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The former Cheers star opens up about a drug addiction in her youth that nearly destroyed her.

"I thought I was going to overdose almost every time," reveals Kirstie Alley of a rampant "compulsion" for cocaine that set in a few years before landing her first big break in Hollywood.

Related: Bradley Cooper Details Brutal Path To Sobriety

"I would do so much at a time," she says. "I would snort the coke then I would sit there and take my pulse."

Binging for five days at a time on occasion, Kirstie admits the drug use, which began as her first marriage to Bob Alley fell apart, became "insane."

"I kept going for that feeling of being extroverted and that would last for sixty seconds," she explains. "And then I was going to die for thirty minutes, and then the second I wasn't going to die I went boom, I'd do it again."

Video: Kirstie: How I 'Destroyed' My First Marriage

Although the road to sobriety was a rocky one, the 61-year-old star credits the introduction of Scientology, namely L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics, as her savior. Book in hand, Kirstie says she was sky high when she finally came to her personal epiphany.

"Somehow I got through it and I thought this is either the world's biggest scam or, I thought, this is how I'm going to get rid of this hideous compulsion," she says.

Kirstie's tell-all memoir, The Art of Men, is out now.