Kristen Johnston Opens up About Her 'Abusive Relationship' With Drugs

Mom star Kristen Johnston opened up about her "abusive" relationship with drugs after 3rd Rock from the Sun ended in 2001. Johnston starred as Sally Solomon on the NBC sitcom, which ran six seasons and earned Johnston, 53, two Emmys. The series was Johnston's breakthrough show and she struggled to handle the fame, Johnston told Heart of the Matter podcast host, Elizabeth Vargas.

"It was like an on-off relationship for four years, and it only became really bad after 3rd Rock," Johnston told Vargas, reports PEOPLE. Johnston, who has been sober for 14 years, compared her relationship with opiates to a marriage and a "very, very abusive" relationship that began a couple of years after the sitcom ended. Johnston said she was in an "absolute panic" while handling fame.

"The work was fun, but everything that came with it was so terrifying to me, and I didn't realize until later that I lived in a state of absolute panic for 10 years," Johnston told Vargas. At one point, she thought, "Ugh, I'm going to be found out. I'm being chased by [the] paparazzi. They're going through my garbage. They're going to write crap about it. My mom's going to see."

Johnston discovered she had a serious problem when she was hospitalized while working in London. She suffered a ruptured ulcer the day after her play opened. This inspired her to get help and she spent the next few weeks in the hospital. "I saw all these fireworks, and everyone was outside at the Eye, and I could see the London Eye from my hospital bed, and it just occurred to me that there are people standing there watching that outside," Johnston recalled. "They're with their friends and their family, and they are not worried about where their next pills are. I haven't done that for 15 years." She described that as the "first-time sanity seeped through."

The actress, who is now working on the final season of CBS' Mom, revealed that her younger sister, Julie Herschede, died after a struggle with addiction in August 2020. "Yesterday, my beautiful younger sister Julie lost her battle with addiction," Johnston tweeted at the time. "I know she's finally at peace. She had the best belly laugh in the world."

Johnston has been open about her relationship with drugs in the past. In 2012, she wrote her memoir, Guts: The Endless Follies and Tiny Triumphs of a Great Disaster. In the book, she wrote about battling depression while filming 3rd Rock. "Yeah. And you're not supposed to be," Johnston told Entertainment Weekly in 2012. "You can't tell anybody, 'I'm so bummed you gave me an Emmy.' You can't be sad when you're being celebrated. So it was a big conflict and there's no shrink that can understand it."