Tatum O’Neal is probably best known for being the youngest person to win an Academy Award, for 1973’s Paper Moon. She was ten years old when she won her Oscar. The last time we covered her was in February 2020 and she was sharing how bad her rheumatoid arthritis was. As is so often the case with child actors, Tatum has had a hard life. Her dad Ryan O’Neal was not a good dad–Tatum wrote in her memoir that he had emotionally and physically abused her. She started struggling with addiction in adulthood and in 2020 it nearly cost her her life. She overdosed and had a stroke, and was in a coma for six weeks. When she woke up, she had lost the ability to speak. Over the course of the last three years, she has made a truly miraculous recovery, and is sharing with People Magazine about her sobriety and recovery. She is still struggling to read and write, but she can speak. Her son Kevin McEnroe is also quoted in the story.

What happened in 2020: In the early days of the COVID pandemic, O’Neal had been using — and abusing — prescription medications, some of which were prescribed for her back and neck pain and her rheumatoid arthritis. But on that day in May 2020, she overdosed on a combination of pain medication, opiates and morphine. A friend found her in her Century City apartment and she was rushed to the hospital.
In the hospital, O’Neal was diagnosed with aphasia, a disorder that results from damage to the part of the brain that is responsible for language, according to the NIH. She was in a coma, says Kevin, “and had damage to her right frontal cortex. At times, it was touch and go,” he says. “I had to call my brother and sister and say she was thought to be blind, deaf and potentially might never speak again.”

Her recovery and healing process: Over the next two years, under medical supervision, and with regular therapy , she has fought to regain her full memory, an ongoing process. And while her vocabulary keeps getting better, there’s still a ways to go.  As Kevin says, “Emotionally the things that made my mom want to take drugs in the first place, those things are still very present.” In addition to her daily therapy, O’Neal attends twelve step meetings (often via Zoom) and is working on her recovery, all under the care of her physician.  “I’ve been trying to get sober my whole life,” says O’Neal. “Every day, I am trying.”

Her son says she’s never wanted to be sober just for herself: Looking back, says Kevin, “She could always want sobriety as a mom, but she never really wanted it for herself.” Now, he says, “She has embraced this attempt at recovery. She was always a very loving mom but when isolated, I think it was hard to find any love for herself.” Kevin, a writer who has had his own struggles with alcohol and drugs, has now been sober for three and a half years. “ It was a road to a short life but now I don’t feel that way,” he says. “And I’m so proud of her for trying.”

[From People]

It really is a miracle that Tatum is alive and well after what happened, and that she’s regained the ability to speak. Her story reminds me that so many people struggle with addiction because of childhood trauma, or trauma generally. I completely understand why people who grow up with abusive parents end up looking for an escape. Emotional wounds from childhood are so hard to heal because our brains are so malleable then. It’s easy sometimes for those of us who have never struggled with addiction to judge the people who do–to look down at the street addict and think, “they’re just in that position because they made bad choices.” And yeah, addiction is a downward spiral staircase of self-destructive choices. At the same time, it’s also likely the case that someone, somewhere communicated to that person that they were unworthy or unlovable–and they believed it. Recovering from addiction is complex and usually requires a lot of support–medical, psychological, and community support. There is a crisis of addiction and overdose deaths in the U.S. but most people don’t have Tatum’s resources, and it is a terrible injustice. It should be easy to access addiction treatment, but it’s not. Multiple systems are failing people with addictions. I’m pulling for Tatum. Everyone who struggles with addiction should get the chance to recover and to heal.

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