Illustration by Lusco y Fusco
Jamie Lee Curtis is more than just a “scream queen,” the nickname she earned for her numerous appearances in blockbuster horror movies, including 1978’s Halloween and its sequel, The Fog, Prom Night, and Terror Train.
She won a Best Actress Golden Globe for her star turn as the wife of an undercover spy, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, in 1994’s action-thriller True Lies. Her impressive oeuvre includes such notable movies as the comedy Trading Places with Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy, My Girl also starring Aykroyd and Macaulay Culkin, and A Fish Called Wandawith Kevin Kline.
But behind the scenes, there was an ugly darkness lurking. Curtis developed a serious addiction to narcotics.
In an editorial she wrote about Michael Jackson’s death for The Huffington Post, Curtis spoke of her addiction in vivid detail, comparing herself to the King of Pop:
I too found painkiller safter a routine cosmetic surgical procedure and I too became addicted. The morphine becomes the warm bath from which to escape painful reality. Finding the narcotic was merely a matter of time. The pain needed numbing.
She goes on to note she believes she is lucky and that her recovery is the “single greatest accomplishment” of her life.
Body-image issues were the impetus for Curtis to get plastic surgery and Botox. She was initially given Vicodin pills for post-operative pain but began abusing them and also drinking heavily.
Curtis found herself desperately waiting for prescriptions to be refilled because she had taken more than the prescribed dose. She empathizes with Prince, who died of a fentanyl overdose in 2016.
“I was an opioid addict, hidden,” she told the addiction blog The Fix in 2017. “[I] only got more famous and more attention during it, and it was one of the most humiliating, shameful secrets [I’ve had]… It was horrible… If one person listening to this understands… Maybe if they get sober, then [it’s] absolutely worth it. The beauty of recovery is it’s about connecting. It’s one addict talking to another, saying, ‘I get it.’”
Jamie Lee Curtis also wrote a piece for the Huffington Post in the aftermath of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death due to heroin overdose, published on the 15thanniversary of her sobriety. In it, she outlines the crisis and struggles that multitudes of addicts who are not famous face every day.
On the opioid epidemic, she told The Hill:
Sadly we are seeing that opiate addicts are everywhere and from every ethnic and socio-economic strata. They are in the clergy, the medical profession, the legal profession, law enforcement, teaching and every other profession. It’s important for people to understand that opiates don’t discriminate.
The curse of addiction may have been in her genes: her brother died at 23, after suffering a heart attack from a heroin overdose, and her parents were both heavy drinkers.
Curtis has been sober since 1999. Unlike some other celebrities, she didn’t go to cushy, expensive rehabs. Instead, she did it through less-glamorous 12-step meetings.
“Help is available,” she once said. “I am a living testament that without fancy rehabs and without all sorts of pharmaceuticals, I was able tofind sobriety as have millions of other people in rooms all over the world… This is an addiction, this is an illness and there is help, but the help needs to be longstanding and ongoing.”
Since achieving sobriety, Curtis has been giving back to the recovery community by sharing her story in such venues as Good Housekeeping and More, She now volunteers with anti-drug campaigns and is a source of inspiration for the addicted.
Curtis appeared on Larry King Live on CNN in 2001, alongside evangelist James Bakker and former Texas governor Ann Richards, to talk about addiction. She noted that she was addicted to Vicodin.
“I lived in a private battle with this for a long time because I was afraid — of what you would think about, what other people would think. I was a wife, I was a mother. I was very successful in many careers, she told Larry King. “And I was afraid. And I think that most people live in fear, and I think fear is a terrible thing.”
Nowadays, Curtis serves on the board of CASA, California Alcohol and Substance Abuse recovery. She is an alcohol and drug counselor who also works on anti-drug campaigns.
“Getting sober just exploded my life,” Curtis once said. “Now I have a much clearer sense of myself and what I can and can’t do. I am more successful than I have ever been. I feel very positive whewre I never did before, and I think that’s all a direct result of getting sober.”
