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Paris Jackson reveals in detail about her journey to sobriety and mental health battles
Paris Jackson is revealing the parts of her life post-sobriety.
It has been six years since the only daughter of the late Michael Jackson decided to get sober after being dependent on alcohol and heroin. Now, at 27, she is recalling the hardships of the journey even years down the line.
“Getting sober ain’t always the indication that life is perfect,” Paris penned down in an Instagram post dated Jan. 3 where she shared a series of photos showing her pets and family members. “After a couple of years, everything suddenly became very extremely difficult. For what seemed like an eternity. And I didn’t have the same survival skills I was used to having to cope.”
According to her, she had to “learn to live life on life’s terms,” and in part, this has meant taking care of her mental health.
“Treatment resistant major depressive disorder is a b—h,” she went on. “So is CPSTD. and OCD. if you’ve got this s–t, or anything of the sort, you’re not alone.”
Paris Jackson Credits Sobriety For Giving Her Not Just “a Better” Life, But Her Old One As Well
Paris Jackson’s last words in a post accompanied by a snippet of The Cinematic Orchestra’s “To Build a Home” were encouraging. She wrote as if to anyone going through difficult times: “Hang in there and if no one’s told you they love you today, i love you.”
As she embraces sobriety and moves forward after calling off their engagement last year, Jackson has also appeared on record speaking about how sobriety has changed her life for good.
“I didn’t just get my life back,” she testified while picking up the Shining Star Award during the Friendly House Awards Luncheon last October. “I got a better one.” Sobriety to her was like a very sudden awakening to reality: “Getting sober, to me, was like getting into a car accident because everything that I had shoved in the back seat suddenly went flying forward on impact and now I am learning how to live life according to life’s terms.”
Paris Jackson Throws Sobriety Party with a Touching Thank You
It seems that Paris Jackson is still on the right path to sobriety, documenting her journey with a refreshing level of truth and gratitude for the life she believes it has given her.
The singer/model marked her 5th year of sobriety in January 2025 by sharing a post on Instagram where through a lens of gratitude she reflected on being able to enjoy the simple everyday moments thanks to sobriety.
“To say that I’m thankful would be a poor euphemism,” she wrote. “Gratitude hardly scratches the surface. I get to smile today because I’m sober. I get to make music. I get to experience the joy of loving my dogs and cat. I get to feel heartbreak in all its glory. I get to grieve. I get to laugh. I get to dance. I get to trust.”
“I feel the sun on my skin and it’s warm,” she added. “It turns out that life does go on whether or not I’m sober, but today I get to be there for it.”
(Check out more of the celebs who have opened up about their sobriety journeys below.)
AJ McLean Says He Got Sober “for the Last Time” After His 2021 Relapse
AJ McLean opens up about his sobriety after his 2021 relapse.
The Backstreet Boys’ member declared that he “got sober again for the last time,” talking to PEOPLE in July 2025, “I’m sticking this one out all the way. It’s a thing you do every day. But I have finally done what has been suggested amongst the sober community, and my life has flipped in a positive way.”
McLean said that he has “still learning, still growing” but still he has gotten the clarity he needed about who he is besides his character on stage — and he has also acquired a new tool: setting boundaries.
“I’ve found new words like boundaries that I never really had,” he told. “Now I have them, which is a blessing. AJ is part of a group. He’s a persona, but he doesn’t define me as an individual. Alexander James is me.”
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Jason Biggs Opened Up About Addiction and Celebrated One Year of Sobriety in 2018
Jason Biggs has been very open about his battle with alcohol and drugs – and getting sober. It was a tough road, but he persevered.
The American Pie star took to Instagram in October 2018 to share the news that he had been sober for a year. He referred to the journey as tough but worthwhile. “I first attempted to get sober over 5 years ago when the burden of my obsession with booze and drugs became too much for me to handle,” he said. “It turns out that this s–t is really hard.”
After a few false starts at recovery, he said, “I’ve finally got my first year of sobriety under my belt and I’m quite proud of it. If you’re struggling, know that there’s help available. Don’t be ashamed. We can do this.”
Jason Biggs Remembers Pretending to Be Okay While Masking the Severity of His Addiction
Long after he had become sober, Jason Biggs thought about the extent to which he had gone to hide his addiction while still seeming to be a functioning person to the world. During a March 2024 installment of his spouse Jenny Mollen’s All the Fails podcast, the actor from American Pie narrated the story of how after therapy session which he felt had been very productive, he walked out, stopped at a liquor store and bought a big bottle of vodka, drank it and then drove home.
“I knew how to get so drunk that I could take myself out of life, take myself out of the present, not have to connect in a way that would make me feel things,” he said, narrating how he had tricked everyone into thinking he was “fine” on the outside. “I had it figured out to a T. To not get too drunk that I couldn’t have a conversation with you. I was always replacing those bottles in the bar.”
Ashlyn Harris is frank about how she misused Adderall when she was a college soccer player
Ashlyn Harris has been open about how she misused Adderall along with injuries she had when she was a college soccer player.
“I was getting really heavily addicted to Adderall and misusing it,” the two-time FIFA Women’s World Cup champion said on a 2025 episode of the Question Everything with Danielle Robay podcast. “I was taking it basically all the time. Sometimes I wouldn’t sleep for days. It was crazy. I thought I might be having a heart attack. I was crushing it. I was snorting it. It was so problematic.”
According to Harris, in a deep low that she reached, her former college coach, Anson Dorrance, helped her find the right educational tools for healing.
“It was so dark that I had to make some major changes,” she said. “And Anson would have me read stuff. I got into this book called Man’s Search for Meaning and it’s about suffering and changing your perspective and it totally transformed me.”
Offset Opens Up About Son’s Question Leading to His “Wake-Up Call” For Codeine
Offset recently revealed that he has been four years free from codeine, and a little thing his son did really helped him get rid of it completely.
Last autumn, the Migos rapper was reflecting on the moment on Baby, This Is Keke Palmer when his teenage son Jordan kept asking him for pineapple Fanta even though he normally does not drink soda at all. Then Jordan found out something.
“My oldest son kept asking for like pineapple Fanta, but he don’t even really drink soda,” Offset said. And then one day he came into the studio like, ‘Why yours is different color than mine?’ That broke me.”
Offset shared that the remark was unexpected. “When I got upstairs to my room, I was close to tears,” he kept on, “and I was sort of blaming myself as a father… in my mind it was like, if him saying he wants the same soda as me… ‘Yeah, I’m influencing him.’”
50 Years Sobriety – Anthony Hopkins for a Better Future!
Leading actor Anthony Hopkins has been remarkably candid in his interviews about the pivotal moment of his life turnaround: December 29, 1975, the day he decided to stop drinking.
Chatting with podcast The Interview by The New York Times in October 2025, the actor who has been honored with Oscars twice, shared the story of his drunken driving in California when suddenly the severity of his actions hit him and he realized what a danger he was to others and to himself.
“I was drunk and driving my car here in California in a blackout,” I had no idea where I was going “when I suddenly realized that I could have killed somebody—or myself, which I didn’t care about—and I realized that I was an alcoholic.”
After getting in touch with a buddy and asking for his help, Hopkins set out on his path to recovery. In December 2025, celebrating his 50th year being sober, the actor shared a hopeful message with his fans on Instagram: “Choose life instead of the opposite… Life life life and more life.”
Jax Taylor Opens Up About Drug Use That Lasted for Decades
In an attempt to start a new life, The Valley’s star Jax Taylor is sharing very openly about his rehab experience and his road to recovery. On the March 4, 2025 episode of Bravo’s Hot Mic podcast, the reality star recognized himself as an addict for the very first time in public.
“I am coming out that I’m an addict,” Taylor told the audience. “I really have a problem with drugs, mainly with cocaine. It’s really hard for me to even say it.” He went on to say that his addiction to the drug has been an “up and down” battle since he was 23 years old.
Taylor, who is 45 now, revealed that he has abstained from drinking alcoholic beverages as well in order to keep his sobriety. “I don’t necessarily think I have an alcohol problem, but the two go together. I can’t do cocaine without drinking,” he confessed. “So, I essentially gave up both. I’m happy to share with everyone that I am 82, 83 days sober now, which is the longest time I have ever been without any of them in my life.”
Tom Holland Says He Quit Drinking After Feeling “Enslaved” to Alcohol
Tom Holland recently revealed that he decided to quit drinking alcohol in 2022 because he started to feel “enslaved” to it.
“I was, without a doubt, addicted to alcohol, and I won’t deny that at all,” the Spider-Man: No Way Home actor said in an interview on the On Purpose with Jay Shetty podcast, further stating, “I reckon if anyone has a beer every day, they’ve probably got a bit of a problem.”
The actor explained that he saw himself in the same trap that many fall into. “And then you would just reach that moment where you’re like, ‘Wow, I shouldn’t have had that last beer,’” he continued. “And you wake up the next day and you have a terrible headache.”
He spoke of the benefits he has experienced since, such as more energy, greater mental clarity, and a calmer work attitude. “Everyday hassles on the set, which, normally, would have driven me crazy, I could simply take them as they come,” Holland explained. “I had so much such better mental clarity. I felt healthier. I felt fitter.”
Alec Baldwin Reflects on His 39 Years of Sobriety and His Past
Alec Baldwin, who hardly ever speaks publicly about his sobriety, opened up in a podcast in May 2024 about his 40 years of struggle and journey. The Hunt for Red October star said, “I don’t do this a lot. I do it from time to time when it is logical. I am 39 years sober. I got sober on Feb. 23, 1985.”
During the interview, Baldwin shared the time after relocating from NYC to LA in 1983 when things got very bad for him. “I was in hell and struggling hot every minute for two years,” he said. “I guess I snorted a line of coke from here to Saturn. We brought it home. Cocaine was like coffee back then. Everyone was doing it all day long.”
After he gave up cocaine, Baldwin confessed that he turned to alcohol for a short while before he made up his mind to give that up too. At present, he is happy living his quiet life in New York. “New York is really calming to me,” he said. “I just walk around and I keep finding things there that I did not know before… I have meals and coffee with my friends.”
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Anne Hathaway Marks Five Years of Sobriety with a Big Smile: “Life’s So Much Better”
Anne Hathaway made it public that in April 2024 she had achieved a major milestone: five plus years of being sober. The Princess Diaries star told The New York Times, “That to me is a milestone.”
Hathaway elaborated that her sobriety came from self-understanding rather than a sudden event. “I just sensed that it was not really for me at all,” she disclosed.
“And it seemed to me so unfair that I had to say, ‘But none at all?’
But none at all. If you are allergic to something or have an anaphylactic shock to something, don’t you just react? So I quit reacting to it.”
The actress credits the decision as the best thing that has happened to her. “My personal experience with it is that everything is better,” she said at one point. “It was the fuel for my wallowing. And I don’t like to wallow.”
Demi Moore Reflects on How She Turned Around a “Self-Destructive” Spiral
Demi Moore has confessed that she was walking the “self-destructive path” that almost made her lose her career. At the 2018 Woman of the Year Award acceptance speech from the Peggy Albrecht Friendly House, Moore reminisced about her early debut when she was spiraling down despite the success.
“I was on a downward spiral of self-destruction,” she explained, “and it didn’t matter what successes I had, I just never felt good enough.”
“I had no value for myself at all,” she added. This journey eventually led to a “crisis point” which Moore says was met by heavenly help.
In 2012, Moore was treated, and she said that two people she “barely knew” were the ones who changed her life with an ultimatum. “I know that I couldn’t have survived,” she laughed, mentioning that they allowed her to make one more mistake and then she would have destroyed everything.
“Obviously, they had a clearer view of me than I had of myself,” she said, showing her appreciation for their faith in her.
Noah Cyrus Opens Up About Her Xanax Addiction And How She Has Been In Recovery Since 2020
According to a 2022 interview with Noah Cyrus, she has been in recovery for a Xanax addiction since 2020. Among other things, she told Rolling Stone how the drug first gave her a sense of order during a rough time: “It gave me a lot of structure at the time because I really needed structure, and I didn’t want to just be sitting around and stir my brain,” she explained. “It made me hopeful.”
However, the relief very soon turned to danger. “If you think that you can silence your mind, numb your pain for one second, then it’s game over,” she confessed.
At the time, Cyrus feels that her friends “kind of cosigned” her drug use and “it just kind of becomes this dark pit, bottomless pit.” Then came the pandemic. She understood that she was not emotionally there. “I was literally falling asleep… I kept nodding off, I couldn’t lift my head or keep my eyes open, because I was so far gone.”
Eventually, she decided to get professional help and confessed, “it took a while before I could stand on my own two feet.”
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Eminem Reveals That Missing Daughter Hailie’s Birthday Was One of the Main Reasons He Decided to Get Sober
Eminem discussed his addiction to prescription pills in his 2025 documentary, Stans, where he also talked about how a near-death experience from an overdose and missing his daughter Hailie Jade’s birthday party were crucial moments that led to his sobriety.
“I cried because it was like, ‘Oh my god, I missed that,'” he recalled. “I kept asking myself, ‘Do you want to f–king miss this again? Do you want to miss everything? If you can’t do it for yourself, you f–king pussy, at least do it for them.'”
He also mentioned that putting his energy back into music helped him stay sober.
“It did something. It turned the light on,” Eminem said. “I realized I’m not embarrassed anymore about [sobriety]. I began to see sobriety as a super power and I was proud of the fact that I had the strength to quit.”
Drew Barrymore Reveals That Giving Up Alcohol “Did Not Serve” Her and She Feels As if a Heavy Burden Was Lifted
Drew Barrymore has been very transparent about quitting alcohol as a significant part of her recovery program that has been going for quite a while. Two years ago on CBS Mornings, she announced a significant achievement to the viewers, “I have not drunk alcohol for two and a half years,” she continued, “it was something I just figured out alcohol wasn’t really good for me.”
Barrymore considered admitting that fact as being both liberating and revealing. “When we show our real selves, our truths, and the things of which we’ve been so proud, it’s extremely liberating and at the same time, very vulnerable,” she stated.
Barrymore told the Los Angeles Times that she doesn’t really use the word “sober” to describe herself as she doesn’t want people to think that she is “some perfect Puritan.” Looking back at her alcohol issues in 2023, she admitted, “I was constantly telling myself, ‘I am going to get this right. I am going to solve this,’” then she came to the realization, “You have never got the hang of this and you never will.”
Jada Pinkett Smith Reflects on Past Sex and Alcohol Addictions
Jada Pinkett Smith spoke openly about how her addictions changed through the years, revealing her battle with sex and alcohol. In 2018, she mentioned that she was convinced “everything could be fixed by sex,” as she talked about what she thought was sex addiction in her younger days.
Moreover, she shared when she saw the signs that her drinking had already got out of control. “I recall that time – I was completely alone in the house, had two bottles of wine and was going for the third one,” she said. “And I was like, ‘Wait! You’re alone here and you’re about to have your third bottle of wine? You definitely have a problem.'”
Pinkett Smith told that she “cold turkey” gave up on drinking, telling that she gets everything or nothing type of personality. “I am a binger… I just can get obsessed with things,” she added.
She feels that the key problem is not simply the habit itself, but the reasoning behind it: “It’s not what you’re doing but how you’re with it… It’s the behavior that’s attached to it.”
Dennis Quaid Says a “White Light” Moment Ended His Cocaine “Love Affair”
Dennis Quaid has talked about his cocaine addiction that continued for most of the 1980s and how at some point, he ended up in a rehab center in 1990. He said that it was back then, during the 60s and 70s, when people had very different attitudes towards this drug.
In the interview of 2018, Quaid recognized that during the ’80s he was on cocaine “pretty much on a daily basis” and he even described the life he led: the regret-relapse cycle. He even reported that he used to “scream at God” to get rid of the drug at night—however, the next day he would downplay it again.
After a while, Quaid claimed that he had a kind of “white light experience” in which he visualized two possibilities: the first one being dead and the second one losing everything that was important to him. He explained everything to his then-fiancée, Meg Ryan, and went for help. “It was the end of the love affair between me and cocaine,” he revealed.
Ryan Lochte Went to Rehab After Alcohol Became a “Destructive Pattern” in 2018
Ryan Lochte went to rehab in 2018 after an incident in Newport Beach when he allegedly tried to kick in the door of his hotel room that he owned.
The representative of Lochte informed E! News that the Olympic swimmer had been “struggling with alcohol addiction for several years” and that it had “turned into a destructive pattern.” The statement revealed that Lochte admitted “to the need for professional help” and that he would “be getting help right away.”
The rep said Lochte believed that dealing with his addiction was crucial to staying out of trouble in the future, continuing to be “a good husband and father,” and chasing his swimming comeback dream—he was aiming to compete in his fifth Olympics in Tokyo 2020.
Jason Ritter reveals that his relationship with was a big factor in his decision to quit drinking
Jason Ritter shared that while you “shouldn’t get sober for someone else,” his relationship with wife Melanie Lynskey was a huge reason why he stopped drinking.
On a March 2023 episode of The Drew Barrymore Show, the Parenthood star recalled feeling that Lynskey was so incredible that she deserved to be with someone better than the version of himself he was at the time. “At some moment, I knew how wonderful she was and I thought she would be really great to someone who deserved her,” he said, “and I didn’t think I was that person. I kind of felt like I was a little bit too crazy.”
Ritter shared with E! News that initially, it was easier for him to say sobriety was for her because he didn’t feel he was as important. “I was less concerned about hurting myself than hurting her,” he stated. “So at the beginning, it was simpler for me to say, ‘I’m doing this for her.’ And now, I’m doing it for myself.”
