Drug addiction is not always an easy topic to speak freely about. Especially when the subject hits close to home.
Many celebrities over the years have detailed their struggles with addiction, their road to sobriety and occasionally been honest about their relapses. A few notable Black celebrities have lead the charge in being the most vocal about their journey.
Keep reading for a few of the celebrities who have revealed their struggles with addiction and how they work everyday to remain clean and sober.
Oprah Winfrey
Over the course of her career, Oprah Winfrey has remained open about his struggle with addiction. Particularly in her early 20s. In an episode of her talk show in 1995 she detailed her experience with crack cocaine in her early 20s. She recalls her career being the driving force that made her realize that she needed to stay clean to have the career she wanted. Recently, Oprah opened up that being on a GLP-1 helped her to get sober from alcohol.
“I was a big fan of tequila. I literally had 17 shots one night.” She credits the weightloss drug with helping her stay off of alcohol. “The fact that I no longer even have a desire for it is pretty amazing.”
Naomi Campbell
The supermodel entered rehab in 1999 for cocaine addiction after she collapsed during a photoshoot. She has stated that one of the reasons she turned to drugs was because she was grieving the murder of her close friend Gianni Versace. She got candid about her addiction in the Apple TV+ documentary The Super Models.
“I guess when I started using, that was one of the things I tried to cover up, was grief. Addiction is such a bulls—t thing, it really is. You think, ‘Oh it’s gonna heal that wound.’ It doesn’t. It can cause such huge fear and anxiety. So I got really angry,” she shared.
As part of her recovery process she started attending Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
Gucci Mane
During his early career, Gucci Mane struggled heavily with an addiction to lean and other substances. He has been sober since his release from federal prison in 2016 and has become an advocate for sober living. In his memoir Episodes: The Diary of a Recovering Mad Man he talked at length about his recovery. He shared that detoxing from lean felt “like death.”
“Drying out from drinking lean is probably the worst feeling in the world,” he shared. “It tears your body down. It tears your mind down.” One of the things that helped the rapper get clean while serving his prison sentence was the book As a Man Thinketh by James Alan released in 1903.
Mary J. Blige
Mary J. Blige started using drugs in her early teens to deal with the pain of emotional and sexual abuse she experienced as a young girl. In her 2011 Behind the Music special she says that she started using as a way to “kill the visual of what happened to me when I was five.”
Blige did not go to any formal rehab to help her get clean. Instead she credits her personal discipline and her faith in God as the things that helped her to heal from her addiction issues.
“We numb ourselves with drugs and alcohol and people and shopping and shit, to cover up what’s really going on inside,” she said. “You’re taking drugs so you can go out and feel courageous, or go out and feel beautiful or whatever. You’re doing it to cover up something.”
Samuel L. Jackson
Actor Samuel L. Jackson struggled with addiction and partying in the 80s and 90s before getting sober in 1991.
“I had basically moved into the basement of our brownstone,” he shared in an interview. “I was like the troll in the basement, and every now and then I’d come upstairs and hover around to do something. I was addicted and being crazy.”
It was his wife who urged him to enter a rehabilitation program, and fearing that he might lose his family, he chose to go through with it. “She didn’t have to try to fix me,” he said. “She could’ve just said, ‘Get out,’ and left me into the world, let me go and be whatever I was going to be.”
Kid Cudi
Kid Cudi started using drugs in 2009 to cope with mental health issues brought on by his sudden fame. He dealt with depression and suicidal ideation which caused him to self medicate.
I was running to the grave,” the artist shared with CBS This Morning. “I had a death wish.”
The rapper was arrested in 2010 for possession of a controlled substance which was a wakeup call for him. “I didn’t allow the public to make me feel bad about my mistake. The reason why I was doing cocaine was so I could maintain so I didn’t blow my brains out. I really didn’t give a f— what people thought, I was doing this so I could maintain,” he shared.
After getting clean, he relapsed in 2016 which caused a stroke. “I was watching tv in the rehab center and my vision got crossed… I don’t think I noticed until the next morning that my speech and movement were slow. And then we went to the doctor, ran some tests, an they told us I had a stroke.” Luckily, due to his age and health he was able to make a full recovery, but it scared him enough to stay clean.
