Nicole Kidman has supported her husband, Keith Urban, through his sobriety for more than a decade and she is opening up about what she’s learned “as the wife of somebody who’s been through” a struggle with addiction, PEOPLE reports.
Speaking on The Jess Cagle Interview, Kidman offered advice to the loved ones of addicts. She encourages them “to get help. To put your hand up, to reach out. There is absolutely help out there. You can’t save somebody, they’ve got to save themselves.”
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That lesson, she explains, “is a very big thing for people like me who go, ‘I can take care of you. I can do it.’” Kidman realized, “At some point, you just have to say, ‘I love you and I’m here when you decide to do the work. If you don’t, then that’s it.’”
Urban’s battle with addiction started early in his career in the 1990s. He checked himself into the Betty Ford Center in Palm Springs for alcohol abuse in 2007, just four months after he married Kidman.
“Nicole listened to her heart and did what she felt was the right thing to do,” Urban told PEOPLE in 2007. “To see that kind of love in action, that’s very moving and deeply inspiring and just makes me want to be a better man.”
Kidman stood by Urban’s side no matter what. “It’s not easy, but there’s an extraordinary life if you do get there through help,” she says.
