Whoopi Goldberg has revealed that a hotel maid once found her in the closet with cocaine “all over” her face after she became a “high-functioning” addict in the 1980s.
Whoopi, 68, opens up about her substance abuse in her new memoir, Bits And Pieces: My Mother, My Brother, And Me, where she also writes about her mother, Emma, who was sent to a mental hospital for two years.
Recalling the height of her cocaine addiction, the Sister Act star reportedly wrote that she believed she could handle the drug because it didn’t seem as dangerous as heroin, to which she had already been addicted in the 1970s.
According The US SunWhoopi explains in her new book how after moving to Los Angeles, she attended parties in Hollywood, Bel Air and Beverly Hills, where a plate of Quaaludes greeted her at the door and lines of cocaine were set out for guests.
Whoopi Goldberg is reportedly opening up about her cocaine addiction in her new memoir, Bits And Pieces: My Mother, My Brother, And Me.
Whoopi, pictured here in 1985, says she was a “very high-functioning addict” after moving to Los Angeles.
The actor, pictured here at the age of 30 in March 1986, said lines of cocaine would be set up for guests at parties he attended in Hollywood.
The mother of one, whose first husband, Alvin Martin, was her drug counselor, explained that at the time she was a “very high-functioning addict” because she was still going to work.
However, about a year into Whoopi says she realized she was becoming “careless” when it came to being on set and says a horrific incident in a Manhattan hotel room was a real “slap” moment. for her.
She described how she was sitting on the floor of the closet snorting cocaine alone when a maid knocked on the door and entered.
“I screamed, she screamed and backed away and looked like she was going to run,” Whoopi explained.
“I had to get to her quickly and try to calm her down. She was looking at my face while I was talking,” the View host continued, before admitting that she then looked in the mirror and realized she had cocaine ‘all over’ her face. expensive.
“I would have been very embarrassed if my mother had known how much coke had me in its clutches.”
Elsewhere in the candid memoir, the Oscar winner says she saved her mother, Emma, from taking her own life shortly before she was transferred to New York City’s Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital when Whoopi was just eight years old.
In the book, which will be published on May 7, Whoopi – whose real name is Caryn Elaine Johnson – describes the day she came home from school to find her mother “disheveled” and barefoot as she “mumbled incoherently” and was confused about where she was.
She writes: ‘I watched her walk over to the oven, turn it on and stick her head in there. She was old enough to know that this was really bad news. I ran and grabbed her waist and pulled her out.
Whoopi photographed with her daughter and second husband, David Claessen, in Hollywood in 1986.
In the book, Whoopi reveals how her mother, Emma, was sent to a mental hospital.
Whoopi also writes about her older brother Clyde in the book, who sadly died of a brain aneurysm in May 2015.
During Wednesday’s episode of The View, Whoopi discussed said excerpts from her new memoir during an interview with the panel, including Joy Behar.
Joy, 81, said: ‘Do you write in the book that when you were a child your mother had what they used to call a nervous breakdown? She had a very, very difficult time and they took her to Bellevue, that’s scary.
And for two years you didn’t really know what happened to him, did you? And then she came back and didn’t really remember you two? Who took care of you and Clyde? he asked, referring to Whoopi’s older brother, who was 14 at the time.
“Our cousin, Arlene, took care of us, and my dad showed up and took care of us, but in those days kids weren’t told anything, parents would just disappear, things would happen,” Whoopi explained.
“And for me it was like, ‘Oh, so they took her to this hospital and no one is going to tell me anything and I can’t go see her,'” the Sister Act star continued.
‘They just never mentioned it because you didn’t, but we didn’t know any better, we didn’t know that. “Now we talk about everything with the kids and maybe that’s not the best thing we can do.”
When Joy asked Whoopi what happened to her mother in Bellevue, the Ghost actor confirmed, “They gave her electroshock treatments.”
Addressing the live studio audience, Whoopi said: “So here’s another reason why you really need to pay attention to what’s going on politically because there was a time in this country when your husband or your brother or any man involved in your life could make medical decisions for you.
‘So my mother’s father, my grandfather and my father approved it. They gave the go-ahead for my mother to receive shock treatment for two years.’