The actress reveals that she and her husband are going to therapy again.
Kristen Bell is standing by her man. After her husband, Dax Shepard, recently opened up about his relapse with prescription medication following 16 years of sobriety, Bell appears on Wednesday's The Ellen DeGeneres Show to talk about her husband's journey with substance abuse and sobriety.
"He is actually doing really great," she says of the 45-year-old actor and the father of her two daughters. "I mean, look, everybody's up against their own demons. Sometimes it's anxiety and depression, sometimes it's substance abuse."
Bell, 40, praises Shepard for coming to her following his relapse and saying he needed help.
"The thing I love most about Dax is A) that he was able to tell me and tell us and say we need a different plan. Right?" she says. "Like we have a plan. If he has to take medication, for any reason, I have to administer it. But he was like, 'So, we need a stronger plan. I was faltering and I have to do some sort of emotional work to figure out why I wanted to use again.'"
The Good Place star has full confidence in her husband, adding, "One of the main reasons I love him is he's also addicted to growth. He's addicted to evolving. And he was like, 'I don't want to risk this family and I did, so let's put new things in place to make sure it doesn't happen again.' We're going back to therapy. I love that he's addicted to growth and I will continue to stand by him because he's very, very worth it."
Shepard opened up about his relapse publicly in September on his Armchair Expert podcast. His struggle occurred after the actor sustained several injuries this year doing extreme sports and began taking prescription pain medication.
He revealed that he'd begun to significantly up his dosage, which led him to start lying.
"I'm lying to other people and I know I have to quit," he said. "But my tolerance is going up so quickly that I'm now in a situation where I'm taking, you know, eight 30s a day, and I know that's an amount that's going to result in a pretty bad withdrawal. And I start getting really scared, and I'm starting to feel really lonely. And I just have this enormous secret."
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