Jamie Lee Curtis: Self-Professed Dope Fiend of Show-off Business (Aired August 1, 2022)

This episode originally aired on August 1, 2022.


Getting Jamie Lee Curtis to open about her many years spent
addicted to Vicodin is, frankly, not very difficult. She wants to
talk about it. And that’s for a couple of reasons. One, she wants
to make it clear that she’s no different from any other addict in
any other walk of life. That’s why she calls herself a dope
fiend. She just happens to have had success in an industry she
derisively calls “show off business”. Two, because she committed
to sobriety after reading someone else’s story of addiction so
maybe her story can help someone too.


We talk to Jamie about how she got hooked, how she sustained the
habit, and how she carried on a perfectly successful movie star
life without anyone catching on. Until they did catch on.


Listen to Letters from Camp, now on its third and final season,
at Audible.com. Follow Jamie Lee Curtis on Twitter
@jamieleecurtis and on Instagram @curtisleejamie.


Jamie's Gifts to John:


"At such a time, it seems natural and good to me to ask myself
these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and
what must I fight against? Our species is the only creative
species and it has only one creative instrument: the individual
mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men.
There are no good collaborations whether in music, in art, in
poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of
creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but
the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the
lonely mind of a man. And now the forces marshalled around the
concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on the
preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation,
by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammer blows
of conditioning. The free roving mind is being pursued, roped,
blunted, and drugged. It is a sad, suicidal course our species
seems to have taken. And this I believe that the free exploring
mind of the exploring human is the most valuable thing in the
world. And this I would fight for. The freedom of the mind to
take any direction it wishes undirected. And this I must fight
against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or
destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I'm about. I
can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to
destroy the free mind for this is the one thing which can by
inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this.
And I hate it. And I will fight against it to preserve the one
thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory
can be killed, we are lost." - John Steinbeck, East of
Eden


"When things go unexamined for a long enough time, certain things
happen. They become very very powerful. They create conformity.
They intimidate." - E.L. Doctorow


"Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling
something." - The Dread Pirate Roberts, The Princess Bride


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what you want to hear about. What guests and issues would you
like to have covered in a future episode? Write us at
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Help is available right away.


The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255,
1-800-273-TALK


Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741.


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available
here. https://read.macmillan.com/lp/the-hilarious-world-of-depression/


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