This article includes potentially triggering descriptions of sexual assault.
Selma Blair, 49, has revealed how her childhood alcoholism began in her new memoir, Bad baby, which goes on sale on May 17. Blair, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2018, says she began experimenting with alcohol at age seven and it soon became a coping mechanism: “I don’t know if she would have survived childhood.” without alcoholism”, said the actor People in a new interview. She shared more details about his past with the outlet, which published a section excerpted from Bad baby.
One passage explores the roots of his alcoholism, recalling his introduction to Manischewitz, a sweet wine popular in the Jewish community. “I always liked Passover,” Blair wrote. “As I sipped Manischewitz, I was allowed throughout the seder to be flooded with light, filling me with the warmth of God. But the year I was seven years old, when we basically had Manischewitz on tap and no one was paying attention to my level of consumption, I put it together: the feeling was not God but fermentation.” Eventually, Blair established a pattern of getting heavily drunk that she continued into adulthood and she stopped in 2016 when she got sober.
She notes that anxiety used to be the trigger that led her to drink: “just quick sips whenever my anxiety kicked in. Usually I barely got drunk,” she writes, according to People. “I became… an expert at hiding my secret.”
“That’s why it’s such a big problem for a lot of people,” Blair said. People. “It really is a great comfort, a great relief at first. Maybe even the early years for me because I started very young with that as a consolation, as my coping mechanism.
Bad baby it also includes details about the sexual assaults Blair has experienced throughout her life, which was important for her to include in her memoir as part of the healing process, she says. She explained how she felt during a seizure, which took place when she was twenty years old: “I wish I could say that what happened to me that night was an anomaly, but it wasn’t. I have been raped several times because I was too drunk to say the words: ‘Please. Stop.'”
Aside from her therapist, no one knew she had been sexually assaulted multiple times, Blair said. People. But ultimately, therapy equipped her with the tools she needed to write her memoir and share her story with a much broader audience. The writing experience illuminated parts of her life that she hadn’t considered, she said: “My sense of trauma was bigger than she thought. I didn’t realize that assault was so central to my life. I had so much shame and guilt.”
The creative process also became cathartic, helping her process past trauma, she said. “I am grateful that I felt safe enough to put it on the page. And then I can work on it with a therapist and with other writing, and really ease that burden of shame on myself.”
If you or someone you love needs support due to substance use, please contact the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) or call the national helpline at 1-800-662-4357. If you have been a victim of sexual assault, you can call National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-4673 or chat online at online.rainn.org.
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Reference-www.self.com