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Dax Shepard has opened about his current struggles after his long-running, publicly celebrated sobriety.
The actor admitted in an interview on his podcast Armchair Expert posted Friday that after 16 years clean and sober, he relapsed and began taking Vicodin, saying that for the previous eight weeks, “I’m on them all day.”
The actor talked about his father dying in 2012 of cancer and how that began the rocky road of his sobriety, which at that point he had maintained for eight years.
But it was his motorcycle accident in August that led to his full relapse. Shepard said he felt like he was “managing” his addiction well until podcast co-host, Monica Padman, called him out on his altered behavior. “And I start lying to you pretty regularly. And I hate it. And I am lying to other people. And I know I have to quit.”
Shepard explained he had felt deep guilt about hiding his “enormous secret” from wife Kristen Bell and friends, such as Padman.
“I felt so terrible about the lying,” Shepard said. “I was just very scared and I felt very, very lonely.”
The actor said he finally came clean to his wife and Padman at the same time a little more than a week ago and asked them for help. He also said the fact that his sobriety was public, celebrated news, made it that much harder to admit his stumble.
The episode recorded Sept. 21 is titled “Day 7,” in honor of Shepard’s seventh day of sobriety. “If you’ve got more than seven days, you’ve got more than me. And you’re my elder, and I look up to you. Onward and upward,” he said during the podcast’s conclusion.
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