
Asked whether her success disguised the seriousness of her addiction troubles, Jamie replied: "There’s no one way to be an addict or an alcoholic. People hide things – I was lucky, and I am ambitious, and so I never let that self-medication get in the way of my ambition or work or creativity. It never bled through. No one would ever have said that had been an issue for me."
Jamie admits that her addiction caused a lot of damage to herself and the people around her.
However, the actress insists that she's moved on from that period of her life, describing herself as "an old lady now".
She said: "The external costs are awful for people; but the internal costs are more sinister and deadly, because to understand that you are powerless over something other than your own mind and creativity is something. But that was a long time ago. I’m an old lady now."
In February, Jamie took to social media to celebrate 26 years of sobriety.
She wrote on Instagram at the time: "26 years ago today I walked into my first recovery meeting. Since then, my life has completely changed. I have made beautiful, beautiful, friendships and it has expanded my life beyond recovery and it has given me the family life and creative life. I never thought possible."
