A few months away from the third anniversary of her sobriety, Jessica Simpson is silent no more.
In her 2020 memoir, Open Book, the fashion mogul and performer opened up about her struggles with alcohol and self-medicating and what drove her to become sober. Reflecting on her battles with substance abuse and using it to cope with anxiety and her insecurities, Simpson told SiriusXM's Jess Cagle that she eventually realized alcohol was having the opposite effect of what she had wanted.
"I didn't even realize how much I was drinking and how much I was suppressing," she recalled. "I thought it was making me brave, I thought it was making me confident and it was actually the complete opposite. It was silencing me."
At a certain point, though, the star could no longer keep everything within her down.
"It just ended up coming to a surface. I knew a lot of it was coming up, coming up and I couldn't suppress it any more. The alcohol wasn't numbing anything. It wasn't numb anymore. I was just numb," she recalled. "I couldn't even understand stuff that was coming out of my mouth. It didn't sound like me."
As a result, Simpson decided to go right into therapy and "laid it all out there," as she described to Cagle, for hours on the first day.
"My therapist was like, 'Wow, I can't believe somebody can cover that much trauma and fear and awareness,'" Simpson said. "It takes people their whole life to discover those things."
Today, Simpson knows firsthand the silver lining of taking that leap. "I really had to get back inside of the person that I am. When you do that self-reflection, it's very empowering. It takes a lot of courage," she told Cagle. "I can promise anyone on the other side of that fear, that courage is so beautiful and it's one of the most rewarding things and decisions I've ever made in my life, and I never thought I would have to make that decision."
Come November, the star will be celebrating a milestone in her sobriety. "It's almost been three years, which is crazy. I mean, it's pretty, it's awesome," the singer recognized. "People are like, 'Don't you want to drink during this pandemic?' 'Oh my god, aren't your kids driving you crazy?'"
The answer? A resounding no from Simpson. "I'm like no, I do not want to drink, like I have not wanted it…I feel like that's a big blessing," she told Cagle. "Once I surrendered and gave it over, I never looked back and my husband did it with me, so that support was amazing."
The coronavirus pandemic has spurred a different habit for the mother of three.
"Through the pandemic, every morning I journal and I haven't done that in forever," she shared. "Normally it was to do songwriting or something like that. But, now every morning, I sit with my journal. I confront myself before I confront my family."