By RODNEY HO/ rho@ajc.com, originally filed Friday, May 6, 2016
Bert Weiss' ex-wife Stacey gave a riveting account of her painkiller addiction on Atlanta-based HLN's "The Daily Share" yesterday in the wake of Prince's death.
The legendary musician was addicted to opiates before he passed, according to media reports.
Bert and Stacey divorced last year after nearly 20 years and have two sons. Weiss has hosted the Bert Show, heard on Q100 locally, for 15 years.
Stacey said she was addicted to hydrocodone for six years after being given the meds to treat her chronic migraines.
"When you have pain, and you experience pain every single day of your life, you just want to get out of that pain," Stacey said on the program. "You don't care what it takes to get out of that pain. You're at that point. I was at that point. I had exhausted every other avenue. Now I had the painkillers."
She said she woke up every morning with a migraine and had to function to take care of her sons and Bert's Big Adventure, their charity. "It wasn't an option for me to have pain," she said. "What happens with the drugs is they perpetuate the pain." So she needed more.
"It got a point that I wasn't remembering things anymore," she added. In fact, she can't recall the first year of her youngest son's life. "That's my biggest regret," she said. "I was missing their life."
While at her beach house, Stacey was looking at her kids and decided she needed to be there for them in a real way. Her sister in law is a nurse and helped her detox.
"I had the right people with me to do it. It's not the safe way. You need to go to a facility to detox. I did that at home with my sister in law," Stacey said. "It was the worst thing I've ever experienced. Even talking about it, I get anxious. I can still feel the anxiety. You can't sleep. You can't eat. I lost 15 pounds in four days. It was crazy. It was so much pain, way way worse than the migraines. I wanted to feel every single bit of it so I'd never do it again."
The detox took seven days and the migraines stopped. She's been clean for eight years now.
Through the Bert Show, she has helped people through similar addiction. "I have never been happier than the moment I stopped taking them," she said.
Bert posted the video:
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