No topic of discussion is off limits in Kristen Bell's house.
This means that the Frozen actress and husband Dax Shepard's daughters Lincoln, 9, and Delta, 8, are well-aware their dad's past struggles with addiction.
"I know it's shocking, but I talk to my kids about drugs and the fact that their daddy is an addict and he's in recovery," Kristen told Real Simple magazine in a cover interview published Feb. 9. "And we talk about sex."
She added, "There are all these 'hard' topics that don't have to be if you give the person on the other end your vulnerability and a little bit of credit."
Dax has spoken candidly about his journey to sobriety in the past. "From 18 to 29 I was a heavy smoker, heavy drinker, drug addict, terrible eater and philanderer," he told Playboy in 2012. "The past eight years, since I got sober, have honestly been about trying to peel back each of those habits, to get back to the 12-year-old kid inside who was tremendously excited about life."
He continued, "I just loved to get f--ked up—drinking, cocaine, opiates, marijuana, diet pills, pain pills, everything.
In 2020, Dax shared on his Armchair Expert podcast that he suffered a relapse after 16 years of sobriety, using painkillers following a motorcycle accident earlier that year.
And the following year, he revealed how he and Kristen spoke about his relapse with their daughters.
"We explained, 'Well, Daddy was on these pills for his surgery and then Daddy was a bad boy and he started getting his own pills,'" he explained in a 2021 episode of Chelsea Clinton's In Fact podcast. "Yeah, we tell them the whole thing."
He also said that his kids "know that dad goes to an AA meeting every Tuesday and Thursday" and recalled a conversation he had with Lincoln when she was younger. "She said, 'Where are you going?' I said, 'I'm going to AA,' the actor recalled. "She said, 'Why do you have to go?' I said, 'Because I'm an alcoholic and if I don't go there, then I'll drink and then I'll be a terrible dad.'"
He continued, "And she said, 'Can I go?' And I said, 'Well, no, you got to be an alcoholic.' And she goes, 'I'm gonna be an alcoholic.' And I said, 'You might become one. The odds are not in your favor, but you're not there yet.'"