Posted on 01/24/2003 8:38:49 PM PST by mhking
Yasmine Bleeth: My battle with drugs
Thursday January 23, 2003
FOR Baywatch beauty Yasmine Bleeth, getting high on drugs brought her so low, it nearly killed her.
Now she's poured out her heart and revealed for the first time her horrific battle with cocaine, her rocky fight to win back her life and the love that is helping her.
Two years ago, the actress' drug habit was so bad, she didn't sleep for days at a time. She looked like death and on Sept. 12, 2001, she nearly drove herself into an early grave after losing control of her car on a Michigan road and careening into a median while high.
She spent a night in jail and, after a plea bargain, was sentenced to two years' probation and 100 hours of community service.
"For three years, people had been telling me that drugs would kill me," says Yasmine, 34, who was in the car with boyfriend Paul Cerrito, whom she married last August. "And this was my proof."
Bleeth says cocaine crept into her world so slowly, so easily, she didn't realize it until she was hooked.
When her three-year contract with Baywatch ended in 1997, she moved from L.A. to San Francisco and started her gig on Nash Bridges, opposite Don Johnson. Her romance with actor Richard Grieco had all but died, and she started drowning her pain with drugs.
"I just wanted to feel good again," she confides. "And I knew an easy way to get that feeling."
At first Yasmine just snorted the stuff socially on weekends with people she knew. Three months later, she made her first call to a dealer.
"It was like ordering Chinese food," she says. "I made one phone call and they delivered it to my front door."
Suddenly, she was in love again - with the white powder. "It was all I could think about," she admits. "When I was high, I didn't think about my problems. I had no pain. I wouldn't sleep for two or three days, sometimes even four or five."
By the end of 1999, her ghastly appearance started scaring her friends and family.
"I'm a fleshy girl, very curvy and round, but I lost my softness," she says. "I looked like an alien. My eyes were bulging out of my face. I was 110 pounds and a size 0. I looked dead."
In fact, she was slowly killing herself.
"I had an infection that had completely eaten out the inside of my nose," she tells Glamour magazine. "Essentially, I had gangrene in my nose."
The doctor put her on antibiotics and told her that another couple of months with this infection and it could have gone to her brain and killed her.
"That scared me," says Yasmine. "Until I started doing drugs again six weeks later."
In no time, the devastating drug cycle began again. Remarkably, she managed to drag herself to the set of the series Titans. But she was in no shape to film. The show's producer, Aaron Spelling, gave her time off to go to rehab at Promises in Malibu, Calif.
"I did drugs right up until I entered the program," says Yasmine. "I even did drugs in the Town Car on the way there."
During her December 2000 treatment, she met someone who made her feel better than the powder: Michigan bar owner Paul Cerrito, 32. After rehab, Yasmine invited Paul to stay with her in L.A.
"I thought that if ever I could handle doing drugs casually, now would be the time," she says. "But once I started doing coke, I lost control, and it took over my life again."
Yasmine was high when she crashed her car in Michigan a year and a half ago and nearly died. But now she sees that crash as a godsend. "I felt like some force had saved our lives," she says.
She knew she desperately needed to quit drugs - and finally, she did. Then this past August, just less than a year after her car crash, she and Paul tied the knot in Santa Barbara and honeymooned in Hawaii.
Yasmine is clean now, but it hasn't been easy. Her husband's love helps her over the rough patches.
"The feeling I have when I'm with Paul is better than how I felt on cocaine," she says.
But she still has to take one day at a time.
"Consciously trying to stay off drugs is now part of my life, and it always will be," she says.
"I've proven to myself that I can't have both drugs and love. Every day, I have to make the choice again. So far, I choose love."
He supports an expansive interpretation of the Commerce and General Welfare Clauses of the Constitution that has enabled New Deal/Great Society liberalism and an out of control Federal government (I can provide a link that backs up this assertion if anyone requests it).
Roscoe- It is not against the law to support liberalism. It's just that it is not consistent with the restoration of our Constitutional Republic.
The good Senator is just asking you to own up to your principles.
We did...on Yasmeen's choice.
Okay. How can I give a prop for what I agree with you on?
You have a point there.
I'm trying to understand what you're saying.
Thank you. That's all I ask. I will offer the same.
I met Yasmine in NYC about the time she was claims she was doing drugs. She was very thin....I didn’t recognize her initially. I remember praying for her salvation at that time. I will not feel sorry for her, but I will continue to pray for her.
Sorry.
And I'll agree that no one will take you up on these goofy ideas.
Anyone who uses these substances places others at unacceptable risk of harm.
You've, once again, jumped in over your head. To have an "unacceptable risk" means that there has to be an "acceptable risk", with quantifying factors for each. Your opinion alone does not qualify, and infact, can be proven wrong. My neighbor having a drink at home poses no risk to me. My neighbor smoking a joint at home poses no risk to me. My neighbor eating a twinkie at home poses no risk to me. (Risk = potential for loss.) You have to add another factor to make risk. (AND drives a car, plays with a gun, experiments with flammable liquids, etc).
Waiting until the jackasses do cause harm merely guarantees that most will get away with never paying for their foolishness. The rest of us just fork over our money in the form of taxes and increased insurance premiums to pay for their "freedom." That is socialism, pure and simple.
Wow, let's not wait until someone actually breaks a law, let's arrest them because they MIGHT!
Also, you paint with too broad a brush, combining occassional users with criminal addicts. That is like combining those who profess a belief in God with jihadists who claim to murder for God.
Then, you propose fighting socialism (government provisions for addicts) with statism, jailing and punishing people for vices. You little extremists, you! You are so cute when demanding government intervention in all our lives.
If you want to blow dope or use cocaine recreationally, you should be required to buy and maintain druggie insurance.
Again, government rule for Kevin. Why not include alcohol? Or calories? or SUV's? Or firearms? Or 5 gallon buckets?
You don't understand diddly about a free market and capitalism. If you could require 'vice insurance', what happens when the premiums get too high? Them we're right back to square one, except Kevin has a new crime for which to jail people, and that is being uninsured.
Kevin, you represent govenment oppression by supporting the continuance of the WoD. When are you going to tire of supporting the evilness of addiction, street crime, and corruption brough on by the WoD?
So there's the deal, all you pro-dope closet socialists.
When will you stop lying about those with whom you disagree? Show where I advocate any drug abuse? The fact is that I've repeated told you that I don't "do" drugs, and the fact is that you've repeated implied or stated that I do.
WOW! Brilliant insight! A paean to freedom! All props to you as you swash buckle through life. You are my hero! You rugged individualist, you!
Your sarcasm suggests that she should be jailed for potentially self-destructive behavior.
Do you support the prohibition of alcohol? Why or why not?
Last time I checked, you had to be 21 and show a photo ID to purchase it. There are also severe penalties to be faced when the abuse of it causes injury to others. Whether you think so or not, alcohol has an entrenched societal history that no other drug can claim. That is why prohibition never worked.
Remember, old Jesus passed around wine at the Last Supper, not a joint.
Well, she certainly got that part right!
Just wait for it, I suspect some enterprising lawyer will file suit against Anheuser-Busch any day now.
I support all of the above for other drugs, too.
Whether you think so or not, alcohol has an entrenched societal history that no other drug can claim. That is why prohibition never worked.
The current prohibition (aka War On Some Drugs) is not working either.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.