Jamie Lee Curtis is reflecting on how her life has changed over the past 26 years since becoming sober.
On Monday, Feb. 3, the Oscar winner shared an image from her Twelve Steps app on Instagram that revealed the exact number of years, months, days and hours she has been sober.
“26 years ago today I walked into my first recovery meeting. Since then, my life has completely changed,” she began in the emotional caption. “I have made beautiful, beautiful, friendships and it has expanded my life beyond recovery and it has given me the family life and creative life. I never thought possible.”
Curtis, 66, then thanked all the people she has met over the years who have opened up to her about their struggles with alcoholism and drug addiction.
The second picture in Curtis’ post was a street-view image of her Pacific Palisades community almost completely burned aside from a couple structures. Curtis tearfully spoke about the deadly California wildfires during an appearance on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” Jan. 8. At the time, she said, “Where I live is on fire right now. Literally, the entire city of the Pacific Palisades is burning. I flew here last night. I started getting texts. It’s f—— gnarly, you guys. It is just a catastrophe in Southern California.”
In her Instagram post about her sobriety, she said she wouldn’t let the devastating aftermath of the fires impact her sobriety.
“The little avatar in the picture of the street is in the the exact spot/ seat I sat in at my weekly meeting in the Palisades in a church that no longer exists, in a neighborhood that no longer exists, but we don’t drink or use no matter what and this is a big f—— no matter what,” she continued. “Be gentle with yourselves. ONE DAY AT A TIME! My hand in yours.”
A couple hours later, Curtis returned to Instagram and shared a photo of her wearing a shirt that read, “I love LA.”
“This is what 66 years of LIFE + 26 years, 312 months, 9,498 days and 227, 913 hours of SOBRIETY FREEDOM looks like,” she wrote in the caption and added the hashtag “recovery.”
What else has Jamie Lee Curtis said about her sobriety?
Curtis has spoken about the importance of her sobriety in the past. Last year, she discussed her 25th sobriety anniversary on social media.
“One day at a time. 9,125 of them,” the actor wrote on Instagram Feb. 3, 2024, to caption a black-and-white photo of herself holding up a ring inscribed with, “JLC Twenty Five.”
“What’s inside, as my old friend Adam sang, is a sense of calm, serenity, purpose and the greatest feeling that I am not alone. That many others share the same disease and solution. For all those struggling with addiction and shame, there are others out here who care. My hand in yours. Our hands in yours. XO JLC,” she wrote.
During an appearance on TODAY in 2023 shortly after she won her first Academy Award in 2023 for her role in “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” Curtis revealed how sobriety has affected other areas of life.
“I’m sober for a long time, long time — almost 25 years. And the best thing I learned last year in recovery was people aren’t pleased when you stop people-pleasing. … It was as if the greatest sage arrived on me,” Curtis told TODAY’s Hoda Kotb in an interview that aired on Jan. 16.
“So I’m trying to own it. Isn’t that what life is supposed to be? We grow up, we learn, we do all these things. Now we have to own it. We have to own who we are, be who we are, and be in full acceptance of who we are and what we’re not. And I think that’s the beauty of me right now — owning it.”
Curtis has been open about becoming addicted to opiates in the late 1980s after she received a prescription for pain killers following minor plastic surgery for her eyes.
“I was ahead of the curve of the opiate epidemic,” she told People in 2018. “I had a 10-year run, stealing, conniving. No one knew. No one.”
In a 2023 interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Curtis recalled how she “liked a good opiate buzz” and said that if fentanyl were as easily available then as it is today on the street, she’d be dead. Her brother Nicholas died at 21 of a heroin overdose, she noted.
Curtis was addicted for a decade until she got sober in 1999.
Today, she continues to act and is the author of a children’s book about patience titled, “Just One More Sleep.” Children are all about the future, Curtis said, but she’s focusing on the present moment, and being authentic and real.
“I say what I mean, I mean what I say and I try not to say it mean,” she noted.
