“I had stayed pretty far away from drugs, except for pot, after getting cleaned up in the early ’70s,” Goldberg wrote in her new memoir “Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother, and Me,” released Tuesday. “But Los Angeles and New York started to redefine what ‘recreational drug use’ meant in the ’80s.”
The Oscar-winning actor said that cocaine was readily available and normalized at parties that she often attended. She said that the atmosphere was relaxed because cops wouldn’t raid the homes of Hollywood stars. Goldberg said she underestimated the effects of cocaine and thought she could handle it because it didn’t seem dangerous.
“It was a really good time for about a year,” she wrote. “Then I fell into the deep well of cocaine and sank to a new low. Nobody around me caught on to where I was at with it. At least, that’s what I wanted to believe. I would have called myself ‘a very high-functioning addict.'”
Goldberg said that she remained professional at work, being punctual and doing what was required.
“Then cocaine started to kick my ass,” she wrote. “I’d go to work and realize I was getting sloppy.”
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The “Color Purple” star said a turning point came when she experienced “one of those slap-in-the-face moments that make you see pretty fucking clearly that you’ve hit bottom.”
Goldberg recalled celebrating her birthday at “a very upscale hotel in Manhattan” and receiving an ounce of cocaine.
“I was sitting on the closet floor, just putting it up my nose,” she said. “All by myself. I didn’t hear the housekeeper knock or let herself in the room to clean it up.”
When the maid opened the closet and found the actor on the floor, they both screamed in surprise. Goldberg said that the woman “calmed down and left” after the actor explained that it was her room. Then, Goldberg saw her reflection and realized why the housekeeper had such an alarming reaction.
“I looked at myself in the mirror near the door and saw cocaine all over my face,” Goldberg said.
“Get up, get out, and fix your life,” she recalled thinking. “You’ve been sitting in a closet for two days. It’s not good.”
Luckily, Goldberg said she was able to quit drugs quickly. She didn’t want to die or have her family think she was an addict, so she got clean.
“I had already decided that I was willing and ready to stop, so I was going to do whatever I needed to stop putting drugs up my nose,” she said.