Actor Christopher Lloyd, 88, has disclosed in a new memoir that his cocaine use began at a nightclub in Los Angeles and that he later sought treatment at a facility in Arizona as he worked to overcome years of alcohol and drug abuse.
In the book, “In My Own Time,” Lloyd writes that a woman approached him at the Los Angeles club and asked if he wanted to “do a snort.” He said he had never tried cocaine before that night.
“She meant cocaine, which at that point I had never tried,” Lloyd wrote. “I hadn’t been out looking for it, but I said all right. We went out to her car and did a couple of lines. That was all it took. I was hooked almost immediately. I loved it, and that was where my cocaine abuse began.”
He wrote that within a couple of years of moving to Los Angeles, cocaine, alcohol and marijuana had become deeply embedded in his daily life. “It wasn’t just the occasional weekend indulgence,” he wrote. “It got entrenched.”
Lloyd said he made it a rule never to perform or film while high or drunk, but that once work ended for the day, his restraint disappeared. “Once the curtain came down or the director said, ‘That’s a wrap,’ all bets were off,” he wrote.
His drinking came into sharper focus during a routine medical visit, when a nurse asked how many drinks he had each day. He answered two or three. “She said, ‘You’re an alcoholic,'” Lloyd recalled. “It stunned me, because I didn’t think what I was doing was a problem.”
As his substance use began threatening both his health and his career, Lloyd wrote that he recognized he needed help. In 1993, his psychologist arranged for him to enter treatment in Arizona. He wrote that he was “completely wasted” when he boarded the plane, and that he initially refused to stay at the first facility.
“I refused to stay,” he wrote. “I bolted out of the place and, drunk and disoriented, ran straight into a barbed-wire fence that tore up my face and left me a bloody mess.”
He was later admitted to Sierra Tucson, an Arizona treatment center, where he stayed for five weeks. Lloyd wrote that the stay marked a turning point but not an immediate end to his struggles. “That was the beginning, but not the end of it,” he wrote. “I relapsed a few times after that.”
He continued attending a private 12-step meeting for high-profile men, where he said he felt comfortable discussing his addiction openly. “Some years later, on April 1, I got sober for what turned out to be the last time,” he wrote.
Lloyd also discussed his recovery in a conversation with his “Back to the Future” co-star Michael J. Fox for Interview Magazine. Fox asked whether Lloyd had been drinking while playing Reverend Jim on “Taxi.”
“Sometimes,” Lloyd said. “It hadn’t gotten to be a big problem yet.”
Fox, who has spoken publicly about his own recovery, asked Lloyd if it was difficult to reveal his addiction in the memoir, noting Lloyd’s private nature. “Yeah. I had a problem,” Lloyd replied. Fox responded, “Well, you recovered. We’re both in recovery.”
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