Selma Blair Opens Up About Sexual Assault and Decades-Long Alcohol Struggle: ‘I Drank to Disappear’
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below."
Selma Blair got vulnerable about her relationship with alcohol in a new interview.
She admitted to having the “desire to drink as much as I could, as often as I could” for 20 years.
The actress details her struggle with alcohol, sexual assault, and her multiple sclerosis (MS) journey in her new memoir, Mean Baby.
In Selma Blair’s upcoming memoir, Mean Baby, she unveils all the chronic pain she’s bared—in and outside of her multiple sclerosis (MS) diagnosis. Long before she began her MS healing journey in 2018 (which included chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant), the actress had to mend her relationship with alcohol—a substance she began confiding in as a young child.
The Cruel Intentions star, now 49, candidly spoke on her 20-year battle with drinking with Savannah Guthrie on Today. “My first [time] drunk [was] when I was 7. I had my first drinks much younger,” she admitted. From then on—throughout elementary school, middle school, high school, and college—she turned to the bottle to escape various traumatic memories, including those of being raped several times.
“These were the things I drank to forget,” she writes in her book, per Today. “I didn’t drink for attention: I drank to disappear.”
Elaborating to Guthrie, Blair admitted: “It was hard. I don’t know. But maybe it was easier. Maybe I never would have survived without a drink.”
In her book, the mom of one details her darkest moments in which she contemplated taking her own life. But the support of family and friends empowered her with the strength she needed to push forward.
In speaking with Guthrie, Blair admitted that the process of writing Mean Baby was cathartic in a way, because it allowed her to validate her role as a victim in her life’s trauma. “You bury it. You really do,” she said. “It’s a big deal to have these things happen and hold that shame in your cells.”
In addition to numbing her emotional pain, Blair’s dependence on alcohol also helped hide what she believes were early signs of MS. “I had so many things that were so indicative of MS,” she recalled. “Doctors thought I had leukemia. I didn’t, but it was a constant high fever. … The ailments as a kid connected. I do know for sure I had it by the age of 23. It was definitely there for so long.”
This heavy combination of experiences led Blair to have “the desire to drink as much as I could, as often as I could,” she writes. That desire was lifted in 2016 when she passed out on a plane and was carried out on a stretcher in front of her son, Arthur, who was 4 years old at the time.
“The thing that made me really stop drinking was that I could have died on that plane,” Blair told Guthrie. “I mean, now that I was a mother, it just changed everything.”
Mean Baby is currently available for preorder and releases May 17.
If you or someone you know is suffering from alcoholism, find support and resources by visiting Recovery.org and Alcohol.org.
If you or someone you know needs help or has been affected by sexual assault, call 800.656.HOPE (4673) to be connected with a trained staff member from a sexual assault service provider in your area.
If you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts, call The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255) or text TALK to 741741 to message with a trained crisis counselor from the Crisis Text Line for free.
You Might Also Like
