Demi Moore Says She Once Balked at Alcohol Rehab Facility: ‘I’m a DRUG Addict’

Demi Moore offered up every excuse she could think of to avoid checking into rehab before filming the 1985 Brat Pack hit St. Elmo’s Fire, including the fact that she was a drug addict, not an alcohol addict.

During Thursday’s episode of WTF with Marc Maron, the Golden Globe winner explained that her mother was an alcoholic, so she knew drinking “wasn’t good” for her.

“But that didn’t preclude coke, right?” she said. “So, I get St. Elmo’s Fire, and I remember [director] Joel Schumacher saying to me, ‘If I hear of you drinking one beer!’ And I was thinking, ‘I don’t drink.’”

But word had gotten out that she and the film’s other young actors were “sneaky s---s,” she said. Schumacher asked her to go to rehab before filming began, but when she showed up, the facility was an alcohol rehabilitation center.

“I was like, ‘No, no. You don’t understand. That’s my mother. I’m a drug addict,’” she told Maron.

But the staff had an answer for every excuse, and she eventually checked into the facility for two weeks. Moore has previously spoken about how the rehab facility objected to her leaving to start work on St. Elmo’s Fire.

“What’s more important? The film or your life?” they asked her.

“And I said, ‘The film. Because you know what? That was my life,’” she told Maron.

St. Elmo’s Fire follows seven recent college graduates in Georgetown attempting to transition into adulthood. It starred some of the biggest names of the 1980s and early ’90s, including Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Judd Nelson, and Ally Sheedy. New York magazine dubbed the stars—who appeared in several coming-of-age films in the 1980s—the “Brat Pack.”

In a 2024 documentary about the Brat Pack, Moore revealed that the St. Elmo’s filmmakers “stuck their necks out” for her and paid for a 24-hour sober companion while shooting, even though she wasn’t yet a box office draw.

Moore began the film 15 days sober and stayed sober for almost 20 years before relapsing in her 40s. Today, she’s been sober again for almost 13 years, she told Maron.