Almost 20 years after getting clean, Jamie Lee Curtis continues to attend recovery meetings — this time around to help others struggling with their addictions.
“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,’” said the 59-year-old “Halloween” actress.
In an interview with People, Curtis revealed that she was addicted to opioids for a decade, starting in the late 1980s. Her recovery, she says, is what defines her the most.
“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,” she told the publication.
Curtis said she was first prescribed painkillers after minor plastic surgery in 1989 for her “hereditary puffy eyes.” In the following years, she obtained pills any way she could, including stealing them from friends and family.
“I was ahead of the curve of the opiate epidemic,” she said. “I had a 10-year run, stealing, conniving. No one knew. No one.”
She even kept it from Christopher Guest, to whom Curtis has been married for 33 years. Guest didn’t find out about Curtis’ addiction until the day that she attended her first recovery meeting in 1999.
“I’m breaking the cycle that has basically destroyed the lives of generations in my family,” she said.
Her father Tony Curtis and half-brother Nicholas Curtis were among the family members who battled addictions. Tony abused alcohol, cocaine and heroin, and Nicholas died in 1994 from a heroin overdose.
