Jamie Lee Curtis’ opiate addiction and her family’s history of addictive habits have been publicly discussed. She has just finished writing the foreword to a new book about achieving sobriety and a greater connection with one’s spirit.
In the foreword of Elisa Hallerman’s new book Soulbriety, Jamie Lee Curtis says, “many of us seek mentors to help sweep away the noise and debris of our ancestral imprints and access that beautiful CenterPoint that is our basic self.”
Hallerman, a former entertainment agent, writes in the book about realizing her work wasn’t done on the fifth anniversary of her recovery.
She had been sober for five or six years at that point, according to her. “I was successful and had all of these external things that I believed would make me happy, but I felt empty and sad, and I was forced to look at that and go deeper.”
This necessitated her leaving her work to attend graduate school, where she studied depth psychology to help individuals suffering from addiction.
“Nobody wakes up wanting to be an alcoholic or a drug addict,” according to Hallerman. “Nobody works for it, but some people get the illness while others do not.”
She goes on to say that addiction is a symptom. “Something isn’t right,” she claims. “We experience a loss of meaning and purpose, grief, misery, anxiety, or depression. And I believe that if we don’t take the time to look at what’s beneath, that leads to repeated relapses because we haven’t gotten to the root of the problem.”
Curtis describes Hallerman’s “unflinching and authentic storytelling” and “deep seeking and learning” as driving the book’s holistic approach to addiction and healing from the underlying trauma that commonly drives it.
Curtis writes in her prologue that she burst into tears when she first heard Hallerman’s book’s title. “Jamie has been a dear good friend of mine for many years,” Hallerman said. ” When I told her I was writing a book, she asked what the title was, and when I told her it was Soulbriety, she had a deep emotional reaction, before she had even read a word, stating ‘I want to be involved, I want to contribute.’”
“In the end,” Curtis explains, “it’s all about our soul, and the message is that we are enough.”
