Rob Lowe got sober after he had to go to sleep instead of taking his mother’s call that his grandfather had suffered a heart attack.
The ‘St Elmo’s Fire’ actor, 60, hasn’t had a drink for 34 years and says his decision to give up alcohol wasn’t the result of a sudden revelation. It was more of a process of self-reflection marked by a series of wake-up calls, including the shocking moment he missed his mother’s frantic calls about his grandfather’s health crisis.
Lowe told People: “Getting sober was a gradual decision. It’s baby steps until you’re ready. You can’t do it until you’re really ready.” Before entering rehab in Sierra Tucson in 1990, Rob said he took a series of “baby steps” toward beating addiction. One of those steps was watching his “hero” Warren Beatty in the 1975 romantic comedy Shampoo. Rob added: “It’s a great movie, but at the end he’s a bon vivant, a charming playboy who’s left with nothing. It touched me enormously and was the first glimmer of a conscience, a fate, God saying, ‘Shh, pay attention.'”
Rob added that his infamous sex tape of him with two young women was also a major moment in his life. He said: “It definitely changed my life at the time and looking back I realised it was another step that led me to recovery and re-evaluation of my life. But what really changed me was not being able to be there for my family and myself.”
Rob also said that in 1990, when his grandfather suffered a heart attack, he ignored his mother’s call about the crisis. He added: “I remember it like it was yesterday – my mother telling me on my answering machine ‘answer it, answer it’ because my grandfather had had a heart attack. In the state I was in, I couldn’t handle it and I had to go to sleep to get my head around it. Who doesn’t have a bottle of Cuervo Gold (tequila) next to their bedside table? That was the final wake-up call. I’ve been sober ever since.”
Foto: © BANG Media International – Rob Lowe – At the Fox Upfront Presentation – MAY 2019 – Famous
