Katey Sagal Gets Candid About Her Struggles With Alcoholism

Katey Sagal is opening up about her journey with alcohol addiction. The 71-year-old actress spoke candidly about her journey to sobriety on the March 11 episode of Christina Applegate and Jamie-Lynn Sigler’s MeSsy podcast, saying that she first started using drugs and alcohol when she was 15 years old.

Sagal, who played Applegate’s mother for 11 seasons of Married…with Children, shared that she first “medicated” herself with drugs and alcohol so she didn’t have to “deal with emotion.”

“I’m a person that for probably the first 30 years of my life, didn’t deal [with] s—t,” Sagal explained on the podcast. “I medicated myself to where I didn’t really deal with my emotion. My parents died, I had cancer in my 20s, I mean, a bunch of s—t happened, and I didn’t really deal with it. And then, you know, I stopped medicating myself, and now I have no choice but to deal with it.”

Referencing Applegate and Sigler’s multiple sclerosis journies, the Sons of Anarchy actress continued, “I’m sure as you deal with a life-threatening illness — which as an alcoholic, I deal with a life-threatening illness — it brings into the forefront of your brain your own mortality. So there’s a certain maturity that I’m sure having the illness that you girls both do that has forced you in probably some really great ways to, you know, like, ‘This is it, man. This is the moment, you know?’”

It’s that worldview that allows Sagal to “stay unafraid,” to “walk in faith,” and “to be a person that can look at the dark sides and really process them.” The Smart House star added, “I’ve learned this way that I live my life, which I think that’s been the biggest inspiration. Because, you know, the brave part of living a sober life is that, you know, life’s f—king terrifying. And you got to look at it. And what I have found around community around all that is I know lots of people that have walked through everything I’ve walked through. So, you know, the opposite of addiction is community.”

Sagal is using her own experiences to keep an “open dialogue” with her youngest child, 18-year-old Esme, who is heading off to college. “We talk a lot about, you know, do not do drugs, period. She’s grown up in a household of no alcohol. So, you know, we’re gonna let her try some alcohol before she goes to college,” she said. “Only because I don’t think the first experience should be at a frat party with a keg or whatever.”