Whoopi Goldberg reveals cocaine incident in hotel in 1980s after becoming a ‘high functioning addict’ in Hollywood
WHOOPI Goldberg has admitted cocaine was “kicking my a**” as she hit rock bottom in the 1980s when recreational drug use in Hollywood was at a high.
The Oscar-nominated star, who has been open about her past, recalls an awkward incident at a hotel in her new memoir, Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother, and Me.
Whoopi cleaned up in the ’70s after becoming a heroin addict and her first husband was her drug counselor, Alvin Martin, the father of her daughter, Alex.
But after moving from New York to California to further her acting career, she started taking cocaine when she began attending Hollywood parties.
Whoopi believed she could handle the drug because it didn’t seem as dangerous as heroin and Hollywood had a relaxed attitude towards it.
She said a bowl of Quaaludes would greet her at the door of parties and lines of cocaine would be laid out for guests at soirees in the likes of Hollywood, Bel Air, and Beverly Hills.
Whoopi classed herself as a “very high-functioning addict” who would still show up on set and do her job for about a year until she realized she was getting “sloppy” at work.
The View co-host recalled a “slap-in-the-face” moment while staying at a luxury hotel in Manhattan for her birthday when somebody had given her an ounce of cocaine.
The cocaine had me in its clutches.
Whoopi Goldberg
Whoopi was sitting on the closet floor sniffing the drug by herself and didn’t hear the maid knock or let herself in before she opened the closet door.
“I screamed,” the star wrote. “She screamed and backed up and looked like she was going to run.
“I had to get to her quickly and try to calm her down. She was staring at my face as I talked.”
Whoopi said the woman eventually understood it was her room and left, but when she turned to look in the mirror she realized she had cocaine “all over my face.”
“I’d have been so embarrassed if my mother knew the extent the coke had me in its clutches,” she admitted.
She said she was “p****d off” with how bad the problem had got at that point and felt she was letting her daughter down, admitting she’d been sitting in the closet for two days.
Whoopi said she had let her cocaine addiction run her life and it had taken over.
She said she didn’t want to die and felt like the “luckiest woman in the world” because she was able to give up using drugs quickly, while other people find themselves in the throws of addiction for years.
The actress said she changed her friend circle and began turning down party invites.
She put on 20lbs in recovery, but claims in the book it was a small price to pay to get back on the straight and narrow.
HIGH & HALLUCINATING
Whoopi, 68, also writes in the raw memoir about an incident where she began hallucinating after taking drugs and didn’t get out of bed for days.
She previously spoke about the disturbing moment on The View, and how she didn’t even leave to go to the bathroom.
“I ended up sitting on a bed for three or four days scared there was something under the bed,” she said on the show back in 2011.
“I wet the bed, I pooped the bed… I was so scared. I hit bottom. I did that a long time ago.”
In 2009, Whoopi also opened up about how she dropped out of high school and worked as a phone sex operator to get by while getting hooked on heroin.
“I was a child of the Sixties so I ingested as many mind-altering substances as I could,” she said, per The Telegraph.
“It was a rite of passage. And when I got clean I was convinced I wanted to be an actor.”
Whoopi’s autobiography will be released on May 7, 2024.
