Actress Patricia Heaton has revealed she quit drinking eight years ago after a mortifying incident where she could not pronounce a word in front of her sons.
The 68-year-old, known for her roles in Everybody Loves Raymond and The Middle, detailed her path to sobriety in an interview with Woman's World published on August 12. Heaton said her drinking escalated just before the pandemic, when her four sons with husband Daniel Hunt, Samuel, John, Joseph and Daniel, left home and she found herself without work.
"The things that had always anchored me, my family and my work, were gone," she explained. "I started thinking, 'What am I supposed to do today?'"
"A glass of wine while cooking became wine with dinner, wine while cleaning up and wine while watching Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!" she said. "One night I realized I had almost finished an entire bottle by myself."
Realising her behaviour was changing, she tapped into her actor training. "I was thinking about alcohol differently," she said. She prayed for help: "God, I think you want me to stop drinking. I would be willing to stop, but you have to make it happen because I can't. I'm willing, but I'm unable."
The following night, she struggled to pronounce the word "tradition" three times in front of her sons and their friends. "My youngest son said, 'That's great, Mom. You can't even speak.' I was completely mortified," she said. The next morning, she decided to quit, saying, "Okay, God. Message received."
Heaton is now developing Solubrae, a nonalcoholic wine brand. "I tried a lot of NA wines," she said. "And they were always either very thin, flat or they tasted like grape juice, and so I thought there's got to be a way to do this." She noted that "women like to participate socially without feeling left out," adding, "I wanted something that felt special."
Lamar Odom and Jason Biggs
Two-time NBA champion Lamar Odom told Page Six Radio in April 2026 that addiction is a disease, following a January 2026 driving under the influence arrest. "If you do your education, addiction is where you suffer from a brain disease, just like cancer or any other disease," he said. "I don't think anyone would wish to have cancer."
Odom, who survived a near-fatal drug overdose in 2015, told USA Today in March 2026 he had passed 60 days of being completely sober. "I have a certain type of mental and physical endurance, but when it comes to getting high and escaping, I'm just like everyone else," he said. "If I could just help the average person and give them faith and hope that they can overcome it, then that's probably one of the reasons why the Lord spared me."
American Pie actor Jason Biggs announced on Instagram in October 2018 he was one year sober. "I first tried to get sober over 5 years ago, when the weight of my obsession with booze and drugs became too heavy for me to handle," he wrote. "Turns out this s--t is hard. After some fits and starts, I've managed to put together one year of sobriety. I'm as proud of it as anything in my life. If you're struggling, know there's help. Don't be ashamed. We can do this."
In March 2024, he told the All the Fails podcast, hosted by his wife Jenny Mollen, about his past hidden struggles. "I'm going to therapy and 'working on things' but meanwhile I'm leaving therapy, having just had a good session, and I'm going to the liquor store and buying a fifth of vodka, drinking it and then driving home," he said. "I knew how to get wasted enough to where I took myself out of the life equation, took myself out of the present, didn't have to connect in a way that made me feel things. I had it figured out to a T. To not get too drunk where I couldn't have a conversation with you. I was replacing those bottles in the bar all the time."
Ashlyn Harris and Offset
Two-time FIFA Women's World Cup champion Ashlyn Harris told the Question Everything with Danielle Robay podcast in 2025 that she misused Adderall during her college soccer career while battling injuries. "I was getting really heavily addicted to Adderall and misusing it," she said. "I was taking it all the time. I would go days without sleeping. It was wild. I felt like I was gonna give myself a heart attack. I was crushing it. I was snorting it. It was so problematic."
She said her college coach, Anson Dorrance, helped her. "It got really, really dark and I had to make some serious adjustments," she explained, "and Anson would have me read books. I started reading this book called Man's Search for Meaning and it's about suffering and reframing it and it changed my life."
Migos rapper Offset revealed on the Baby, This Is Keke Palmer podcast in October 2025 that he was four years sober from codeine, an opioid used in sizzurp. He cited a wake-up call from his teenage son Jordan. "My oldest son kept asking for like pineapple Fanta, but he don't even really drink soda," he said. "And then one day he came in studio like, 'Why yours is different color than mine?' It killed me."
Offset added that the remark touched a nerve. "When I went in my room, I damn near cried," he said. "I felt bad as a father. He don't even notice it's drugs in here though. He don't know, but in my head it's like, him even just saying he want the same soda I want. It's just like, 'Oh no, I'm influencing him.'"
Anthony Hopkins and Jax Taylor
Double Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins discussed his sobriety date, December 29, 1975, on the New York Times podcast The Interview in October 2025. "I was drunk and driving my car here in California in a blackout," he said, "no clue where I was going, when I realized that I could have killed somebody, or myself, which I didn't care about, and I realized that I was an alcoholic." He celebrated 50 years of sobriety in December 2025, telling Instagram followers: "Choose life instead of the opposite. Life life life and more life."
The Valley star Jax Taylor told Bravo's Hot Mic podcast in March 2025 he had substance issues. "I am coming out that I'm an addict," he said. "I have substance issues, primarily with cocaine. It's hard to say out loud." He added, "I've been dealing with this on and off since I was 23 and now I'm 45. There was times where I would stop doing it but then there were times where I'd go heavy on it."
Taylor also quit alcohol. "I don't necessarily think I have an alcohol problem, but the two go hand in hand. I can't do cocaine without drinking. So, I just gave up both," he said. "I'm proud to say I'm 82, 83 days sober right now, which is the longest I've ever gone in my life without either."
Tom Holland and Alec Baldwin
Spider-Man: No Way Home star Tom Holland said he quit alcohol in 2022. "I was definitely addicted to alcohol, not shying away from that at all," he told the On Purpose with Jay Shetty podcast. "I think that anyone that has a beer everyday has probably got a little bit of a problem."
"And then you would just reach that moment where you're like 'Wow, I shouldn't have had that last beer,'" he said. "And you wake up the next day and you have a terrible headache." Since stopping, he said he could sleep better and handle problems better. "Things that would go wrong on set that would normally set me off, I could take in my stride," he said. "I had so much such better mental clarity. I felt healthier. I felt fitter."
Hunt for Red October actor Alec Baldwin discussed his sobriety on a podcast in May 2024. "I don't discuss this a lot," he said. "I discuss it every now and then when it makes sense. I'm 39 years sober. I got sober Feb. 23, 1985."
Baldwin moved to Los Angeles in 1983. "I had a white-hot problem every day for two years. I think I snorted a line of cocaine from here to Saturn. We took it back home. I mean, cocaine was like coffee back then. Everybody was doing it all day long." He quit drugs, and later alcohol, and said he now relies on New York City. "New York relaxes me," he said. "I walk around and I see aspects of it that I've never seen before. I'll look at a building and I'll go, 'My God, I never noticed that about that building, those doors.' I have lunches and coffee and my friends."
Anne Hathaway and Demi Moore
Princess Diaries actress Anne Hathaway told the New York Times in April 2024 she was more than five years sober. "That feels like a milestone to me," she said. "I knew deep down it wasn't for me. And it just felt so extreme to have to say, 'But none?' But none. If you're allergic to something or have an anaphylactic reaction to something, you don't argue with it. So I stopped arguing with it."
She added, "My personal experience with it is that everything is better. For me, it was wallowing fuel. And I don't like to wallow."
Demi Moore accepted the 2018 Woman of the Year Award from the Peggy Albrecht Friendly House, recalling her self-destructive path. "I feel like there's a defining moments in our lives that shape who we are and the direction we go and early in my career, I was spiraling down a path of real self-destruction and no matter what successes I had, I just never felt good enough," she said. "I had absolutely no value for myself and this self-destructive path, it very quickly brought me to a real crisis point and it wasn't clear at the time the reason. Maybe it was divine intervention."
Moore sought treatment in 2012, thanking two unnamed people. "Unless I was dead, I better show up," she said, calling it "a chance to redirect the course of my life before I destroyed everything. Clearly they saw more of me than I saw of myself. And I'm so grateful because without that opportunity, without their believing me, I wouldn't be standing here today."
Noah Cyrus and Eminem
Singer Noah Cyrus told Rolling Stone in 2022 she had been in recovery for a Xanax addiction since 2020. "It gave me so much structure in the time that I really needed structure, because I didn't want to just be sitting around and stirring in my brain," she said. "It gave me hope."
She said her friends "kind of cosigned" her use. "Once I felt that it was possible to silence things out for a second and numb your pain, it was over," she said, adding "it just kind of becomes this dark pit, bottomless pit." During the pandemic, she found herself struggling. "I was completely nodding off and falling asleep," she said. "And unable to keep my head up or keep my eyes open, because I was so far gone. It took some time to get on my own two feet."
Oscar-winning rapper Eminem discussed his past prescription pill abuse in his 2025 documentary Stans, recalling an overdose that made him miss his daughter Hailie Jade's birthday. "I cried because it was like, 'Oh my god, I missed that,'" he said. "I kept saying to myself, 'Do you want to f--king miss this again? Do you want to miss everything? If you can't do it for yourself, you f--king pussy, at least do it for them.'"
He channelled his energy into music. "It did something. It turned the light on," he said. "I realized I'm not embarrassed anymore about sobriety. I started treating sobriety like a super power and I took pride in the fact that I was able to quit."
Dax Shepard and Jamie Lee Curtis
Parenthood actor Dax Shepard revealed in 2020 on his Armchair Expert podcast that he relapsed on Vicodin after a motorcycle accident, following 16 years of sobriety. "For the last eight weeks maybe, I don't really know, I'm on them all day," he said. "And I'm allowed to be on them at some dosage because I have a prescription and then I'm also augmenting that."
"And I hate it," he continued. "And I'm lying to other people. And I know I have to quit. But my tolerance is going up so quickly that I'm now in a situation where I'm taking, you know, eight 30s a day, and I know that's an amount that's going to result in a pretty bad withdrawal. And I start getting really scared, and I'm starting to feel really lonely. And I just have this enormous secret."
Halloween star Jamie Lee Curtis told People in 2018 about her 10-year opiate addiction, which started in the late 1980s after plastic surgery for hereditary puffy eyes. "I had a 10-year run, stealing, conniving," she said. "No one knew. No one."
She reached a low in the summer of 1998 when she stole painkillers from her visiting sister. "I knew she had them in her suitcase in our guest room closet," she said. "I basically took all her opiates. When she was leaving I knew she would pack her suitcase and find her pills missing. I knew I had to acknowledge to her what I had done, and so I wrote her a note and left it on her suitcase. I came home that day, and she put her arms around me and told me she loved me and she was concerned about me and she was unwilling to watch me kill myself." Curtis told her husband Christopher Guest on February 3, 1999, the day she attended her first meeting. "He was incredulous that he'd never noticed," she said.
Drew Barrymore and Bradley Cooper
Drew Barrymore told CBS Mornings in 2021 she had given up alcohol. "I'm just going to say something for the first time in a long time: I have not had a drink of alcohol in two and a half years," she said. "And it was something that I realized just did not serve me in my life. It's so funny. When we reveal ourselves and our truths and the things we've worked so hard for, it's so liberating and vulnerable all at the same time."
In 2023, she told the Los Angeles Times she does not use the sober label because she does not want people to think she is "some perfect Puritan." She said: "I kept thinking, 'I'll master this. I'll figure it out.' And finally, I just realized: 'You've never mastered this, and you never will.'"
A Star Is Born actor Bradley Cooper told the Smartless podcast in 2022 that his friend Will Arnett confronted him about his cocaine addiction in the early 2000s. "That was the first time I ever realized I had a problem with drugs and alcohol," Cooper said. "I'll just never forget it." He credited Arnett as the reason he got clean, adding, "He took that risk of having a hard conversation with me that put me on a path of deciding to change my life."
Brad Pitt and Ryan Phillippe
Fight Club star Brad Pitt thanked Cooper for helping him get sober at the 2020 National Board of Review Annual Awards. "I got sober because of this guy," he said. "And every day's been happier ever since."
Cruel Intentions actor Ryan Phillippe wrote on Instagram in September 2023 that it was "the longest I've gone since I was a teen without some kind of nicotine or marijuana in my system (among other things)." He added: "Feeling thankful for the freedom that comes with breaking addictions and dependency on substance. Sobriety, clarity, and spiritual connectedness feels real good."
Demi Lovato and Jada Pinkett Smith
Singer Demi Lovato revealed a relapse after six years sober in her 2018 song "Sober", singing: "Mama, I'm so sorry I'm not sober anymore / And Daddy please forgive me for the drinks spilled on the floor / To the ones who never left me / We've been down this road before I'm so sorry, I'm not sober anymore."
After being hospitalized for a near-fatal overdose a month later, she wrote on Instagram: "What I've learned is that this illness is not something that disappears or fades with time. It is something I must continue to overcome and have not done yet...I now need time to heal and focus on my sobriety and road to recovery. The love you have all shown me will never be forgotten and I look forward to the day where I can say I came out on the other side. I will keep fighting."
Jada Pinkett Smith recalled her addictions to sex and alcohol in 2018. "My sort of addictions jump. They jump around," she said. "When I was younger, I definitely think I had a sex addiction of some kind, yes, that everything could be fixed by sex."
She realised she had a drinking problem when she was alone. "I remember reaching a rock bottom that time I was in the house by myself and I had those two bottles of wine and was going for the third bottle," she said. "And I was like, 'Now hold up. You're in the this house by yourself going onto your third bottle of wine? You might have a problem.' So I went cold turkey. That's the thing about me: I can go cold turkey. I am a binger, and I always have to watch myself and I can just get obsessed with things." She added, "It's not what you're doing but how you're with it. Why you're doing it. It's the behavior that's attached to it because if you want to have a lot of sex, that's great, but why are you having all that sex? That's what you've got to look at."
AJ McLean and Bow Wow
Backstreet Boys member AJ McLean said he first tried drugs before filming the music video for "The Call" in 2000, and "was off the walls". He got sober in 2021 and told People in July 2025 he had lost 32 pounds by cutting out alcohol and fast food. "I'm sticking this one out all the way," he said. "It's a daily thing. But I have finally done what has been suggested amongst the sober community, and my life has flipped in a positive way."
McLean noted he is "still learning, still growing," adding, "I've discovered new verbiage, such as boundaries, never really had those. Now I have those, which is a blessing. AJ is a member of a group. He is a persona, but he doesn't define me as an individual. Alexander James is who I am."
Rapper Bow Wow, born Shad Moss, tweeted about his past cough syrup addiction after the death of Mac Miller. "To the youth Stop with these dumb ass drugs," he wrote. "Im going to let something out. When me and Omarion worked on FACE OFF album. I was high off lean everyday! When yall saw me on BET going off on Torae i was high off lean. My attitude everything changed. My fans started to...Turn on me my family too. I never promoted lean in my songs. The whole time i was on the UCP tour with Chris Brown I WAS SIPPING 4's atleast 7 times a day. I was addicted until our show in Cincinnati.. i came off stg and passed out woke up in the hospital i was having withdraws."
"I never felt a pain like that ever," he added. "It was summer but i was walking round with 3 hoodies on because i was so cold. I missed the chicago show of that tour baltimore show BECAUSE I WAS F--KING HIGH AND SICK!!!! that s--t is not cool and i was doing it to be cool! Kick that s--t! Be a good son or daughter. Be the best you. Ima start being more vocal. We gotta save the youth from going out early. Parents watch your kids. Explain to them. We want yall to live man. I almost died f--king with syrup." He added: "To this day im affected my stomach will...Never be the same and it hasnt been. DRUG FREE IS THE WAY TO BE! smarten up tighten up out here. We cant lose no more of you. Not one! I love all yall. The young artist all the kids around the world.. dont follow a trend. Break the cycle. PEACE."
Lily Allen and Dennis Quaid
Singer Lily Allen said in 2018 that she drank until she was "parisitically drunk" and abused cocaine. Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin staged an intervention after she accidentally headbutted Orlando Bloom and knocked herself out at Kate Hudson's Halloween party. Allen told The Guardian, "Nothing seemed to reach or satisfy me. I remember waking up one morning in those dark days thinking, 'Maybe it's time for heroin, because nothing else is working.'"
Parent Trap actor Dennis Quaid told Today in 2018 he did cocaine daily during the 1980s, noting "there was a completely different attitude" then and "It was even in some movie budgets." Quaid said: "I spent many, many a night screaming at God to 'Please take this away from me and I'll never do it again, cause I've only got an hour before I have to be at work.' Then at 4 o'clock in the afternoon I'd go, 'Oh it's not so bad.'" Quaid entered rehab in 1990 after a "white light experience where I saw myself either dead or losing everything that meant anything to me," and confessed to his then fiancee Meg Ryan. "That was the end of the love affair with me and cocaine," he said.
Ryan Lochte, Jason Ritter and Brantley Gilbert
Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte sought treatment for alcohol addiction in 2018 after trying to kick in his own hotel room door in Newport Beach. His representative told E! News: "Ryan has been battling from alcohol addiction for many years and unfortunately it has become a destructive pattern for him. He has acknowledged that he needs professional assistance to overcome his problem and will be getting help immediately." They added, "Ryan knows that conquering this disease now is a must for him to avoid making future poor decisions, to be the best husband and father he can be, and if he wants to achieve his goal to return to dominance in the pool in his 5th Olympics in Tokyo in 2020."
Parenthood actor Jason Ritter told The Drew Barrymore Show in March 2023 he initially stopped drinking for his wife, Melanie Lynskey. "one of the things that you're not supposed to do is get sober for somebody else," he said. "At a point, I knew how amazing she was and I thought she would be incredible for someone who deserved her, and I didn't feel like I was that person. I felt a little bit too crazy." He told E! News: "It was easier for me to say that I'm doing it for her because, at that time, I didn't feel like I was sort of worth much. I didn't care as much about hurting myself as I did about hurting her. So, initially it was easier for me to say, 'I'm doing this for her.' And now, I'm doing it for myself."
Country singer Brantley Gilbert went to rehab on December 18, 2011, after a hospitalization for pancreatitis. He told People he kept a laptop bag filled with alcohol "at arm's reach at all times," drinking every couple of hours and taking pain pills. "It wasn't like I was stumbling around all day," he said. "I was fully functioning, I wrote more songs then than I do now. That was the scary part." Gilbert tried to slow down on his own. "I still put it off and was trying to slow down on my own, like, 'All right I'm only gonna let myself take two pills today. I'm only gonna drink this much of my bottle and make a mark on the bottle,'" he said. "And it would work a couple days, and then somebody throws a party." He finally realised he needed help: "I got to the point where I knew it was something I couldn't do on my own. Pissed me off to no end and embarrassed me. I'm a pretty strong-willed person but that was the one thing in my life that I couldn't get to stick."
