Natasha Lyonne Reflects on Relapse After 10 Years: ‘You’re Not Alone’
Natasha Lyonne opened up about relapsing after 10 years of sobriety, saying “Recovery is a lifelong process. Anyone out there struggling, remember you’re not alone,” in a post shared Saturday on social media.
Lyonne continued: “Grateful for love & smart feet. Gonna do it for baby Bambo. Stay honest, folks. Sick as our secrets. If no one told ya today, I love you. No matter how far down the scales we have gone, we will see how our experience may help another. Keep going, kiddos. Don’t quit before the miracle. Wallpaper your mind with love. Rest is all noise & baloney.”
Lyonne entered treatment in 2006 after years of well-publicized arrests (which included a DUI in 2001 and was hit with charges of mischief, trespass, and harassment of a neighbor in 2004). She was admitted to the hospital for a collapsed lung and hepatitis C in 2005.
Her comeback has been strong, but it wasn’t always guaranteed.
“Rather than spend so much time wondering if I’m going to get hired or is it a problem that I’ve got this black-tar history, I’ve just got to keep doing what I’m doing and try to be decent,” she told Entertainment Weekly in 2012.
“Listen, I did not think I was coming back,” she added. “So I didn’t really care. When you go as deep into the belly of the beast as I went, there’s a whole other world going on and something like show business becomes the dumbest thing on planet Earth.”
Lyonne also reflected on the nature of addiction.
“Spiraling into addiction is really, really scary. Some things have a very A-to-B scientific effect. Like, alcohol is a depressant. Cocaine is a stimulant. And then: Cocaine plus heroin is bad! That’s the point of my story, that’s the moral,” she added. “Coke plus heroin equals speedball. And speedball equals bad, you know?”
“It’s weird to talk about,” she admitted. “I was definitely as good as dead, you know? A lot of people don’t come back. That makes me feel wary, and self-conscious. I wouldn’t want to feel prideful about it.”
In 2025 Lyonne also shared that the late Paul Reubens, the star and creator of “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” took her out to dinner after she left rehab. “Paul Reubens so lovingly said to me when he took me to a steak dinner in the valley after rehab, he said to me, ‘Oh Natasha, don’t worry about it. I was never shocked when things went south, you’re going to be OK. But it was inevitable. You’ve got to remember: I met your mother,’” she said.
“It was a real comfort to me that there was a witness to that time in my life,” she said of Reubens.
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