Jamie Lee Curtis Details Past Opiate Addiction in Reaction to Prince’s Death

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Jamie Lee Curtis (Photo: Getty Images)

In a new essay for The Huffington Post, Jamie Lee Curtis opens up about the opiate addiction she and millions of other Americans — reportedly including Prince — have struggled with.

“I too, waited anxiously for a prescription to be filled for the opiate I was secretly addicted to,” Curtis writes. “I too, took too many at once. I too, sought to kill emotional and physical pain with painkillers. Kill it. Make it stop.”

The New York Times has reported that Prince sought help for an opiate addiction — most likely due to long-term use of prescription painkillers — shortly before his death. In fact, it was reportedly a man named Andrew Kornfeld, the son of pain medication addiction specialist Dr. Howard Kornfeld, who found Prince unresponsive in his elevator and called 911.

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Prince (Photo: Getty Images)

Curtis writes that she became addicted to opiates after she was prescribed painkillers following a medical procedure.

In fact, that’s how many people in America become addicts. First seeking a high from painkillers and eventually succumbing to a full-fledged heroin addiction.

Curtis calls herself “one of the lucky ones,” as she has been in recovery for 17 years. According to the American Society of Addiction Medicine, painkiller overdoses led to 18,893 accidental deaths in America in 2014, with another 10,574 people dying from accidental heroin overdoses.

“It seems now that the governmental body, the AMA, the FDA, and the media are starting to address the rampant epidemic of opiate addiction. There have been reclassifications and attempts at reigning in the overprescription of opiates,” Curtis writes. “Let’s work harder, look closer, and do everything we can not to enable and in doing so, disable, our loved ones who are ill.”

Curtis has spoken about her addiction issues before. In another essay, also written for The Huffington Post, following Michael Jackson’s death, Curtis wrote: “The morphine becomes the warm bath from which to escape painful reality. I was a lucky one. I was able to see that the pain had started long ago and far away and that the finding the narcotic was merely a matter of time.”