Page Six revealed today that Dax Shepard is opening up about his fall back into substance abuse. The 45-year-old actor shared his relapse story on the latest episode of Armchair Expert, in which he shared how he relapsed not long after celebrating 16 years of sobriety with Kristen Bell, his wife.
According to Shepard, it all started with his visit to his father who was struggling with a cancer battle at the time. A doctor prescribed him Vicodin which he took at home, however, he says he was taking double what he was supposed to.
According to Shepard, his father had been prescribed Percocet and they were both addicts their entire lives but they never actually got high together. Shepard took Vicodin and his father was on Percocet, and he says they finally felt that “elation” and he was happy spending those moments with his father on his death bed.
On account of his several motorcycle injuries over the last few years, Shepard has also had to undergo multiple surgeries, which has led to taking more prescription drugs. He had to find a fine balance between taking drugs to ease his pain but also not become an addict again.
Shepard explained on his podcast that he often feels like he’s entitled to take two Vicodin pills at the end of the day because he’s in pain. However, as time passed, he slowly started to realize his prescription drug addiction was getting worse.
Shepard said that since then, he has been taking 30 milligrams of OxyContin whenever he feels like it. It became even more of an issue when he began to hide it from his wife, Kristen, and his podcast co-host, Monica Padman.
Dax said it became a huge issue because he was lying to the people around him about his habit, and he started to worry about what was going to happen once he finally decided to stop taking OxyContins on a regular basis, which he had been taking every day.
This all led him to realize that it was time for him to come clean about what he has been up to. Dax claimed his habit has intensified to multiple OxyContin pills a day.