What Jamie Lee Curtis Has Said About Her Past Opioid Addiction Over the Years (Exclusive)

Jamie Lee Curtis may be the ultimate scream queen, but her life experiences weren't just dark in the movies.

In various interviews with ET over the years, the Halloween star has discussed her past struggles with alcohol and opioids, an addiction that began for her in the late '80s.

"I had a past and it involved drugs and alcohol, and luckily, that was about it," Curtis told ET in September 2002. "I think any addiction threatens your life. I don't want to sugarcoat it. I think that these addictions are deadly. I think it's epidemic proportions and I think it's deadly."

Addiction is something that has also affected a few other members of the Curtis family. Her father, Tony, struggled with alcohol, cocaine and heroin usage, and her half-brother, Nicholas, tragically died in 1994 from a heroin overdose.

"It kills people, it killed my brother," the 59-year-old actress said. "Young people, old people. It ruins families. It ruins people's lives and happiness. It rips families apart."

"I think that there's something very important about saying that you stop running and you turn back and you face your demons," she added in another interview with ET in 2002. "And obviously that's a metaphor for life for many, many people. There's a point in all of our adult lives where we stop running from the past of our families, the past of mistakes that we've made, running from problems that we've had all our lives and are drowning them -- in alcohol, in drugs or overeating, or anything that has dogged us our whole life. And there's a point that we should all hopefully get to where we stop."

Now, Curtis is all about living in the "real world," with her husband, Christopher Guest, and their two children, Annie, 31, and Thomas, 22, by her side.

"I understand what real life is, and so I'm trying to carry that through my life as an actress, as a mom, as a spokesperson, as an advocate for women," she told ET in 2015. "I want to advocate that we are beautiful. That we need to take care of ourselves, but that we absolutely should not attack ourselves with whatever the newest commodity is."

"I've called it a genocide of a generation of women, a visual genocide, and I really believe that," she continued. "So, I've tried to sort of carry that in my own life, in my work, on the red carpet."

Curtis' past struggles with addiction are making headlines again this week in light of her cover story with People, in which she tells the outlet, "I was ahead of the curve of the opiate epidemic."

"I had a 10-year run, stealing, conniving," adds Curtis, who says she's been sober for nearly 20 years. "No one knew. No one."

Hear more on Curtis in the video below.

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