Entertainment
Selma Blair Gets Candid About Her Sobriety Journey
“I had to grow up,” she said in a new interview.
Content Warning: This article contains mentions of alcohol misuse.
Selma Blair is opening up about her decision to get sober. In a new interview with Us Weekly, the actor discussed living with multiple sclerosis (MS), a diagnosis she said would’ve never happened if she hadn’t given up alcohol in 2016.
“I wouldn’t have been able to be diagnosed with MS unless I was sober,” Blair told the outlet. “I wouldn’t be a good mom unless I was sober. I self-medicated.”
The actor also explained that her undiagnosed symptoms of MS, including “jerks and spasms,” contributed to her drinking. “I’d try to suppress them or keep moving or drink excessive amounts of alcohol to stop big things that I thought were mental,” said Blair, who wrote openly about her sobriety in her debut memoir, 2022’s Mean Baby.
When asked about her lowest point with drinking, the Legally Blonde star recalled a “plane incident” in 2016, when she was removed from an aircraft for being too intoxicated.
“I was so messed up and dehydrated and hungover and didn’t know I had neurological issues,” she explained, referring to her MS that was undiagnosed at the time. “I didn’t understand anything. It was horrifying and humiliating. I had to grow up.”
She’s In A “Much Happier” Place
In the Us Weekly interview, Blair also recalled being officially diagnosed with MS in 2018, two years after she decided to get sober.
“Once I knew I had MS — which I’d had for a while — [things] made so much more sense,” she said, revealing that, before her diagnosis, she thought she might’ve been “making it up.” Adding that she’s now in a “much happier” place, she said that being open about her diagnosis and sobriety “has been a real enrichment in my life.”
“I could be sitting crying at a table and someone leaves me a note that says, ‘You changed my daughter’s life,’” she continued. “I feel like the luckiest person in the world. It makes me so emotional.”
Looking to the future, Blair said she’s “open for business” when it comes to acting. “I would die to get on The White Lotus and work with Mike White and have that rebirth like Jennifer Coolidge,” she confessed. “I’d [also] love to do a period piece — a Downton Abbey type of thing or a Joan of Arc Mad Max.”
