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As a result, she started acting out. “I started cheating on my husband,” she shared on the podcast. “I had always really drunk alcohol to take the edge off of the drugs. And then I realized that I was getting up in the morning and just going straight to the minibar and downing those mini vodka bottles or whiskey, whatever was left, and without the drugs anymore. I was like, ‘I think I’ve got a drinking problem.'”
There was one night in Los Angeles that particularly sticks in her mind. As Allen recalled, “I remember being in LA and thinking like, ‘None of this acting out is working anymore. Maybe I should try heroin.'”
That’s when she knew she needed help. “I’d been in a scene where—a scene what happens to, you know, people that use heroin—and knew that when that thought popped into my head it was time to confront whatever it was, confront my demons,” she said. “That was about five years ago. And I started recovery.”
Though she attended 90 meetings in 90 days, she didn’t feel truly committed to the program. “I was just like, ‘I just want to get to six months,'” she said. “‘Once I’m there, at least I know I can stop this when I need to know.'”
Six months later, she began drinking again—and it destroyed her world. “I lost my marriage; I lost my house that I’d work for 10 years to buy; my career started just sinking and I lost all my friends,” Allen, who split from Cooper in 2016 and finalized their divorce in 2018, admitted. “I didn’t have any of my friendships anymore. I was so resentful, so angry all the time. Really felt like the world owed me stuff and I got the raw end of the deal. That went on for another four years and then I ended up back in the rooms again.”
