Singer-songwriter Chynna Phillips, who has been very open about her struggles with substance abuse and addiction as a teen, recently revealed that she has taken the next step in her healing journey by joining Al-Anon, a support group for family members of alcoholics.
“I used to be in a 12-step program many, many years ago—decades—but I have joined a new 12-step program, and it is called Al-Anon. And I never really understood what Al-Anon was but now, I have been enlightened,” said Ms. Phillips, who wed actor Billy Baldwin in 1995.
“I’ve been going to meetings and taking the cotton out of my ears and put it into my mouth so that I can truly listen to what’s going on there,” she admitted.
Al-Anon is similar to Alcoholics Anonymous in that it is a recovery support group based on the 12-step method. Although the latter is geared toward helping people recover from alcoholism, the former helps those whose lives have been affected by someone suffering from alcoholism, including family members, spouses, partners, friends, and co-workers, among others.
Ms. Phillips—the daughter of John and Michelle Phillips, members of the vocal group The Mamas & the Papas—has previously disclosed the troubled relationship she had with her late father, who also struggled with drug and alcoholic addiction. He died in 2001 at the age of 65 from a heart attack.
‘God Had His Hand on Me’
Ms. Phillips, who began her career in show business as an actress and model, has been very candid about her tumultuous upbringing on her YouTube account, discussing her fight to overcome addiction in her late adolescence.However, after experiencing “an all-time low” in her life, including flunking out of high school and suffering from five bleeding ulcers, Ms. Phillips finally decided to turn her life around.
“At that time, I just felt really down and just really bad about myself,” she explained.
“I looked at myself in the mirror and I just sort of said, like, ‘Okay, Chynna. What are you doing with your life? What do you want to do with your life? You need to take a very good look at yourself and at your situation and your circumstances. ... Is this the life you want to live for the next 20, 30 years? Do you have any dreams or aspirations or plans? Because if you continue like this, it’s going to be a dead end,’” she recalled.
“I don’t know if it was a higher source, I don’t know if it was God, the Holy Spirit, but I just felt like I knew exactly what I needed to do,” she added, explaining that she called her only sober friend and asked him to take her to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.
“I went to an AA meeting, and I don’t remember anything they said that night, but I just cried my eyes out in the meeting. And I knew that my journey with drugs and alcohol was legitimately over,” she recounted.
Ms. Phillips noted that she stopped craving drugs and alcohol after only a few weeks in the program, which she said was “a total and complete blessing”—acknowledging that everyone’s path to sobriety is different. The singer eventually made new friends and began seeking therapy to help her work through “intense issues” she hadn’t yet processed.
“I am eternally grateful that I was able to pull my life together at such a young age—by the time I got sober I was 19. I couldn’t live that life anymore,” she said. “And I don’t even believe that I made that decision. I truly believe that God had His hand on me. He had a plan for my life. But I had to get to a place of surrender, and I had to get to a place of coming to terms with the fact that I had a problem with drugs and alcohol.”
“I’m just incredibly grateful that I made it through that time in my life because I know several people who didn’t make it through,” she continued. “I could have died; I easily could have died with the situations that I put myself in. I’m very lucky that I never overdosed. I’m grateful to be here today to be able to tell you this story.”
