Jessica Simpson candidly discusses her life-threatening battle with addiction in her new memoir.
In Open Book, the singer admits she self-medicated with alcohol and stimulants following a period of trauma, which began with her being sexually abused as a young girl. However, the dependency later prompted her doctor to tell her that her life was in danger.
"I was killing myself with all the drinking and pills," she writes in one chapter, according to an excerpt obtained by People.com. "Giving up the alcohol was easy. I was mad at that bottle. At how it allowed me to stay complacent and numb."
Jessica has been sober since November 2017. But it was the therapy that the star struggled with at first.
"With work, I allowed myself to feel the traumas I'd been through," the 39-year-old explains.
The abuse began when she was six years old, "when I shared a bed with the daughter of a family friend," she recalls. "It would start with tickling my back and then go into things that were extremely uncomfortable."
The With You star "wanted to tell my parents," but feared she'd be blamed, writing: "I was the victim but somehow I felt in the wrong."
When she was 12 years old, she told her parents, Tina and Joe, while they were on a car trip.
Jessica saw her mother slap her father's arm and yell: "I told you something was happening."
"Dad kept his eye on the road and said nothing," the mother-of-three adds, before noting that they didn't stay with the friends again. "But we also didn't talk about what I had said."
Jessica went on to recall finally hitting rock bottom after a Halloween party in 2017, confessing, "When I finally said I needed help, it was like I was that little girl that found her calling again in life."
