Oscar winner Tatum O’Neal revealed she had a near-fatal drug overdose three years ago that led to a stroke.
The actress, who has long struggled with substance abuse, overdosed on “a combination of pain medication, opiates, and morphine,” which left her in a coma for six weeks.
“I almost died,” O’Neal, 59, told People of the May 2020 incident, noting she had been an “addict [her] whole life, pretty much on and off, for the past 30 to 40 years.”
O’Neal’s son Kevin McEnroe, 37, along with his siblings Sean, 35, and Emily, 32, admitted they thought it would be the last time they ever spoke to their mother.
“It was the phone call we’d always been waiting for,” Kevin told the outlet.
“She also had a cardiac arrest and a number of seizures. There were times we didn’t think she was going to survive.”
The “Paper Moon” star has spent the past few years in rehab centers, re-learning how to read and write and working to regain her strength and memory.
“I’ve been through a lot,” O’Neal said, noting she was abusing pain medication at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic after being prescribed it for her neck and back pain and rheumatoid arthritis.
After overdosing, the mother of three was found by a friend in her Century City, Calif., apartment and rushed to the hospital.
She was diagnosed with Aphasia, a disorder that usually occurs suddenly after a stroke or a head injury, per the Mayo Clinic.
“She had become very isolated. With the addition of morphine and heavier pharmaceuticals, it was getting scary. COVID, chronic pain, all these things led to a place of isolation. In that place, I don’t think, for her, there was much hope,” Kevin said.
“At times, it was touch and go,” he went on, explaining that she “had damage to her right frontal cortex.”
“I had to call my brother and sister and say she was thought to be blind, deaf and potentially might never speak again.”
In fact, O’Neal couldn’t speak at all when she woke up from her coma.
“She didn’t know where she was. She couldn’t say, ‘I’m scared,'” Kevin said.
However, after two years of rehabilitation work with “medical supervision and therapy,” the actress has begun regaining her memory.
“Emotionally the things that made my mom want to take drugs in the first place, those things are still very present,” her eldest son, who has also struggled with substance abuse, explained. “She could always want sobriety as a mom, but she never really wanted it for herself.”
Kevin noted that his mom has now “embraced this attempt” at recovery.
“She was always a very loving mom but when isolated, I think it was hard to find any love for herself,” he shared.
“This last chapter where she wants to live, wants to get sober, wants to learn, I think it’s a miracle. I think it’s beautiful. I’ve never been more proud to be her son. She’s full of love and full of heart … it’s a miracle to behold.”
O’Neal reiterated that she is “trying” every day because she wants to be with her “beautiful three kids,” whom she shares with former tennis pro John McEnroe.
The couple wed in 1986 but split in 1994 amid a bitter divorce and nasty custody battle.
The actress is the youngest Oscar winner of all time thanks to her role in the 1973 film “Paper Moon” opposite her father, Ryan O’Neal.
