Jamie Lee Curtis had a secret 10-year addiction to opiates.
The 59-year-old actress was prescribed pills in 1989 after minor plastic surgery for her "hereditary puffy eyes" and spent the next decade doing what she could to get her hands on more medication, even stealing from her friends and family.
She said: "I was ahead of the curve of the opiate epidemic. I had a 10-year run, stealing, conniving. No one knew. No one."
The ‘Halloween’ star’s sister Kelly was the first person to find out about her addiction in 1998 and the actress attended her first recovery meeting in February 1999, confiding in her husband Christopher Guest – the father of her children Annie, 31, and 22-year-old Tom – later that day.
And Jamie – whose late father Tony Curtis abused alcohol, cocaine and heroin, while her half-brother Nicholas died from a heroin overdose in 1994 – couldn’t be prouder of her near-20-year sobriety.
She told People magazine: "I’m breaking the cycle that has basically destroyed the lives of generations in my family. Getting sober remains my single greatest accomplishment… bigger than my husband, bigger than both of my children and bigger than any work, success, failure. Anything."
The ‘True Lies’ actress continues to attend meetings and offers her help and support to others struggling with similar addictions.
She said: "In recovery meetings, anyone who brings up opiates, the entire room will turn and look at me, because I’ll be like, ‘Oh here, talk to me. I’m the opiate girl.’ "
Meanwhile, Jamie recently admitted she doesn’t feel like her career is "hard work" and there are many people who have things much tougher than she does.
She said: "Being an actor in a movie is not hard work. It’s physical, it can hurt a little bit, it can be very taxing emotionally. But any person trying to raise a couple of kids and hold down a couple of jobs works way harder than I’ve ever worked a day in my life."
Jamie Lee Curtis admits opiate addiction
