"The Mighty Ducks" star Shaun Weiss is opening up about his recovery from heroin and meth addiction.
The former child actor who portrayed Greg Goldberg, a player on the youth league hockey team in all three "Mighty Ducks" movies, struggled in recent years, getting arrested for burglary while under the influence of methamphetamine in 2020 and also being arrested for public intoxication in 2018.
Since then, the actor, who also appeared on "The Cosby Show," "Boy Meets World" and "The King of Queens," has been on the road to recovery, even getting a new set of teeth from a high-end Los Angeles dentist after his own were ruined by meth use.
Now, as revealed in a new interview on episode 22 of Addiction Talk, an online recovery talk show presented by American Addiction Centers, Weiss is two years sober and has landed his first film role in 14 years.
"It's hard to see those images," Weiss told host Joy Sutton regarding the shocking pictures of him under the influence. "When I see them, they kind of shock me still," he said. "I was avoiding reflective surfaces, so I didn't know what I looked like. I'm not exaggerating."
"I'm really sorry 'Ducks' fans had to see me like that," he added. "I'm really hoping my story can be useful, so it's not just a sad thing that happened."
Weiss said his troubles began when the lease ran out on his apartment and he went through a crushing split with his then-fiancée. Instead of "using his wits" the actor said he "turned to drugs" and began to neglect himself.
"I didn't care," he said.
Weiss said he went from seeing hard drugs for the first time to a full-blown drug addict over the course of six months.
"It was instant relief," he said of using meth to mask the pain brought on by his relationship break up and the death of his father. From there, he explained that his life quickly spiraled.
"I stayed chasing that next fix. I had gone down such a spiral I didn't know what to do to get myself out of it."
He lost his possessions, including his cell phone, which led to him to lose touch with the people in his life. Weiss said he also experienced shame which prevented him from wanting friends and family to see him like that.
"It's a big reason for why people don't reach out for help. When we're in our addiction we tend to burn people." He said he now knows that "connection is the opposite of addiction."
Weiss said that each time he got high, he promised himself it was the last time.
"Every bag I did was the last bag I was going to do," he said. "And it just went on and on."
Weiss spent three years in this cycle. "Subconsciously, I didn't think I'd be alive much longer," he said. He began composing goodbye notes to the people he loved.
"I was in horrible shape if those nice sheriff deputies did not come in and save me," he said of his arrest.
A judge ordered him into a recovery program, which he credits with saving his life.
"I wasn't ready to trade a little pleasure for a life behind bars," he said.
Now, Weiss turns to yoga and journaling to keep him on the straight and narrow.
"When I write things down, they aren't swimming around in my head all day," he said.
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
