Hayden Panettiere revealed that she dealt with jaundice, hair loss, and more, when she battled alcoholism before she went into treatment.
Hayden Panettiere, 33, opened up about her battle with alcoholism and addiction in a new interview with Women’s Health. Hayden, the cover star of the magazine’s May 2023 issue, recalled how she went to rehab in 2015, when she was starring in Nashville, after relying on drugs and alcohol to deal with postpartum depression after giving birth to her daughter Kaya, now 8. “I struggled with sleep deprivation,” Hayden said about the effects of her alcoholism. “Sleep is massive. It affects your motor skills, your ability to think and your overall health…my body was like, ‘enough.’ ”
The Scream star said that when she turned 30 in 2019, she was dealing with even worse side effects from her drinking. “My face was swollen. I had jaundice. My eyes were yellow,” she revealed. “I had to go to a liver specialist. I was holding on to weight that wasn’t normally there. My hair was thin and coming out in clumps.”
Before her first rehab stint, Hayden was also addicted to opioid painkillers to cope with post natal depression and the flare up of a neck injury. “I was in a lot of pain,” she recalled. “My tolerance got so high so fast that it became a problem. I should have gone on antidepressants [to cope with the postnatal depression], but you have to find the right one that works for you. They don’t mix well with alcohol, and I wasn’t ready to stop drinking.”
Hayden went to rehab in 2015, and when she came out she took a break from acting, but she continued to drink. In 2021, Hayden went back into treatment and got fully sober. “I did a lot of work on myself. After eight months of intensive therapy, I felt like I had this blank canvas to work with,” the Heroes star said.
Hayden previously opened up about badly she struggled with addiction last year, in a joint cover story with People and Good Morning America. Hayden admitted that she took solace in “the bottom of a bottle” while dealing with postpartum depression. Hayden also described her rock bottom moment before she got treatment, saying, “When you see a happy-go-lucky girl for years suddenly on the floor in a puddle of mess and alcohol, you’ve got to know something’s wrong.” The mom of one noted in that interview that she’s “grateful to say I’m sober today.”
After getting sober, Hayden made her long-awaited return to acting in Scream 6, where she reprised her fan-favorite role as Kirby Reed. She’s still long distance from her daughter Kaya, who lives in Ukraine with Hayden’s ex Wladimir Klitschko.
