NEW YORK — Tatum O’Neal says the recent death of her Scottish terrier, Lena, triggered a relapse, leading to her arrest Sunday for allegedly trying to buy crack cocaine near her New York City home.
“There’s no excuse for what I did,” the Oscar-winner told the New York Post after being released from jail Monday.
“That seemed to set me off,” she said of her dog’s death three weeks ago. “She got old. She got cancer. She was the fabric of our family. We had to let her go to heaven. My daughter and I had to put her down. It was too horrible for words.”
“I couldn’t get out of it,” she added. “I was going to my psychiatrist. I was doing everything I could do. I have the disease of alcoholism. It’s lifelong. I treat it every day by going to my 12-step program.”
The 44-year-old actress was seen making the illicit purchase around 7:30 p.m. Sunday. She was charged with criminal possession of a controlled substance, according to The Associated Press.
At the age of 10, O’Neal became the youngest person to win an Academy Award for her role as a child con-artist in the 1973 film “Paper Moon.”
The child star has long battled substance-abuse problems, which she has said began at the age of 14. She chronicled her addiction struggles in her 2004 memoir, A Paper Life.
O’Neal, who currently appears on the FX television series “Rescue Me,” said she was thankful that the police stopped her from relapsing.
“I’m still sober!” she said. “Just when I was about to change that and wreck my life, the cops came and saved me!
“I was saved by the bell, by the guys in the Seventh Precinct.”
