Selma Blair reveals she attempted suicide a few times before being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and masked symptoms with alcohol
Actress Selma Blair has revealed that she attempted suicide "a few times" before being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She also said that her symptoms of the disease were masked for some years because of her excessive alcohol consumption. The 50-year-old celebrity spoke about her health problems in an interview with the magazine.
"I made some mistakes," the 'Hellboy' star said in the interview. “I wished for my death. I tried to commit suicide. Sometimes. Because of my despair. I was lost and sad and barely smiling.”
“I was always worried, from the beginning, that some failure on my part was going to put me out of business. It was usually my lack of coordination or my forgetfulness, always too weak or sick, in my trailer - or anywhere, really. The constant vomiting, the body problems, were frightening, [in addition to] hair loss and itching. I couldn't tell anyone. I could not own up to alcoholism or seek treatment for fear of being seen as a risk.”
“Sometimes the sets could be a pain, with my exhaustion and the tics. I took medicine. I didn't abuse anything, just alcohol. I was always terrified by the possibility of being seen as incapable. Or mentally unstable. My mother always made sure I knew that this is death for a woman in professional terms”.
Then she recalled waking up to hysterical laughter as a child and uncontrollable crying as an adult. All of this, she later discovered, was the impact of multiple sclerosis on her brain - "the equivalent of a brain injury", she explained.
“I thought I was an immensely emotional person. I looked like a 'normal' girl to the world, but I've always been a person with a disability."
