No topic is ever off-limits when it comes to Red Table Talk, where Jada Pinkett Smith and her family have touched on everything from entanglements and Scientology feuds to polyamory and the Olivia Jade of it all.
On the latest episode released on Wednesday, Jada candidly opened up about her past drug and alcohol abuse, saying she’s a “walking miracle” given her family’s long history with addiction.
The Girls Trip star described herself as a “hard liquor drinker” in the past ― as opposed to her “lightweight” husband Will Smith ― before she moved on to red wine, which she believed at the time wasn’t as dangerous.
“Drinking red wine for me was like drinking glasses of water,” she shared on the Facebook Watch series. “Because I’m used to that hard hit. I was drinking hard in high school, too, and when I got out here I was doing cocktails. So, ecstasy, alcohol, weed. Let me tell you, I was having me a little ball.”
“I wasn’t doing things that I thought were addictive,” she continued. “But I would do those three together. That was my cocktail. Your threshold becomes so high, that what it takes for you to get to the place you need to get to, it’ll take me two bottles to get to ... OK, if I do ecstasy, weed and alcohol at the same time I’m gonna get there faster and I can keep the high going.”
Jada went on to add that she’s a “binger” who would try to keep her partying contained to the weekends.
But there was one instance where her substance abuse affected her work life. Jada talked for the first time about an “eye-opening incident” on the set of the 1996 film The Nutty Professor.
“I passed out. I went to work high, and it was a bad batch of ecstasy,” she explained. “I told everybody that I must’ve had old medication in a vitamin bottle. That’s what I said. ... But I tell you what I did though. Got my ass together and got on that set. That was the last time.”
Since then, the actor said, she’s been “cold turkey” besides an occasional glass of red wine, adding, “I cannot touch vodka. I cannot touch rum. Rum’s another one. No dark liquor.”
Addiction runs in the family, as her mother, Adrienne Banfield-Norris, has previously shared her 20-year struggle with heroin use.
Reflecting on her daughter’s own journey with drugs and alcohol, Adrienne noted the stress she’s experienced as a “recovering addict dealing with my family that is not accepting of the fact that addiction runs deep in our veins.”
“I think back on my life, like, I am a walking miracle, no doubt about that,” Jada later added. “People will not believe.”