In May 2019, Justin Long was a gust Dax Shepherd’s podcast Armchair Expert and told a terrifying story about being drugged and kidnapped. What happened? Did he call the police?
About halfway through the podcast, Dax Shepherd brought up the story by asking him about something that happened in 2008 while he was shooting a film in the small town of Birmingham, Michigan.
“I feel kind of ok telling this because it’s been so long,” Justin said. He explained that he was at a time in his fame when people were starting to recognize him, mostly because he was dating Drew Barrymore.
Justin was filming Youth in Revolt and had gone out drinking with co-star Steve Buscemi a few nights before the incident. Almost like a foreshadowing for what was in store for him, Steve recounted to Justin the time he’d gotten stabbed in the neck and head while out drinking with Vince Vaughn in 2001. Steve shared this because he thought Justin was being too accomodating to strangers. Justin did not heed Steve Buscemi’s warning, apparently.
Just a few nights later Justin went out with an actress and two PAs to the same bar. While he was getting drinks, two guys came up to him and he felt a “weird energy.” Justin said they played into his vulnerabilities by calling him a “Big Shot” and “Mr. Hollywood.”
A few hours later as they were leaving at 2 a.m., the guys came up to Justin and his crew and asked if they wanted to go to a casino. The actress decided to decline, but Justin and the PAs got into their car. They stopped at Justin’s hotel so he could get some money, and he got back in the car with them.
They made a stop at their condo and asked Justin to take his shoes off so they wouldn’t wake their roommate. While they were at their condo, they asked Justin to take a rip off of their bong. He resisted at first, but they goaded him until he did. He says the bong tasted weird, like “clear chemicals.”
He immediately felt like his mind wasn’t working. He suspects that it wasn’t marijuana, but PCP. One of the PAs with them also took a hit and but two local men who invited them out suspiciously didn’t take any hits. Justin says as he tried to stand up, they started doing karate kicks at his face. Then, the roommate, who wasn’t actually sleeping, came out of his bedroom and said “Oh yeah, that is the guy. Let me get my camera.”
Justin starts to panic at this point and asks to be driven home. On the ride home, they goading him about not being able to handle his weed despite being in the film Strange Wilderness, which included pot smoking. The movie also included a prescient line from Justin Long: “I smoked some weed the other night, and I think this shit was laced, because I went out right away and got these tattoos on my eyelids to make it look while I was sleeping that people would think I was awake.”
Now, it seems like he had been the victim of laced weed. Before taking Justin and the PAs back to his hotel, the men told him they had to make one more stop. They also asked him if he wanted to make a movie for TMZ or YouTube. They also prodded Justin about how much money he’d gotten for the casino.
At this point, Justin thought he wasn’t going to make it out of the situation alive, and even suspected the PAs of being in on it because they were locals. He said he was so out of it that he couldn’t figure out how to operate his phone.
Justin did notice, though, that the car was going in the wrong direction. It wasn’t headed towards his hotel. At some point, though, they did reverse direction, and he felt safer, but not out of the woods. They drove right past his hotel, though, and ran a red light.
He freaked out so bad at this point that he opened up the car door and jumped out. He said he rolled under the car, and they ran over his leg. At this point, he felt the happiest he ever felt even though his leg was bent. He also, oddly, looked down at his blood-soaked jeans and felt regret because he loved the jeans. He said a cab immediately showed up and he asked to go to his hotel.
He said the cab driver picked up on Justin’s weird energy (and probably the bloody leg) and asked him to get out of the cab. Then, the two PAs, one of which had also taken a hit from the possibly laced bong, showed up and banged on the window. Justin heard one of them saying “I thought we killed a movie star” while crying. At this point, the cab driver refused to move so Justin got out of the cab and walked back to the hotel.
He said the next morning he woke up in severe pain. He didn’t go to a hospital or call the police, but he did see a doctor. Amazingly, he had no broken bones, but he did have nerve damage that he experiences to this day. A few days later Justin said he went through a breakup, so he failed to follow through on aftercare for his leg. He also had to do an Apple commercial a week later, and he said his leg was so swollen they had to get him special jeans to do the shoot.
