Content warning: This story discusses alcoholism and abuse.
Colton Haynes is getting candid about alcoholism in his new memoir, Miss Memory Lane.
In his new book released May 31, the actor shared his deeply personal struggles with alcoholism and his complicated relationship with his mother who was also an alcoholic. Throughout the book, he shares all of the pressures that led him to rehab in 2018. The 33-year-old also recalled how he often turned to booze while his mother suffered complications from cirrhosis of the liver due to alcoholism.
"I was making her mistakes, over and over again," he wrote in the memoir. "I didn't know how not to. The apple never fell far from the tree."
The pressures added on as he received fat phobic comments online after gaining 50 pounds. Colton wrote that a psychiatrist frequently checked up on him by request of his manger during this time. When asked why he drank, Colton recalled saying, "Because I want to. Because I can." When his manager called to remind him of an Arrow shoot the next day, he explained that he was sick. Warner Bros. sent over a physician to check up on him and ran blood tests, which showed the levels of alcohol in his system. His manager told him he had a few episodes off and that he should "get better."
"''What the fuck does that mean?'" Colton wrote. "'Get better?' How passive-aggressive. I was furious. I knocked myself out with Don Julio Blanco to punish them all."
Colton shared how he struggled to accept help and love from the friends and family in his life who cared for him. He even wrote that when his divorce was made public, he retreated to a hotel. While he was asleep, his friend Kathy Griffin showed up and even sent him photos of her and the security guards. "I did have friends who loved me," he wrote. "I just wouldn't let them in."
After taking a dip into a stash of liquor and Xanax in his nightstand one night, he learned he went too far and woke up in a hospital with a bracelet that read "Bruce Stark," his alias created by his friends to keep his hospital visit from the press.
"After a week at Cedars, I still couldn't walk," he wrote. "A doctor told me that I'd taken a near-lethal dose of Xanax on my final bender, of which I had no recollection; it didn't sound like something I would do, but I had to admit that I didn't recognize the person I'd turned into. I had no idea what his intentions were."
As he reflected on the times he turned to drinking, he shared everything that brought pressure to his life: alleged sexual abuse by his uncle at 6-years-old, his mother's death, fat phobic comments and being exploited for his looks.
He wrote, "I was drunk and too fat, too skinny, too successful, too washed up, too pretty, too threatening, too short, too honest, too gay, too straight, too cocky, too serious, too goofy, too this, too that."
The memoir brings his story to today, about four years sober with his sobriety chips rattling from the rearview mirror in his car.
Colton shared, "This road to sobriety—the only road I've ever been on where I've kept both hands firmly on the wheel, the only one I've ever taken slow, noticed the warning signs, and given pedestrians the right of way."
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Miss Memory Lane: A Memoir by Colton Haynes
If you want to learn more about Colton's experiences, check out his memoir.