Selma Blair
She talks about her alcohol addiction
© AP Photo / Evan Agostini / Picture Alliance
Selma Blair reveals that she suffered for decades from an alcohol addiction that began when she was a child and intensified throughout her adolescence.
Ever since Selma Blair, 49, was diagnosed with the chronic autoimmune disease multiple sclerosis four years ago, she has been open about her condition. The actress now speaks just as honestly about her childhood, in which she often had to experience times of darkness. She looked for a way out in alcohol.
Selma Blair: She got drunk for the first time when she was seven
For her recently released memoir, Mean Baby, Selma Blair went back in time and worked through multiple traumas from her childhood and adolescence. In an interview with “People”, she reveals that she started drinking very early. For her, alcohol represented “great comfort” and also a necessity: “I don’t know if I would have survived my childhood without alcoholism.”
The actress got drunk for the first time at the age of seven. At that time, she consumed kosher wine during the Seder, a ceremonial meal of the Jewish Passover festival. Her parents allowed her to sip, but no one was watching how much she was eating. “It was a revelation,” says the 49-year-old, describing the feeling she felt when she first experienced alcohol. “I was drunk that night. Very drunk. Eventually I was put in bed with my sister Katie. In the morning I couldn’t remember how I got there,” she continues.
This formative experience led to years of addiction that she knew how to hide. Whenever she was overcome by anxiety, she took “small sips”. “Most of the time I wasn’t even tipsy. I became a seasoned alcoholic who knew how to hide her secret.”
She has been sexually abused multiple times
During her teens and early 20s, her alcohol addiction got out of hand. When she was in college, she went on a spring break trip where she was raped. “I made myself small and quiet and waited for it to be over. I wish I could say what happened to me that night was an isolated incident, but it wasn’t. I’ve been raped, multiple times ‘Cause I was too drunk.”
Selma Blair only told her therapist about the sexual assault until she decided to work on it in her memoirs. “My trauma was bigger than I thought. I didn’t realize that the assault was so central to my life. I felt so much shame and guilt,” she says.
Writing the book helped her overcome her pain. Meanwhile, the “Ice Cold Angels” actress looks hopeful to the future: “I’m still here and I’m fine.”
Source used: people.com