Dax Shepard has confessed to suffering a sobriety slip after becoming hooked on painkillers following a recent motorcycle accident.
The Parenthood star underwent surgery in August after breaking multiple bones during a collision with a car on California's Sonoma Raceway, and in a special episode of his Armchair Expert podcast, he admitted to abusing the drugs he had been prescribed to handle the pain of his injuries.
In the candid chat, released on Friday, Dax reveals he had previously been closely monitored by his wife, actress Kristen Bell, and close friend and podcast co-host/producer Monica Padman, when given opioids following racing accidents, but after his most recent crash, he began hoarding them so he could take more than the prescribed dose at certain times to get high.
He soon began lying "pretty regularly" to his close friends, family, and even fellow Alcoholics Anonymous members about his drug use, which he kept under wraps even as they marked his 16th year clean of booze and illegal substances at the start of September.
"For the last eight weeks, maybe..., I'm on them all day," Dax explains. "I'm allowed to be on them at some dosage, because I have a prescription..., and then all the prescriptions run out... and I'm now just taking (drugs) that I've bought..."
He tried to wean himself off the opioids, but when that didn't work, the 45-year-old reached out to Kristen and Monica and begged them for help, fearing his setback could lead to his death - just like his hero, Philip Seymour Hoffman, who died from a drug overdose in 2014.
"Philip Seymour Hoffman, who I just adored and idolised, he had 20-something years (of sobriety) and I think he had a very similar kind of experience that ended in death," Dax recalls, "and so I'm not smarter than Philip Seymour Hoffman, I'm not anything more than him."
With Kristen and Monica's support, Dax began detoxing and became "physically ill" as he fought to get clean again, and now the "embarrassed" actor is starting over on his sobriety journey.
He recorded the latest Armchair Expert episode on 21 September, and acknowledged his new clean slate with the title, Day 7.
