BY ABBEY WHITE | HollywoodReporter.Com
Troy Warren for CNT #Lifestyle
During an appearance on ’The View’ on Thursday, the comedian and actress revealed that after seeking addiction treatment with the help of her husband, she was put on a psych hold for three days.
Kathy Griffin is sharing more about how living with drug addiction led to her attempted suicide and how life after her lung cancer surgery has been happier.
While appearing on The View Thursday in part to promote her role in the TBS comedy Search Party, the comedian and actress echoed earlier comments about when she began misusing pills, telling the co-hosts that it started “a couple years before the Trump thing.”
Griffin was referring to the 2017 photo of her holding a bloody effigy of then-President Donald Trump’s head. She lost her job at CNN over the photo and was investigated by the Secret Service before being cleared two months later.
Griffin said she didn’t blame her addiction on Trump or the backlash that resulted from the photo, including her being “blacklisted” as co-host Joy Behar described. But she did say the incident was “was much more frightening than cancer,” due in large part to feeling like the world hated her and thought she was “disgusting and irrelevant.”
“So once that happened, and frankly, that with quarantine, I just started doing pills all day,” she said. “I had this fantasy that my husband will find somebody wonderful, who’s more appropriate for him. I wrote this whole note. Then I took about 100 pills.”
Griffin said that her addiction had “crept up” on her in a typical way: through various injuries over the years that required pain killers. “Back in the day, they would give you like 90 Vicodin like it was nothing or 90 Ambien. Then over the years, I became addicted,” she explained.
At one point, she says she fell down the stairs — after never having blacked out before — and woke up with “lacerations and injuries all over myself.”
“I then finally called my husband because I even kicked my husband out of the house… I was really bad,” Griffin revealed. “I said, ‘Can you take me to the hospital?’ So I went to the hospital and I just came clean. I said, ‘Look, I tried to take my life.’”
From there Griffin says they did a urine test that identified drugs were in her system before she shared with the doctors what she took. “Then they put me on a psych hold for three days,” she said.
Griffin previously spoke about her addiction in August, revealing that after writing the note to her husband, she had also gotten her “living revocable trust in order.”
During her View appearance, the comedian ultimately shared why she was speaking out on national television about her experience. “One of the reasons I’m even talking to you guys about it is I’m 61 and I’m from a time when you couldn’t talk about this stuff,” she said. “You talk about a pill addiction and you’re never working again or you’re not insurable.”
Since getting treatment for her addiction and having her cancer surgery, which involved removing half of her left lung, Griffin says she’s been a much happier person. “For some reason, when I survived, I laugh at everything now. I walk around all day giggling because I feel like I had this near miss and so now I just laugh at everything,” she told The View hosts. “I’m kind of happier.”
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