‘Teen Mom 2’: Leah Messer Reveals Past Heroin Use

Teen Mom 2 star Leah Messer revealed she once tried heroin when she struggled with an addiction to prescription pills. In an interview with the Knockin’ Doorz Down podcast, the 28-year-old Messer said she used the drug when she could not get pills. Her father, Gary Messer, is still addicted to prescription drugs and she hoped to avoid the same situation, but she still became dependent on them.

“I actually tried heroin once. ..my personal experience is I didn’t feel anything from it,” Messer said on the podcast, reports The Ashley’s Reality Roundup. “I think it was divine intervention. It was when you can’t find pain medication, there was the heroin. [It’s] cheaper, and an easier form. I was actually with my dad when I had done it.” Messer explained that she thought she could “avoid” becoming addicted like her father, adding, “I didn’t feel dependent on the medication I was taking at the time until it was too late and I became suicidal.”

Messer bought opioids on the streets and was “doing very illegal activities,” she explained, adding it was a “spiral downhill from there.” She was taking “ridiculous amounts of prescription medication.” The addiction led to her “smoking” the pills and trying heroin.

Later, Messer spoke about the important role Teen Mom 2 producers played in saving her life. She called producer Larry Musnik the “biggest support system I had.” She credited them with saving her life, and she went to a rehab facility in Arizona. Messer was in a “really, really tough custody battle” with her ex-husband, Corey Simms, at the time. She was on the cusp of losing her children because of her drug use. “And the Executive Producer was like, ‘Leah. The best thing for them is for you to go to the treatment facility and get the help that you need and deserve,” she recalled. “That was the support system I had.”

This was not the first time Messer openly discussed her drug addiction, as she wrote about it in her memoir Hope, Grace & Faith. In an August interview with PEOPLE, Messer said writing about her sobriety journey was a “cathartic” experience. Messer’s pill addiction began in 2013, as she started taking medication to manage back pain after Adalynn was born.

“I felt kind of [like a] zombie,” Messer said of her pill abuse. “I don’t really even remember some of those times. I don’t remember anyone carrying me to bed. I don’t remember falling asleep with my legs crisscrossed. I thought I was making it. I was barely surviving.” Messer is mom to Aleeah, 10, and Aliannah Hope, 10, from her relationship with Simms; and Adalynn Calvert, 7, from her relationship with ex-husband Jeremy Calvert.