Actor Dean McDermott has marked a major milestone in his sobriety journey amid his divorce from actress Tori Spelling.
Mr. McDermott took to Instagram on Monday to celebrate one year of sober living after battling drug and alcohol abuse for nearly three decades.
“Thank you to my Sponsor, my Sponsee Brothers and everyone in the fellowship for celebrating my 1 year birthday,” Mr. McDermott said.
The “Due South” star addressed his sobriety in a previous Instagram post, shared a week ago, which features an image that reads: “Addiction isn’t about alcohol and drugs. It’s the absence of self. This absence is described as a hole in your soul. You can’t love others when you’re empty inside. Recovery peels back the painful layers and heals that hole through connection, honesty and hard work. To love one self is the beginning of a lifetime recovery.”
Entering Rehab
During a November 2023 interview with the Daily Mail, the “Open Range” actor said his addiction struggles had taken a toll on his relationship, leading his now estranged wife to file for divorce in March after nearly 18 years of marriage.“Alcohol made me feel good enough. I started feeling good enough until it got to a point where it didn’t—it ended up in isolation,” Mr. McDermott said.
“It ended up with me drinking a fifth of tequila every night, seven days a week, and a handful of [narcotics] by myself with a beautiful family in the other room,” he said. “That’s what it led to and that’s what led to the brokenness and to what happened between me and Tori.”
After spending 40 days in rehab in the summer of 2023, Mr. McDermott moved into the sober living home, crediting Ms. Spelling for pushing him to seek treatment.
“She helped find Harmony Place and got me in here,” he told the Daily Mail when he was still living in the facility. “She came from just such a place of love and wanting me to be healthy and happy,” Mr. McDermott said.
“It was co-dependence. She put my well-being well ahead of hers. She loved me so much that she didn’t really want to tell me how it was affecting her, although I could see it in her face,” he said.
In his most recent Instagram post, Mr. McDermott expressed his gratitude to Harmony Place “for saving my life.”
‘I’m Really Happy That He’s Sober’
Ms. Spelling opened up about her separation from Mr. McDermott in the first episode of her new podcast, “MisSPELLING.” She called Mr. McDermott on the episode, which was published on March 31, just two days after she filed for divorce, to tell him the paperwork was accepted.“He’s working and I have to tell him, but I’m super nervous because I don’t like confrontation,” she said. “That stopped me from a really long time wanting to do this and hurting him and protecting him and protecting the kids.”
The couple wed in May 2006. Two months later, Ms. Spelling became pregnant with their first child, a moment the actress said significantly altered the course of their marriage.
“Honestly, our relationship was never the same after we started having kids,” she said.
“We always said, we won’t be those parents that change. We'll make sure we make our relationship a priority and the two of us, and we have date nights, and just everything went out the window. I became completely focused on the kids and kind of left him in a way,” Ms. Spelling said.
“It doesn’t excuse his behavior and everything he did and how he handled things. And I’m not minimizing his part in this, and how his lack of sobriety did affect me and the kids for years and years and years, and I’m really happy that he’s sober now,” she said. “But our relationship definitely changed, like, to the point where I felt like I was just in this alone with the kids.”
