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Actress Tatum O’Neal revealed she suffered a near-fatal stroke after she overdosed on drugs in 2020.
“I almost died,” she told People magazine.
During the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, the “Paper Moon” child star started abusing her prescription medication, prescribed for body aches and rheumatoid arthritis.
A few months later, in May, a friend found the Oscar winner overdosed on pain medications, opiates and morphine in her Los Angeles apartment.
The news did not surprise her son, Kevin McEnroe, 37, the oldest of her three kids she shares with her ex-husband, tennis legend John McEnroe.
“It was the phone call we’d always been waiting for,” her son confessed.
O’Neal, 59, struggled with her mental health during the pandemic. “COVID, chronic pain, all these things led to a place of isolation,” Kevin said. “In that place, I don’t think, for her, there was much hope.”
The actress was rushed to the hospital and was diagnosed with aphasia, a disorder that results from damage to the part of the brain that is responsible for language, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.
“She was in a coma,” said Kevin. “She was thought to be blind, deaf and potentially might never speak again.”
The Post reached out to O’Neal’s reps for comment.
Her condition frightened her children, who witnessed her have several seizures and a cardiac arrest.
“There were times we didn’t think she was going to survive.”
Kevin McEnroe, O’Neal’s eldest childWhen she came out of the coma, she could not speak, write, or read and struggled with her memory.
While under medical supervision, she attended daily therapy sessions, 12-step meetings and worked towards regaining her memory.
O’Neal admitted, “I’ve been through a lot.”
Five months after her stroke, she was allegedly suicidal and threatened to jump off the balcony of a home in Los Angeles, according to Page Six.
“Emotionally, the things that made my mom want to take drugs in the first place, those things are still very present,” her son revealed.
O’Neal has struggled with drug addiction for most of her life, and has been admitted to various rehabilitation facilities over the last 40 years.
“I’ve been trying to get sober my whole life,” said O’Neal. “Every day I am trying.”
Kevin applauds his mother’s journey to sobriety.
“She has embraced this attempt at recovery. I think it’s a miracle. I’ve never been more proud to be her son.”
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