Ben Higgins, the star of the 20th season of The Bachelor, admitted that at the lowest point of his addiction to painkillers, he stole pills from his grandfather.
The former reality television star shared his story on the Facebook Live series by American Addiction Center. He took viewers through his years-long journey with addiction.
Ben began experimenting with pills in high school. “When I was young … I was a sophomore, we would experiment, like, we would find at the time, like Tramadol, and we would take a bunch of those. But then it kind of stopped. It wasn’t really a thing in my life consistently after that,” he explained.
Ben revealed that he was on his school’s football team and was planning to play in college until he injured his knee and found his career cut short.
“For me, that was a turning moment where I realized my identity, the thing that I had always counted on, was going to be taken away,” said Higgins, who was given medication following knee surgery.
Ben continued to struggle with addiction thereafter
Ben recognized he felt was always hiding something from somebody.
“I think that was the first sign to me, is I was always strategically prepping in my mind on how I could hide whatever it was,” he said. “Maybe I was carrying something on me, or maybe I was going to go find it, or maybe I was high at the time and I didn’t want anybody to know. I was always hiding something.”
“For a while, I was okay with it. But then over time, as I started to feel a ton of depression, a ton of anxiousness around, ‘Where was I gonna find the next pill? Where was I going to find the next bottle?’ and then doing that around friends and family who loved me, it started to click,” Ben shared.
He admitted that his worst day was when he took pills from his grandfather.
“I remember doing it and walking out and I just remember this feeling of like, ‘Who are you? What is this about? Why are you still doing this? You’re taking something from somebody that needs it and someone that you love,'” Ben said.
“That was, I think, the start of me starting to say, ‘I need to start at least confronting it.'”
It took time for him to realize he had a problem and seek help
Ben revealed that he needed to rid himself of his addiction and that he needed help.
It was after he spent 24 hours in bed and questioned where he was in life that he got up, went into the bathroom, took a good, long look at himself in the mirror, and realized that this was not the man he wanted to be.
Ben explained he did not know why it was at that moment he was ready to make a change. It was then he sought help and told his family and friends of his problem. He said he knew he needed to rid himself of his addiction and begin and heal from it.
The Bachelor is currently on hiatus.