Singer Florence Welch Opens Up About Sobriety: This Week in Addiction and Recovery News
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Singer Florence Welch Opens Up About Sobriety: This Week in Addiction and Recovery News

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Singer Florence Welch, the front woman for the popular indie group Florence + The Machine, revealed this week that’s she’s nearly four years sober. While promoting the group’s fourth album High as Hope, Welch told SiriusXM says that she sees not drinking as “more normal now”—a stance that wasn’t always the case, given the drunken difficulties behind putting together their last studio album, 2015’s How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful. “I was a mess, making every song was painful. It was all so painful, I was heartbroken, couldn’t figure out my stuff with booze,” she said of the process. “[High as Hope] was so free, and I don’t think, because I had not been drinking for a while, so it’s almost I wouldn’t say this was a sobriety record, but it really comes from a place of even getting underneath that because when you put the drinking down, all the other stuff is going to show up.”

Purdue Pharma Stops Its Canadian Marketing

Purdue Pharma has officially stopped marketing its opioids in Canada, according to The Globe and Mail. The pharmaceutical giant, currently under fire for triggering an overdose epidemic in North America, announced the change on Wednesday. The decision comes four months after Purdue’s parent company stopped advertising prescription painkillers in the US. Canada’s federal government followed suit, calling on all drug companies to end opioid-related marketing and advertising. “While we have taken this action, we remain steadfast in our belief that Canadian prescribers require the most recent information…to ensure that patients are treated appropriately,” David Pidduck, CEO of Purdue’s Canadian operation, said in a statement. Interestingly, while Purdue acknowledged that its marketing of OxyContin in the US was “misleading” (an admission that cost the firm $634.5 million in 2007), it hasn’t made the same claim in Canada. In fact, The Globe and Mail noted that a national class-action settlement was put on hold in March after a Saskatchewan judge rejected it.

Kelly Osbourne Advocates Regular Counseling Sessions

While Kelly Osbourne has opened up about the benefits of her weekly therapy sessions, she also acknowledges the stigma surrounding mental health counseling, a recent story said. “I believe everybody should have therapy. There’s still a huge stigma, especially in this country,” the 33-year-old said. “You work out to keep your body good so you go to therapy to keep your mind good. Your mind, body and soul are the full package. I try and go once a week.” Osbourne has previously shared her struggles with drugs and alcohol, including a three-day stint in a mental institution over substance abuse. “Mum once locked me in a mental institution for three days and it scared the hell out of me,” she wrote in her memoir. “I had to wear paper shoes, since I could potentially kill myself with a shoelace and wasn’t allowed to have anything metal not even a spoon. I was suicidal by medical standards but I heard mum’s message loud and clear: stop using drugs before I was gone for good.” Now clean and sober, Osbourne is a vocal advocate for mental health: “What I’ve learnt is that no amount of therapy or medication is going to work unless you want it to. Until you want to be a good person, you will never be one.”

Eight Years in Prison: Wynonna Judd’s Daughter Sentenced for Meth Charges

Grace Pauline Kelley, the 22-year-old daughter of country star Wynonna Judd, is serving an eight-year prison sentence for violating parole, Entertainment Tonight reported. The sentencing follows a 2017 meth charge for the younger Judd, who left an in-house rehab program in November before her 180-day term was up. Her departure violated the probation she received for charges of manufacturing, delivery and possession of methamphetamine, with intent to distribute, in May 2017. She is scheduled for release on August 10, 2025, though she becomes eligible for parole on February 4, 2019. A CBS News piece on Kelley added that she’s not the only “celebrity kid” who’s had recent run-ins with the law: “Sean Penn and Robin Wright’s son, Hopper Penn, was arrested in Nebraska for drug possession in April, and Redmond O’Neal, son of Ryan O’Neal and Farrah Fawcett, was charged with attempted murder earlier this month after years of drug-related arrests.”

Real Housewives Star Celebrates Six Months Sober

Luann de Lesseps, one of the stars of Bravo’s The Real Housewives of New York, took to Instagram this week to announce her six months of sobriety. Lesseps was arrested last December for “disorderly intoxication,” as well as resisting arrest, battery of an officer and making threats against a public servant. According to a Page Six story, she entered an alcohol treatment facility and later attributed rehab as “the best thing that I could do for myself.” The 53-year-old mother of two appears to be on the right path: “At this point in my life, I don’t want to drink, nor do I have interest in drinking,” she told Extra. Her drinking problem, Page Six said, began once she divorced from Tom D’Agostino Jr. last summer. “I would have the hair-of-the-dog drink the next day, and drink more, and it didn’t feel good,” she recalled. “Alcohol just stopped working for me.” While Lesseps doesn’t know whether she’ll maintain the sobriety she’s found (in several interviews, she’s commented “I miss good red wine” and that her friends insist she’s not an alcoholic), she does acknowledge that she’s now taking her life one day at a time.

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About Author

Paul Fuhr is an addiction recovery writer whose work has appeared in The Literary Review, The Live Oak Review, The Sobriety Collective and InRecovery Magazine, among others. He is the author of the alcoholism memoir “Bottleneck.” He's also the creator and co-host of "Drop the Needle," a podcast about music and recovery. Fuhr lives in Columbus, Ohio with his family and their cats, Dr. No and Goldeneye.