Liza Minnelli is offering fans an unfiltered look at the exact moment she knew she’d hit rock bottom. 

The 80-year-old icon took to Instagram yesterday to share the harsh realities of her addiction struggles and the events that led to her very first stint in rehab in 1984. Following the release of her memoir, Kids, Wait Till You Hear This!, the star continues to speak candidly about her difficult but triumphant path to recovery. 

Living in NYC in the ’80s 

Minnelli admitted that there were multiple ways to fuel her addiction while living in New York City, and her friends weren’t of much help when it came to partying. 


“In New York I had surrounded myself with people who at worst encouraged me to use drugs, or at best didn’t encourage me to stop,” she wrote. “I had boxes of pills and bottles of booze stashed away in my co-op apartment,” she continued. “With no one watching, I self-medicated myself to foggy perfection, to a place where I felt nothing or no one could hurt me.”

In hopes of escaping the “fog,” she decided to relocate to Los Angeles, but as they say: Wherever you go, you take yourself with you.

“Now, in California, I got lost in the same fog. It was the same old bulls***, this time with more sunshine,” she wrote. “That’s one of the reasons I checked into rehab as quickly as I did. I was out of options.”

A Life-Saving Support System 

Even though she’d agreed to undergo treatment at the Betty Ford Center in LA, Minnelli said she was “f***ing scared to death.” 

She specifically thanked her sister, Lorna Luft, who managed to convince her to board the plane (which was Frank Sinatra’s private jet) by buying her a hot dog. She also thanked her close friend Michael Feinstein, his husband Terrence Flannery, and her physician Dr. Lawrence D. Piro, for stepping in and saving her life. 

“’I’m in pain!’ I would scream,” she wrote. “Dr. Piro would say, ‘Liza, you’re always in pain. Did you take your Tylenol?’ God, did I want to wring his neck. But, these four are the quartet that truly saved my life.”

Breaking the Generational Cycle 

Minnelli’s struggles are rooted in childhood trauma. Her mother, Hollywood legend Judy Garland, passed away from an accidental barbiturate overdose in 1969. She was only 47 at the time. 

After multiple attempts at treatment over the decades, Minnelli finally achieved lasting sobriety following a 2015 stay at a facility in Malibu, California. 

“I realized that maybe my nine lives were up,” she wrote in her memoir. “These days, if someone offers me a glass of champagne at a party, I thank them, and put it down without a sip,” adding, “Medication is a different story. I still have lower back pain, and I do get anxious from time to time. But the drugs are now strictly controlled. And baby, there’s no going back.”





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