Christopher Lloyd is opening up about his decades-long struggle with alcohol and drug addiction, revealing how substance abuse became “entrenched” in his life before he ultimately sought treatment and found sobriety.
The 88-year-old actor detailed his battle in his new memoir, “In My Own Time,” and discussed his recovery during a recent interview with his “Back to the Future” co-star, Michael J. Fox.
In the book, Lloyd recalled that his cocaine abuse began after a woman approached him at a Los Angeles nightclub and asked if he wanted to “do a snort.”
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“She meant cocaine, which at that point I had never tried,” Lloyd wrote. “I hadn’t been out looking for it, but I said all right. We went out to her car and did a couple of lines. That was all it took. I was hooked almost immediately. I loved it, and that was where my cocaine abuse began.”
“Within a couple of years of my arrival in Los Angeles, cocaine, alcohol, and pot had become woven into my life in a serious way,” he continued. “It wasn’t just the occasional weekend indulgence. It got entrenched.”
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Lloyd explained that he made a point of staying sober while working, but his substance use intensified once filming ended.
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“I never went onstage or in front of a camera high or drunk, because I knew I would lose control of myself,” he wrote. “But once the curtain came down or the director said, ‘That’s a wrap,’ all bets were off.”
“I just knew I liked it, and before long it had a hold on me,” he added.
Another substance that had a hold on him was alcohol.
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Lloyd recalled being confronted about his drinking during a routine medical appointment. When a nurse asked how many drinks he had each day, he answered, “Two or three.”
“She said, ‘You’re an alcoholic,’” Lloyd wrote. “It stunned me, because I didn’t think what I was doing was a problem.”
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But he quickly noticed that his substance abuse eventually began affecting his life on screen and off.
“I was recognizing that I had a problem, and if I couldn’t yet appreciate that I was putting my life at stake, I could at least see that it was endangering my career,” he wrote. “I had gotten into these things pretty seriously and I needed help to get under control and get out of it.”
“At some point, it became clear that I needed treatment,” Lloyd continued.
In 1993, Lloyd’s psychologist arranged for him to enter treatment in Arizona. He recalled being “completely wasted” when he boarded a plane to a treatment facility, where he refused to stay and ran into a barbed-wire fence after leaving.
“I refused to stay,” he wrote. “I bolted out of the place and, drunk and disoriented, ran straight into a barbed-wire fence that tore up my face and left me a bloody mess.”
He was eventually admitted to Sierra Tucson, where he remained for five weeks.
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“That was the beginning, but not the end of it,” Lloyd wrote. “I relapsed a few times after that.”
Lloyd said he continued attending a private 12-step meeting for high-profile men, where he felt comfortable speaking openly about his addiction.
“Some years later, on April 1, I got sober for what turned out to be the last time,” he wrote.
During a conversation with Michael J. Fox for Interview Magazine, Lloyd acknowledged that his struggles with alcohol were not immediately apparent to those around him.
“You accounted in the book that you had alcohol problems,” Fox said.
“Yeah, I did,” Lloyd replied.
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Fox then asked whether Lloyd was drinking while playing his “Taxi” character, Reverend Jim.
“Sometimes,” Lloyd said. “It hadn’t gotten to be a big problem yet.”
Fox, who has also spoken publicly about his own recovery, asked Lloyd whether it was difficult to share his addiction in the memoir.
“Because once you let it go, it’s out there, and you’re such a private person,” Fox said.
“Yeah. I had a problem,” Lloyd replied.
“Well, you recovered. We’re both in recovery,” Fox responded.