Rigorous Honesty –
Sep. 25, 2020 – “Eight years into sobriety, I had not done a single shady thing,” he said. “I hadn’t done anything gray.”
At that time in 2012, he had been traveling back and forth to visit his dad, who was undergoing cancer treatment at a hospital. It was around this time that he also suffered a motorcycle accident on his way to the “Parenthood” set.
“I immediately called my sponsor, and I said, ‘I’m in a ton of pain and I gotta work all day. And we have friends that have Vicodin,’” Shepard recalled. “He said, ‘OK, you can take a couple Vicodin to get through the day of work, but you have to go to the doctor, and you have to get a prescription, and then you have to have Kristen [Bell] dole out the prescription.’”
Shepard agreed and followed the guidance. However, not long after, he flew back out to see his dad and–because his wife wouldn’t be with him–traveled without the pills.
While there, he ended up giving his ailing father some Percocet. For his part, Shepard said he himself took double what his other prescription was. “You know, we had so little in common and so much f—— friction,” Shepard recalled. “But the no. 1 thing we had in common was we were both f—— addicts and we had never used anything together. And we sat there stoned and looked at the lake. And in that moment, I felt elation and I was just happy.”
Later, Bell surprised him where Shepard was with his dad to offer her support, and Shepard admitted he had relapsed. While she told him he needed to call someone from Alcoholics Anonymous, she knew he had been experiencing a lot of pain from his motorcycle accident and that he’d been dealing with the stress of his dad’s health.
“That was eight years ago,” Shepard continued, later adding, “I’ve now had this experience where I did that, I felt bad, but there wasn’t any fallout from it. It was like, I felt bad, I said I felt bad, and then I did just move on and it was fine.”
After Shepard got hurt again, he was once again administered pills. However, because they kept him up at night, he decided to save them and take them on his own.
“That cycle happens maybe three or four more times,” he recalled. “I feel shady, but I don’t feel like this is a problem. I didn’t desire more when the thing was over.”
