Elizabeth Taylor’s son Christopher Wilding recently revealed that his family made the difficult decision to perform surgery on him in the 1980s.
Wilding, who is Taylor’s second child with her second husband, the late actor Michael Wilding, revealed in the third episode of the BBC documentary series Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar that her family decided to stage the intervention following her divorce. of her sixth husband. , US Senator John Warner, in 1982.
After that tumultuous event, his drug and alcohol use increased, leading his family to worry about his health.
To further complicate matters, Taylor struggled with chronic pain, so she took painkillers regularly.
“He had physical ailments, especially back problems, for which the use of painkillers was a legitimate remedy,” Wilding said, via People.
Elizabeth Taylor’s son Christopher Wilding (right) revealed in episode three of the BBC documentary series Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar that his family staged an intervention in the 1980s for his drug and alcohol use; photographed together in 2002 in New York
But you may also have turned to drugs instead of other options because of a generational mindset.
‘When I was little, we had all these miracle drugs and you took a pill. That was their focus: living better through science,” Wilding explained.
But those in Taylor’s inner circle knew that she wasn’t simply using medication under a doctor’s supervision, she was “abusing alcohol and pain relievers, including injectables.”
Wilding added that family members talked to Taylor about his substance use from time to time, but it didn’t seem to have an impact on his use, so an intervention was proposed.
“We just wanted her to get help,” Wilding said. “Close family members flew in and boy, that was tough.”
The documentary series was able to include the perspective of Taylor herself, who died in 2011 at age 79, as she spoke about the intervention on tape.
“The family intervention stopped me in my tracks,” he admitted on tape. “It leaves you completely speechless, it’s so sincere and done with so much love that you know it must be agony for them.”
Later, in another recording, Taylor admitted that the intervention felt like reality had “slapped her in the face.”
“And I thought, ‘Oh my God, I thought I was a good mother. How have I allowed myself to do this to the people I love most in the world?”‘
Recalling how each family member spoke to Taylor about how her struggle with substance abuse impacted them, Wilding said they were all “petrified” about how it would all go, as her mother was a “formidable woman.”
But in the end she had the best possible reaction to the intervention, since she immediately agreed to be admitted to a rehabilitation clinic, with the condition that she could wait to leave until the next morning.
Taylor had been abusing alcohol and drugs, particularly prescription painkillers for her back, after her 1982 divorce from U.S. Senator John Warner.
Wilding said everyone was “petrified” by the intervention because Taylor was so “formidable,” but agreed to leave the next morning for the Betty Ford Center. He was there for seasons in 1983 and later in 1988; seen in 2009 in Santa Monica
Wilding said her mother “had to do a lot of things she never had to do in her adult life” when she checked into the Betty Ford Center, including sharing a room with a stranger.
“Each one was assigned a type of life, domestic tasks,” he explained.
Therapy was also an important component for the clinic’s patients, and Taylor committed to the process to help with the traumas she had suffered for decades.
“I really felt, for the first time in my life, that no one was exploiting me,” Taylor said in a recording. ‘They were accepting me for myself. I was forced to look at the honest truth of who I was.’
Heiress Aileen Getty, who was married to Wilding from 1981 to 1989, recalled in the documentary how her former mother-in-law was not afraid to talk about her struggles with substance use with her family members.
‘She lived in everyone’s house. We witnessed their suffering and perhaps that had power too. “She shared that suffering with us,” Getty recalled.
“If it hadn’t been made public, it most likely would have been leaked to the press anyway,” he continued. “That’s when I think a real switch flipped, like, ‘Actually, it’s better to be the one to present it to the world so you control the narrative.'”
Taylor first entered the Betty Ford Center in 1983, when she became the first celebrity to be publicly admitted under her own name. He would later return for a second term in 1988.
Taylor embraced therapy there during decades of unaddressed psychic trauma. In the recordings, she described her anguish at seeing how her substance abuse affected her children; Pictured with her ex-husband Mike Todd in 1957 in Los Angeles.
In addition to drug and alcohol abuse, Taylor suffered significant weight gain, especially after her divorce from Warner, which she struggled with.
He later wrote a diet book that described his difficulties with overeating.
Taylor also had a history of regular smoking, although he cut back significantly after related health problems in the early 1990s.
In addition to interviews with the family members who knew Taylor best, the documentary also features talking heads from other stars, including Sharon Stone and Kim Kardashian, who either witnessed the icon’s celebrity firsthand or have lived with the influence of Taylor’s public life.