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Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard break silence on drug relapse
Kristen Bell has spoken out in a show of solidarity with her husband Dax Shepard’s back amid his drug relapse because she says he is ‘very, very worth it’
The Good Place actress broke her silence on the topic on Wednesday’s Ellen DeGeneres Show, saying she will “continue to stand by him” after he relapsed with pills, including Vicodin and Oxytocin, after 16 years of sobriety.
Dax who regularly opens up about his long-time battle with addiction revealed he had relapsed with prescription medication on his podcast, Armchair Expert, on September 25.
Now his wife has broken her silence on the situation, revealing to Ellen DeGeneres that Dax is doing ‘great’ and working out a plan of action to avoid relapses in the future.
Kristen says ‘everyone has their demons’
"He is actually doing really great,” Bell told DeGeneres. “I mean, look, everybody is up against their own demons. Sometimes it's anxiety and depression, sometimes it’s substance abuse.”
Kristen has spoken about her own battles with anxiety and depression in the past, and says the couple have started attending therapy together again in the wake of Dax’s relapse.
She said the thing that she loves most about Dax, who she started dating in 2007, is his honesty when it comes to his demons.
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“He was able to tell me and tell us and say we need a different plan,” she told the talk show host, who has recently been fighting some public demons of her own.
Dax’s medication issues came about initially after suffering a number of motorcycle accidents, which he spoke about at length with his Armchair Expert podcast co-host Monica Padman when he revealed he relapsed.
“If he has to take medication for any reason, I have to administer it,” Bell said of their conversation when Shepard admitted to the relapse.
“He was like: ‘So we need a stronger plan. I was faltering. I have to do some emotional work to figure out why I wanted to use again.’”
Bell, who has two daughters with Shepard, went on to say, “One of the main reasons I love him is he’s also addicted to growth. He’s addicted to evolving. And he was like: ‘I don’t want to risk this family — and I did — so let’s put new things in place to make sure it doesn’t happen again.’”
Kristen concluded that she would not be abandoning the relationship, in a heartfelt message of support for her partner of 13 years.
“I will continue to stand by him because he’s very, very worth it,” she said.
Dax reveals addiction relapse
It was on the Sept. 25 episode of Armchair Expert, called Day 7, that Shepard spoke about relapsing.
“So, today I have seven days,” he said during the episode, which was recorded Sept. 21.
The Bless This Mess star has spoken a lot of getting sober in 2004 after battling alcohol and cocaine addiction.
About six months ago, Shepard injured his hand and was prescribed pain pills, a substance he has fallen off the wagon with before.
He said that led to him self-medicating. When his prescriptions ran out, he started ‘taking 30 ml’ of Oxycotin — and it escalated to him taking eight pills a day.
He admitted that for the eight weeks before he got sober, he had been on pills ‘all day’.
And he said that while he had another motorcycle accident in August, which required surgery, though he said it wasn’t just the ijuries that prompted the relapse.
“It would be unfair to say this all started with my recent surgeries, which is really hard to say,” he admitted.
Heartbreakingly, the star admitted he had celebrated his recent 16 year sobriety birthday ‘high’, calling it ‘the worst thing in the world.’
It’s no his first relapse either, during the episode, he admitted he started being “shady” in 2012 after a motorcycle accident left him in pain.
At the time, he was given a prescription for Vicodin, which Bell was to administer. Then he visited his dying dad, also an addict, and they took Percocet together. He told Bell about the incident and moved on.
He also shared his side of coming clean about his problem to Bell and Padman, who had grown suspicious. (He said he tells both women everything.)
He recalled how he gave them his remaining pills and asked them to ‘Please help me’.
Additional reporting by Suzy Byrne
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