Michael J Fox has admitted he turned to alcohol to cope with his Parkinson's diagnosis when he first found out he had the condition.
Speaking in his new Apple TV+ documentary titled Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, the 61-year-old actor opened up about the struggles of his diagnosis as well as his battle with addiction which served as a coping mechanism in his early years.
Fox was initially diagnosed with Parkinson's back in 1991 but kept it hidden from the world for seven years while he silently battled the disease. But when the doctors told him that there was no way to cure it, he turned to other methods to try and forget about his struggles.
"I didn't know what was happening. I didn't know what was coming. So what if I could just have four glasses of wine and maybe a shot?" Fox says. "I was definitely an alcoholic. But I've gone 30 years without having a drink."
He continued: "As low as alcohol had brought me, abstinence would bring me lower. I could no longer escape myself," he says before adding that traveling and keeping busy made it easier to put the diagnosis out of his mind.
"You can't pretend at home that you don't have Parkinson's because you're just there with it. If I'm out in the world, I'm dealing with other people and they don't know I have it."
The actor also credits his wife Tracy Pollan as well as his four children as his motivation to get sober. But while he focused on that, the disease continued to ravage his body, making things more difficult for him.
"To me, the worst thing is restraint," Fox explained. "The worst thing is to be confined and to not be able to have a way out... There are times when I went, 'There's no way out of this.'"
Elsewhere in the documentary, Fox also talks about taking "dopamine pills" on set.
"Therapeutic value, comfort – none of these were the reason I took these pills. There was only one reason: to hide," Fox admitted. "I became a virtuoso of manipulating drug intake so that I'd peak at exactly the right time and place."
Thankfully though, he managed to overcome his battles and has now turned his focus to raising awareness about Parkinson's in the hopes that there will eventually be a cure.
Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie will be released later this year.
