Dax Shepard recalls a low point in his battle with addiction.
Shepard recounted a drunken 2004 interview on Late Night with Conan O’Brien when he spoke to Blake Griffin on his Audible podcast The Pursuit of Healthiness. He described the performance as “the only career wreck I did,” which led to him being briefly banned from the show.
The comedian claims he was “blackout drunk” during the “Conan” pre-interview, during which producers laid out stories and talking points for the host, and was awakened by hotel security barely 20 minutes before the recording.
“I show up on the show, I don’t know what he’s talking about. I see him standing in line for stories I’ve told, but I don’t know any of the stories. So I’m just doing what I can to be funny and I’m a mess.” Something about Shepard feels strange from the moment he walks on stage. The actor wanders through an eight-minute interview after falling backward over a chair and damaging a coffee table. “It was great for the audience. But for him, what a disaster. I didn’t know any of the stories,” he recalls. “So I was banned from that show for a few years until I got sober and I came back on it and now I’ve been on it countless times.”
Shepard says the lead-up to the concert was just as bad. While on vacation in Hawaii, on his way to cocaine, the actor was involved in a car accident. He bought crystal meth instead of cocaine, which he did anyway. The actor goes on to say that he was so sick from the trip that he drank at the airport before boarding the plane.
“In hit TV shows and in pop culture
we have this idea of ‘a bottom,’ but most of the recovering addicts I know have multiple, multiple bottoms,” Shepard says.
Shepard has already spoken candidly about his experience with substance abuse. On an episode of his own podcast, Armchair Expert, recorded while sobering for seven days last year, he revealed that he had suffered a relapse with pills. He claimed he was “very proud” of his 16 years of alcohol and cocaine abstinence, but said he had not “been sober like I would like to be sober, where you have no secrets and you are not afraid to tell people about the gray area you go through.”
“I now have the feeling that my life is going to get better. It will make me feel less sick, I will sweat less every night,” he added.
Shortly after, he acknowledged on The Ellen DeGeneres Show that he didn’t want to tell his listeners the truth, but that he felt compelled to do so in order to be honest with individuals on their own recovery journeys. “I really cherish that,” he said of individuals reaching out to him at various stages of recovery, seeking help, or simply sharing their own experiences.
Shepard recently made news for an interview on his podcast with Prince Harry, in which the rebellious royal claimed that his father, Prince Charles, passed on a “cycle” of genetic pain and suffering, which he and his wife Meghan Markle came to Los. Angeles to break.