Before getting into the post let's clarify what addiction actually means.
Addiction is a brain disorder characterized by compulsive engagement in rewarding pleasure despite adverse consequences.
Addiction is now not a condition but is defined as a disease by most medical associations, including the American Medical Association and the American Society of Addiction Medicine.
We'll be looking at now clean celebrities who struggled with some form of addiction in past either before becoming famous or while keeping it secret from the press.
#1 Bradley Cooper
| Age | 45 years |
| Born in | Philadelphia |
Bradley Cooper was recently interviewed by Barbara Walters in a follow up regarding his addiction to alcohol and painkillers in his early years as an actor.
Today, Cooper is 11 years sober from drugs and alcohol and proud to say that he owes his life and career to his sobriety.
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It wasn’t until 2012, that Bradley Cooper came out about his struggle with addiction in his 20s. He revealed that it took him until he was 29 to get sober and set his life back on track.
Cooper suffered from an addiction to painkillers and alcohol which started to have a serious effect on his life and career.
With his new-found life of sobriety, Bradley Cooper landed the role in The Hangover, which would blast his name through millions of homes across the world.
This influx of fame would elevate a simple family man into People's Magazine “Sexiest Man Alive.” Cooper would later accept leading roles in box office hits like American Hustle, American Sniper, Silver Linings Playbook and Joy.
Cooper states that he could never have achieved the success he is experiencing today if he had not managed his addiction.
#2 Ed Sheeran
| Age | 28 years |
| Born in | Halifax, West Yorkshire, England |
English singer and songwriter Ed Sheeran is one of the world’s best-selling music artists. But just like many others in the professional music industry, Sheeran has experienced the negative effects of substance use.
In a recent interview, Sheeran opened up about a bicycle crash that resulted in serious injury and about his past struggles with substance abuse.
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In October 2017, Sheeran borrowed a bicycle from a friend and crashed after trying to go down a steep hill. Immediately after his crash, the songwriter got up and continued cycling to a local pub.
Early the following morning, Sheeran woke up in a lot of pain and went to the hospital, where he learned he had broken his wrist, elbow, and rib.
Sheeran then canceled five shows on his musical tour in Tokyo, Taipei, Osaka, Seoul, and Hong Kong to take time off and support his body’s healing process.
Sheeran says he first realized he had a substance abuse problem when he started using substances regularly on his own.
The singer hasn’t specified which substances he was using, but opened up about his history with heavy alcohol use and about once using MDMA.
Sheeran also stated that, at one point in his life, he was consuming alcohol daily, which was interfering with his ability to work, write songs, and perform.
#3 Terry crews
| Age | 51 years |
| Born in | Flint, Michigan, U.S. |
As far as pop culture is concerned, Terry Crews is basically the ultimate man.
He played football in the NFL. He’s the unequivocal star of a TV comedy (Brooklyn Nine-Nine) and action movie trilogy (The Expendables).
He starred on the cover of Men’s Fitness, and has the personalized workout to show for it. He’s been a happily married man for nearly 3 decades, he has five kids, and he’s so enamored with his family life that he wrote a book about manhood.
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But up until six or seven years ago, Crews wrestled privately with a problem that affects a surprising number of men: pornography addiction.
In a series of three videos he posted to Facebook over the past two weeks under the heading “Dirty Little Secret,” Crews explains how his his addiction became progressively worse because he tried to keep it secret, even from his wife Rebecca King-Crews, and even as it damaged his relationships.
Crews also refuted the idea that pornography could never constitute an actual addiction. “Some people denied it,” he said.
“They’d say, ‘Hey, man, you can’t be addicted to pornography.’ But let me tell you something: If day turns into night, and you’re still watching, you’ve probably got a problem. And that was me.”
Pornography “changes the way you think about people,” he said in the live video, speaking into the camera from his car.
“People become objects. People become body parts. They become things to be used, rather than people to be loved.”
#4 Simon pegg
| Age | 49 years |
| Born in | Brock worth, Gloucestershire, England |
It was the start of a long and tortuous journey. Pegg, now 48, says he had been aware that he suffered from depression since he was 18, but until 2005 had always dealt with it by self-medicating. He would feel sad, he would have a drink, he would feel better.
Repeat when needed. There was no time to stop and thinkabout it – he had a career to build and countless projects to get through. But after flying to Los Angeles to shoot Mission: Impossible III (2006), things started to unravel.
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“When I watch that film back, I can see where I was then, which was fairly lost, and unhappy, and an alcoholic,” he says.
It was the start of what he calls “the crisis years” – although most of his fans will have been blissfully unaware of it. “Because I hid it,” he says. “I’m an actor, so I acted … all the time.”
A turning point for Pegg came after his daughter, Matilda, was born – not because it snapped him out of it, but because it didn’t.
“It was the most cosmic experience of my life,” he says. “I thought it would fix things and it just didn’t. Because it can’t. Nothing can, other than a dedicated approach, whether that’s therapy or medication, or whatever.”
Funnily enough, the crisis that reached a head with Mission: Impossible III started to resolve itself around the time of the movie’s 2011 follow-up.
Pegg says he went into recovery as shooting started, and if you rewatch the film with eagle eyes you will notice him returning to health as the movie progresses. “We always laugh about it when we watch the movie. Try it! You’ll be like: ‘Damn, he’s got cheekbones suddenly!’”
#5 Adele
| Age | 31 years |
| Born in | London, England |
Grammy winning singer Adele is best known for her amazing soulful voice and songs. However, her life has not been an easy one as she has experienced heartbreak.
In an upcoming biography coming out soon, Adele admits that she had a serious alcohol problem in the past. Her drinking became such a problem that it almost destroyed her promising career.
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Many people struggling with alcohol problems can link the start of their addiction with traumatic events or hardships in their life. For Adele, there were many events in her life that may have contributed to her drinking.
Adele shares that her father had alcohol problems and walked out on the family when she was three years old which deeply affected her.
In addition, the singer has had a string of bad relationships that ended in heartbreak. She began to drink heavily to cope with the pain she felt from her failed relationships.
For individuals struggling with alcohol addiction, their drinking may start affecting their work performance and their health.
Adele reports that she was drinking so much that on one occasion she forgot the words to her songs as she went on stage to perform.
She also reported that she couldn’t wake up in time for work or she missed work altogether. Her persistent hangovers were affecting her voice as she stated that her voice was “never in form.”
It seemed that everything she had worked for, including her gifted voice was slipping away due to her alcohol abuse.
Oftentimes, people who become dependent on alcohol require alcohol detox and alcohol rehabilitation to break the chains of addiction.
For Adele, having surgery to repair her overworked vocal chords made her stop drinking and she is now committed to living a healthier life.
Hopefully Adele can keep from going back to a life of alcohol abuse.
That's it for this post. Hope you like it!
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