Jada Pinkett reveals she battled sex addiction when she was younger
Several shocking confessions have been made on Jada Pinkett’s chat show Red Table Talk. On the most recent episode of her Facebook Watch show, Jada revealed that she struggled with alcohol addiction previously. She admits that she came to the realization on her own when she was sitting alone at home working her way through three bottles of wine. “I remember reaching a rock bottom that time I was in the house by myself and I had those two bottles of wine and was going for the third bottle. And I was like, ‘Now hold up. You’re in this house by yourself going onto your third bottle of wine? You might have a problem,’” she recalled.
In conversation with special guest August Alsina, Will Smith’s youngest sister Ashley Marie, and her mother Adrienne Banfield Norris, Jada also opened up about her addictive nature. In an episode themed around the concepts of addiction and alcohol abuse, she said that she is “a binger” and so needs to keep a constant check on her habits to make sure she isn’t going overboard. She said, “I can just get obsessed with things. It’s not what you’re doing but how you’re with it. Why you’re doing it.” But Jada also confessed that once she recognizes her vices, she does not struggle too much with cutting them out of her life. She has an innate ability to go "cold turkey."
Jada also revealed that she had a family history of alcoholism and drug addiction. It made her realize that so many great people just get caught up in the wrong things. She also addressed her mother’s 27-year heroin addiction on the show.
“I think I didn’t find out my mother was addicted to heroin until I was in my teens. I could tell when my mother was high. She couldn’t make it on time to pick me up from school. Or she’s nodding off, falling asleep in the middle of something. You just realize, oh, that’s not being tired, that is like, a drug problem,” she said.
Her mother Adrienne also spoke about her perspective and struggle through her addiction. Though Adrienne was extremely honest about her battle with addiction, it wasn’t hard to notice how difficult it was to open up to the world about such a vulnerable part of her past.
She said: “It’s difficult to talk about something that is gonna go out to the world. I couldn’t hide the unmanageability of my life, and the emotional damage and the spiritual damage I did to myself and to her. That was devastating. I abused drugs for over 20 years."
Watching Adrienne look right into the eyes of her daughter and speak of her past was truly an emotional experience. Both their eyes were bloodshot and filled with tears when Adrienne confessed that she in fact made the decision to quit for a potential relationship with a man.
However, at the end of the day, she realized that the only thing that truly matters is that she got herself out of the situation, not that the motivation arose because of a man. She could barely get herself to say the words, but she did it. She owned up to her addiction and how she got where she is now without letting a tear drop roll down her cheek. She was also extremely grateful to God for looking out for her and her child.
Jada reassured her mother every step of the way. It was truly heart-warming to watch a daughter stand by her mother and somehow assist her in forgiving herself and remaining proud about the fact that she made it through some extremly dark times.
Along with her alcohol addicition, Jada also opened up about her sex addiction. "My sort of addictions jump. They jump around. When I was younger, I definitely think I had a sex addiction of some kind, yes, that everything could be fixed by sex. You know what I’m saying?" Jada said.
This was not the first time Jada spoke about her addiction to sexual pleasure. In an earlier episode of the talk show, she was very candid about her addiction to giving herself orgasms. She said while speaking to her daughter Willow: “I think by your age, I gave myself multiples first. Multiple orgasms. I was really into it at one point. Just because I was in an exploration state and I was abstaining from men."
She also admitted that she recognized, just like with her alcohol addiction, that she was taking it too far. She said, “I actually think I went through kind of an addiction, too, with it. And then one day, I was like, ‘Enough. You’re having five orgasms a day.’"