Jessica Simpson Admits Boozing Got So Bad Her Friends Planned Elaborate Intervention
Feb. 3 2020, Updated 8:40 p.m. ET
Before she committed to her sobriety, Jessica Simpson’s boozing got so bad that her close friends planned an elaborate intervention, the singer admits in her new memoir, “Open Book.”
In Chapter 26 of the memoir obtained by Breaking Celebrity News, Simpson, 39, recalls a day in which she got so drunk at a party that she missed her best friend’s birthday celebration and failed to get out of bed the next morning to take her children to school.
“No matter how much of a mess I had been, I thought that I had always shown up for them,” she writes, admitting her regret. “The fact that I wasn’t present for them, even for just one night, was unacceptable.”
The star says she didn’t want her kids to know she was too hungover to get up, so she stayed in bed until they left and hoped her husband, Eric Johnson, would tell them she was feeling sick. Ironically, the first thing she did that early morning to make herself feel better was drink.
“I hid until they left, then drank,” she writes. “I felt emotionally hungover, and thought I needed it to recover. I needed to be normal for when my friends came over for our weekly meeting.”
Her three close friends showed up at her house: CaCee (her longtime pal), Lauren (her publicist) and Koko (her assistant). The night prior, Simpson bailed on Koko’s birthday party because she got too drunk and went to bed. When the three women arrived, she immediately broke down in tears, telling them how guilty she felt. They were sympathetic, but they were also stern when they sat down and questioned her.
“Jess, why do you think you drank too much?” CaCee asked her. “Do you think you’ve been drinking too much a lot of days?”
“Yes,” she responded. “I need to stop. Something’s gotta stop. And if it’s the alcohol that’s doing this and making things worse, then I quit.”
Simpson says that CaCee told her she was at “rock bottom” and needed to change.
“I know my limits, and I had gone beyond them,” Simpson writes, recalling her life before sobriety. “I was allowing myself to be taken away from moments that I should have been in. Now I needed to turn inward. To live in the moment and not live in the lie anymore. I breathed in, breathed out, and looked around.”
At that point, Simpson knew something was wrong. When Johnson, 40, returned home with their kids that afternoon, she told him she was ready to change.
“Babe, I’m gonna stop drinking,” she said.
“Then I will too,” he said.
She asked him to make her one last drink to say goodbye to booze forever. “I had one more glittercup,” she admits. Of course, her friends soon found out she’d had a drink, so they put their plan into action.
Simpson writes that her pals had been planning an intervention for more than six months before finally confronting her. Her friend Lauren even had a doctor lined up, one who treated celebrities with addictions.
