Lena Dunham is celebrating five years of sobriety following a prescription pill addiction.
“5 years ago today, I set foot- trembling like a little kid- into treatment for substance misuse,” the “Girls” creator wrote on Instagram alongside a carousel of smiling photos on Monday. “My parents hugged me goodbye, I changed into house slippers and there I was.”
Dunham, 36, shared that her “struggle with addiction, hit me little by little, then all at once” and that “asking for help was the hardest part.”
She revealed that her addiction stemmed from a desire to create “ease.”
“Ease in my body, ease in my restless mind and the ease to exist in moments of pain, anxiety and uncertainty without reaching for a solution that seemed to help in the moment but pulled me further away from the people I love and the life that I wanted,” she candidly wrote.
In 2020, the “Not That Kind of Girl” author confessed that her relationship with anxiety medication had taken a disturbing arc when she found herself holed up under blankets feeling completely empty.
“I was lying in a bed in my parents’ apartment under two blankets, in the same pajamas I’d been in for three days, and I was like, ‘This isn’t me.’ It wasn’t that I was suicidal. I felt nothing. I didn’t want to live,” she told Cosmopolitan UK.
Dunham checked into a 28-day rehab program for an addiction to prescription pills after undergoing a hysterectomy that stemmed from her endometriosis.
The “Tiny Furniture” star said that the last five years “have been the happiest of my time on earth so far.”
“They’ve been full of work, love, complexity and- yes- pain,” she continued. “But facing all of that without medicating myself in unhealthy ways has given me a sturdy baseline and new tools. 5 years ago all of this was impossible to imagine. 5 days was impossible to imagine. 5 minutes sometimes felt hard.”
Dunham credited her sobriety to being supported and able to access resources, both “medical” and “spiritual.”
“For so many people, the difference between sober and using isn’t their willingness, or their strength- it’s their resources,” she explained.”We don’t have a system that makes this easy for those who are already struggling to make their lives work.”
Dunham added that to celebrate her “very lucky sober birthday,” she will be matching donations to Friendly House, a rehab facility established in 1951, that was the first program helping women recover from substance abuse.
She described it as “a rehab that doesn’t turn away women and gender nonconforming people for financial reasons…Every cent you give will go to helping people deal with addiction and trauma.
“There are a lot of people who deserve thanks here- I hope I’ve given them enough of that face to face, but today is a good reminder to give more,” Dunham concluded. “Every day is a lesson I am lucky to learn, and I don’t take it for granted. So especially today, I am grateful.”
Besides achieving sobriety in the last five years, Dunham also got hitched.
She married Luis Felber, 36, a Peruvian-English musician in an impromptu ceremony in London last year in front of pals including Taylor Swift.
