Christopher Lloyd, best known for his roles in the classic sitcom Taxi and the Back to the Future film franchise, has just released a new memoir. In it, he shares that he fought an addiction to drugs and alcohol for many years.
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Christopher Lloyd Struggled With Addiction for Decades
The 88-year-old Lloyd wrote in his new book, In My Own Time: A Memoir, that he first tried a "snort" of cocaine while outside a comedy club in Los Angeles in the 1970s. There, he went out to the car of a woman he had just met and "did a couple of lines."
"That was all it took," he wrote. "I was hooked almost immediately. I loved it, and that was where my cocaine abuse began."
Lloyd said he didn't go on stage or on camera while under the influence. Still, his use of marijuana, alcohol, and cocaine became "entrenched."
"I wasn't asking myself what it meant or what it was doing for me," he shared. "I just knew I liked it, and before long it had a hold on me."
The "Back to the Future" Actor Eventually Went to Rehab
After Taxi was canceled in 1983, Lloyd and his girlfriend got into an argument. The actor was drunk and high, and he spent the night at his nephew's home.
The next day, Lloyd went home to find his partner had locked him out. He began punching the windows to get back in.
"The next thing I remember, I was lying on the floor of my kitchen, bleeding out, and paramedics were attending to me," wrote Lloyd. "I later learned that I had lost so much blood that they had to give me plasma."
The Back to the Future actor had to undergo surgery and physical therapy to repair his hand. Then, a few years later, he started working with a psychologist. The doctor helped him realize that addiction was causing a lot of damage in his life. Lloyd eventually went into rehab in 1993, where he stayed for five weeks.
"That was the beginning, but not the end of it," shares Lloyd. "I relapsed a few times after that... Some years later, on April 1, I got sober for what turned out to be the last time."
