Does Jamie Lee Curtis Drink Alcohol?

Multi-talented Jamie Lee Curtis, once lauded for her status as the silver screen scream queen, starring in multiple horror genre cult classics over the years, has faced her share of real monsters throughout her life. Keeping in mind that one of those monsters was addiction, does Jamie Lee Curtis drink alcohol?

Jamie Lee Curtis does not drink alcohol. Not only does she not drink alcohol, but she has also been sober for more than 20 years, defeating both an addiction to alcohol and to prescription painkillers.

Lifestyles high in stress and pressure are prime candidates for addiction, especially combined with both access to your substance of choice and the means with which to acquire it. Whether the drug is illegal, prescription, or an every-day item like alcohol, resisting the temptation offered by a little extra help to unwind can prove problematic.

In the case of Curtis, her road to sobriety started when fighting addictions that initially began as a reliance on a prescription painkiller, intended to be taken after surgery.

A History of Addiction

Today the sober, careful, and conscientious Curtis describes her old self as a ‘wildly controlled drug addict and alcoholic.’ Those comments may appear particularly heavy-handed, though she has good reason to be so cautious of any potential substance abuse.

Addiction basically ran in the family for Jamie, starting with her movie-star father, Tony Curtis. It has been alluded to multiple times by both Jamie and Tony, that he suffered from addiction to drugs and alcohol, with Tony even emphasizing with others who suffer from the same conditions.

Tony expresses that a lack of understanding is the issue, something all too common to anyone who has suffered from addiction, explaining that either through lack of knowledge or denial, he refused to believe that he actually had a problem. Instead of addressing it, the solution was to simply find ways to work around the issue instead.

Unfortunately for the other member of the Curtis family that was haunted by addiction, Jamie’s brother Nicholas had his life taken at the age of 21, the victim of an overdose. What initially appeared to be a death related to a seizure, it was later revealed that heroin was the cause.

Curtis’ Own Demons

A witness to her family’s struggles, Jamie was unable to avoid becoming ensnared in a similar set of problems. Following cosmetic surgery, Jamie had the drug Vicodin prescribed to her, intended to treat the pain from her operation.

Vicodin possesses some extremely addictive qualities, however, due to the opioid effects that it causes. This was the trap that Jamie found herself in, and whether due to pressures in her life, or some kind of predisposition towards addiction, she became reliant on the drug.

To Jamie’s credit, she made efforts to ensure that she kept her issues under strict control, only indulging in substances at specific times and in specific spaces. Despite her best efforts, and as it is with any addiction, the issue eventually began to leak out and affect the people around her.

A decade into her addiction, one that she had hidden up until then, she was visited by her sister Kelly. Her sister often traveled with a bottle of Vicodin, after being prescribed it for an injury that she had sustained.

Jamie had her eye on the bottle and was unable to stop herself from stealing it to get her fix of the drug. Jamie expected the reaction from her sister to be one of anger, furious that her sister had stolen from her, or at least disappointed.

Instead, care and understanding are what she received. Kelly simply expressed the love that she held for her, along with a promise to make sure that Jamie wouldn’t do any harm to herself with the drug.

A Turning Point

Since her struggles and recovery, Jamie has been incredibly outspoken about both the importance of rehabilitation and how transformative the experience has been for her. About alcohol, in particular, she explains how identifying herself as an alcoholic was a powerful experience that enabled her to truly begin to make healthy changes in her life.

After all of this, not only does Jamie not drink alcohol, she specifically aims to avoid it when possible. To Jamie, her recovery is an ongoing process that she takes with her wherever she goes, and one that she’s proud of.

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