TW: lots of details about drug and alcohol addiction
Posted by Divine_fashionva
TW: lots of details about drug and alcohol addiction
Posted by Divine_fashionva
32 Comments
Was this known?
When your her age,,at 60 something the filter is off. She was asked a question,,and she answered.
I don’t think anything is gained by pretending an addict wasn’t an addict. It’s a disease and an incredibly hard one to best. There shouldn’t be any more secrecy or shame in someone dying from addiction than there is from cancer or heart disease.
As the daughter of an addict, I can’t stand those of you commenting, “This isn’t Rosie’s business to share.” At least someone is. Michelle can’t because she’s dead and her family enabled it but now paints a different picture. Waiting for the abuser to own up and share is like waiting for pigs to fly, speaking from experience.
I don’t see an issue with her providing her own insights into someone with whom she was once close.
It is OK to talk about the frustrating or even infuriating aspects of having an addict in your life and how helpless you feel sometimes.
Remember Michelle famiky refused an autopsy sorry I have questions. Cos you would think you want answers.
I can’t forget how everyone swore up and down that it was a liver condition completely unrelated to addiction. As an alcoholic I’d haunt anyone who tried to sanitize my cause of death. I hope she is at peace❤️🩹
silence on addiction kills people and contributes to stigma. i am glad she is speaking out about this.
I’m pretty sure this was a widely known secret for a while. I knew, and figured it was the cause of her death. I can’t be the only one??
I actually didn’t know who she was when I read online about her death but when I saw her most recent pictures with jaundice (yellow eyes and skin) I immediately assumed she was an alcoholic and died from liver failure. Turns out she did have a liver transplant and I guess the new liver failed or she drank again. Dying that young from liver failure almost always indicates alcoholism. I had a family member die the same way. She was the same age as Michelle.
when she says her daughter was “born addicted to drugs”, what does that mean?
Crazy how many people are unaware of the dangers of addiction pose to one’s health.
I don’t have any problem with Rosie’s answer but I wonder if the interviewer was surprised they walked into such a heavy topic. It doesn’t seem like they expected it based on the tone of the question and the next.
Addiction is a terrible illness, one that a lot of people unfortunately fall victim to. It also does not discriminate between the rich and the poor, alcoholism in particular takes many lives across all layers of society each year.
It’s sad that Michelle and Whitney (and many others) were not able to win their battles against addiction, but maybe people like Rosie talking about it openly and earnestly can at least help destigmatise addiction and help even just one person get the help they need. With rehab centres and various sectors of mental health care around the world being threatened by budget cuts and closures, it’s more important now than it has been in a long time.
Let’s bsfr here a 39 year old woman ETA *former child star* with money and quality healthcare access needed a liver transplant and passed away shortly after, I think we can all read between the lines on that one.
The family can handle things however they feel comfortable but let’s not act like anything Rosie said here is really new information
I’m rewatching Buffy right now and it’s making my heart hurt. So many losses already in that cast, and Michelle really was so special.
I’m not a Rosie fan at all, but she’s so right about this. I appreciate that she was so candid. It could save someone’s life.
I remember Michelle was being told to seek medical treatment and she latched onto an awful comment about plastic surgery to claim that she was actually healthy and people who said otherwise were haters. People published an article about her “clapping back at haters,” and didn’t take it down when she died.
Eta
I know that they didn’t take it down because it’s still up with just a note she died a month later
I thought she died of diabetes complications? Or am I mixing up young celebrity deaths? Alcohol and drugs would certainly fuck up diabetes management.
So can we acknowledge Britney’s obvious substance abuse now or
Going against the grain here but I don’t think Rosie should have shared this. Michelle didn’t want to talk about this publicly and none of her family have discussed it publicly, which doesn’t automatically mean they enabled her as a lot of people seem to think. Maybe they are still respecting Michelle’s wishes for this to be private? There is a long history of addiction in my family including a very close relative. She would never want me to talk about this publicly in such an identifying way, even if she passes. I would also feel awkward publicly talking about someone I used to work with many years ago and how they died from addiction if the person in question and the family hadn’t talked about it themselves.
I don’t know, it just doesn’t sit well with me.
Rosie has seen some shit.
I’m glad her death is being honestly discussed because the media was sugarcoating it as a diabetes death. This was all addiction, unfortunately. Rosie is correct when she said people are born with the addiction. It’s a disease where the substance or habit affects your brain in an abnormal way.
I love Rosie so much, she has proven time and time again what a gem she is. An absolute great woman
I mean….she was yellow, so this doesn’t surprise me. I wish she would have taken the help offered, but I know how hard that can be.
Rosie a real one
Ask yourself:
1. Why do we want certain things to be “private”—that is, not discussed or talked about by others?
2. Why would we not want others to know a particular detail about us?
3. Why do we want to hide the parts of ourselves we don’t feel good about?
Lastly, Rosie’s not telling Michelle’s story. Rosie’s telling her own story about her relationship with Michelle—and Michelle was an addict. Invalidating a person’s lived experience with an addict is just forcing the addiction back in the closet—which is exactly where addiction thrives.
I like how the next question is about Sleepless in Seattle. Talk about moving on 🤣
Rosie gives deep, heartfelt, empathetic statement on addiction.
Interviewer: sooo I loved you in the Flinstones when I was a kid. Are you gonna make more movies?
I used to think Rosie O’Donnell was just a sorta-sometimes funny comedian who was in a few movies and shows, and I didn’t give her all that much thought beyond that. Over the past few years, she’s been subjected to all sorts of abuse by the president (of all people), and she’s handled it with dignity and a kind of steadfastness of spirit where you can tell she’s not performing or putting up a false front, but is just an actual human trying to get past a lot of nastiness directed her way without letting it consume her. I don’t put stock in “celebrity” or whatever, but I have a lot of respect for her now, and I think in this interview she also comes across as a genuine and decent person. It sounds like she did what I would have done (or would like to think I would have done) in some very difficult situations with addicted people, who are always so hard to help even when you try everything you can.
I work with addicts and alcoholics. Getting sober is hard and staying sober is even harder. They have to want it badly for themselves and get away from the people and lifestyle that indulges the addictive behavior. It’s a terrible cycle to watch people go through and I hope if you’re reading this and are going through it that you choose life and wellness and by getting help. People care about you and you’re worth it.
My dad is an addict. My family hid my father’s addiction out of shame, just like they hid his father’s addiction out of shame. It is a really isolating place to exist in, especially as a kid. Nowadays, we are more open about it, but even then a lot goes unsaid, and while my dad says he’s clean, I’m not 100% sure I believe him because there was always so much lying and secrecy growing up.
My husband is also an addict. He is almost a year sober after completing a month-long rehab stay. We are open about it, both between ourselves and family & friends. It’s still difficult to navigate and really hard sometimes, but the ability to be open about it with him has been healing, weirdly enough. He doesn’t demand I hide it from my friends/loved ones–he recognizes that I need that support, and he recognizes that his addiction is part of my story too, and I deserve to be able to be open about something that impacts me so deeply with people I trust. And ultimately my husband has been able to be honest with his loved ones about the times he still struggles; being able to reach out for that support without fear of judgment has been important in his recovery.
I guess my point is that so often people feel compelled to hide others’ addictions to protect their privacy. And I get that, I do! That was the mentality I was raised with. But all it did was enable my dad and isolate the rest of us from support we desperately needed. Addiction thrives in secret. Being open about it obviously won’t heal it, but it’s not just the addict who is hurt when it comes to addiction, and their loved ones deserve to be able to tell their stories as well. I think O’Donnell is sharing her experience with Michelle Trachtenberg, and I get why some people think she’s crossed a line. But I also think the only way to destigmatize addiction is to talk about it openly, and I think that includes all who are affected, not just the ones in open addiction.