"Something a lot of people don’t know about me is that I’m an alcoholic and I was a drug addict for a lot of years," she revealed at the New Hampshire Youth Summit on Opioid Awareness.
Even though she's now clean and sober for over eight years, the 36-year-old added: "I’m always going to be that, but the difference between me and an alcoholic or an addict that still drinks and does drugs is that I’m sober. I don’t drink and I don’t do drugs anymore."
Eliza, who also had roles alongside Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio in 'This Boy's Life' and as the teenage daughter of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis in 'True Lies', said that she first experimented with drugs at 14.
But it soon became, she says, a horrifying downward spiral. "It was fun — and I loved it — until it wasn’t,” she said. “Drugs didn't love me. They didn’t love my family. They definitely didn’t love my friends that died."
She also opened up about how her brother told her to stay away from his children because of her addictions. ""I was depressed. I didn't like myself, but I love my family," she said. "I'm a really good auntie today. But you know what? He was right. I'm a good person, but when I did drugs and I drank, I didn't make good decisions.… All it takes is one bad decision. You don't have to live like that."
She concluded her speech by urging other addicts to seek help. "If you're in trouble, all you have to do is say, 'I need help'. I'm a real badass and tough girl. It was the hardest thing in the world for me to ask for help, and it was the most powerful thing I've ever done."
You can watch her full speech here: