While some celebrities are able to fight their demons, other aren’t as fortunate. Celebs are often outspoken about their battles in the hopes that those going through the same thing will hear their stories and seek help.
Here, we highlight a few celebrities who have been open about overcoming their struggles.
With or without reality TV, we have a feeling Nicole Richie would have become a star somehow. She stepped out of her dad’s, Lionel Richie, shadow long ago with reality hit The Simple Life, which she starred in with bestie Paris Hilton. Now, Richie has her own fashion line, House of Harlow, has written a New York Times best-selling book, The Truth About Diamonds, and starred in her own reality show, Candidly Nicole.
The late icon famously opened up to Oprah about her issues with drugs, revealing that after The Bodyguard her addiction to drugs spiraled.
At event back in 2011, Flav discussed his memoir, Flavor Flav: The Icon The Memoir, in which he discussed his battles with addiction. He called his addiction “embarrassing” and stated that moving to LA saved his life and gave him purpose.
Short opened up about his cocaine addiction back in 2014, telling Access Hollywood that drugs played a role in his tumultuous time on Scandal. And, earlier this year he told PEOPLE, “To be honest with you, I struggle with medicating with alcohol, I think, and that’s a real truth. I think that deserves more looking into. If I want to be truthfully honest, I think dealing with the stress of the situations that I’ve been going through, medicating with anything, I think, is dangerous because it becomes a crutch.”
Back in 2010, Cudi revealed that he began using cocaine just to get through the anxiety that comes with fame. “I started doing cocaine to get through interviews, ’cause people wanted to know a lot about my personal life and I wasn’t prepared for a 60 Minutes interview every time. Doing bumps I was able to get through the day, but then I would smoke weed to calm me down—it was the only way I could get through the day without people noticing I was doing it.” Just recently, the star opened up about getting help for his struggle with mental health.
Singer Ray Charles was born on September 23.
Jackson has been incredibly outspoken about his drug abuse, thanking his wife and daughter earlier this year at the premier of The Legend of Tarzan. “They found me passed out on the floor after I left somebody’s bachelor party and put my a** in rehab the next day and supported me and pushed me and gave me a reason to get up and go and chase it day after day.”
Earlier this year, Brown opened up about his marriage to Whitney Houston and problems with addiction in an interview with Robin Roberts. “It was terrible. Both of us, you know, trying to be clean, or one of us trying to be clean and the other one don’t wanna be clean. It’s a big struggle…I’m clean from narcotics, yes. I haven’t done narcotics in 10 to 12 years. Alcohol has been a problem.”
The late singer and legend sat down with Wendy Williams in 2010 and discussed her previous battles with drugs and heroin addiction. “Everybody knew me up in Harlem…When my first record came out, ‘This Will Be,’ on that particular day I was on my way to get drugs.”
After numerous oral surgeries, the Atlanta-rapper wound up addicted to prescription painkillers. T.I. opened up about his addiction, telling Vibe, “I had like five, six prescriptions. So I had, like 80 pills. Everybody else might have a drink or smoke a blunt, I took a pain pill. Times when I had 18-, 20-hour days, I’d take a pain pill.”
