In a new interview with Rolling Stone, country superstar Keith Urban says wife Nicole Kidman helped facilitate his recovery from addiction. The singer had struggled with drug and alcohol abuse almost since he first moved to Nashville in the 1990s. He told the magazine that he once missed a recording session with the Dixie Chicks because he was so hung over.
Urban went to rehab for the first time in 1998 and was sober for eight years. During that time period, he met Kidman and the two married. Urban says that his wife helped ease his feelings of loneliness and anxiety, but during one of her trips abroad, he relapsed.
"When she would go away, I would find myself feeling very alone, very lost, and vulnerable to my old ways," he said. "That whole part of my world came back in and swamped me. And I remember just feeling so terrified."
In 2006, shortly after the couple were married, Kidman and some of Urban's close friends led an intervention. He went to rehab and has been sober ever since.
Urban hinted in the Rolling Stone interview that his addiction and alcoholism went hand in hand with acute loneliness and possibly even anxiety and depression. To truly overcome addiction, a patient must address his or her substance abuse problems but also the underlying mental, emotional and psychological issues that may trigger or exacerbate them.
Dr. M.K. (Khal) El-Yousef founded Fairwinds Treatment Center in 1989, to provide patients with a network of support to confront and overcome addictions as well as their underlying causes. The dual diagnosis programs at Fairwinds Treatment Center address bipolar disorder, depression and other mental illnesses in connection with addictions and eating disorders, in pursuit of deep, lasting recovery.
