Rob Lowe celebrates 23 years sober! (Plus, did you know he had a sex tape scandal in 1989?)
Last night 49-year-old Rob Lowe had celebrated something special, 23 years of sobriety! He tweeted Friday evening “Celebrating 23 years sober tonight. #ItWorksIfYouWorkIt”
The Parks and Recreation (which has been renewed for a sixth season!) star spoke with Piers Morgan about his positive experience with rehab while promoting his memoir in 2011:
“It was great. I loved it. Because I was ready. Problem is, people go into rehab and they’re not ready,” Lowe explained. “You want to get sober for your parents, you want to get sober for your job, you want to get sober for the cops, you want to get sober to protect your image. A lot of good reasons, by the way, but unfortunately, the only thing that works is that you have to want to get sober for you. So, I was ready. And so if they told me, ‘Hey, Lowe, you’ve got to go stand in the corner on your head,’ I would have done it. I was ready. And so if they told me, ‘Hey, Lowe, you’ve got to go stand in the corner on your head,’ I would have done it.”
The thing about Rob is that he was absolutely ready for help when he went to rehab in his 20s. Rehab isn’t a magic cure-all, and it doesn’t help you change your life unless you’re ready to put in the effort to change your life.
Rob says his addictions were sex and alcohol, and describes his wife Sheryl Berkoff as “the opposite of an enabler.” He’s now been married to Sheryl for over 20 years, and he credits her for helping him successfully battle his addictions. “She was my best friend. She wanted me to win, to be the best I could be,” he said about the mother of his two children.
He told Piers that he’s the type of person who just can’t one glass of wine, so he’s abstained from alcohol ever since “If I have a glass of wine, inevitably it’s two glasses of wine, it just begins. That’s how you know you’re one of us or you’re not.”
Rob called his sex tape scandal the best thing that ever happened to him because it forced him to get help. That’s right long before Farrah Abraham or Kim Kardashian, Rob Lowe, had a sex tape come out in 1989 when he was 22. It created quite a stir, especially because one of the two girls involved was rumored to be 16 at the time. Rob quipped to Oprah about the experience “Let me just say this – sometimes being a trailblazer is highly overrated.”
When asked then about his brat pack buddy Charlie Sheen, who claims he can battle his addictions without help Rob was firm “He’s wrong… You don’t get to do it your way. You don’t get to make up your own special rules. We have a name for people like that. Those are people who suffer from terminal uniqueness. You don’t get to do it your way.” In Charlie’s defense, he seems to have been doing a lot better in the past few years.
