At the age of 15, Tatum O’Neal, feeling despondent about her image, started using cocaine as a weight loss aid at the advice of her father, Ryan O’Neal. She rapidly became addicted to cocaine, which only worsened her depression. “I felt like I was worth nothing,” O’Neal told ABC News.
O’Neal later married tennis star John McEnroe, and their marriage was negatively impacted by her addiction to cocaine. After many fights and acts of domestic violence, they divorced in 1993 and entered into a shared custody agreement for their three young children. When she was apart from her kids, O’Neal got so depressed that she increasingly misused cocaine and heroin, before ultimately recognizing she had a problem. After two rehab stints and subsequent relapses, O’Neal lost custody of her children when her daughter discovered a heroin syringe in her mother’s apartment. McEnroe attained full custody, and O’Neal’s addiction continued to spiral until 2001, when she began the road to recovery. As O’Neal recalled to NBC News, her son Kevin had simple words of encouragement. “And he said, ‘I would really appreciate it if you wouldn’t do that anymore,'”
The actor wasn’t able to permanently quit, however. In 2020, O’Neal overdosed and endured several medical events, including a cardiac arrest and seizures, and she fell into a coma that lasted for six weeks. “I almost died,” O’Neal told People. She spent the bulk of the following three years in rehabilitation facilities, both to quit drugs and to reacquire the basic functions she lost due to the overdose-related medical problems.
