Almost 25 years after a brain hemorrhage left her with just a 1% chance of survival, Sharon Stone is talking about her choice to live without drugs. It was a decision that came with a tough physical price.
In a new interview with Variety, the 68-year-old actress said she decided to stop taking one of the long-term medications she was put on after her 2001 stroke, despite explicit warnings from her medical team. “They said, ‘You can’t go off of it. You can never go off of it.’ I’m like, ‘I’m going off it,’ and it was like going off of f***ing heroin,” Stone said. “I was sick as a frigging dog for four and a half months. I just thought, ‘I want my life back.’“
Sharon Stone’s Withdrawal Symptoms and Quitting Prescription Medication
The rough stretch was the end of a long process. Over the years, Stone had slowly cut back on most of the drugs she was given after her stroke. She had a ruptured vertebral artery that bled into her brain for nine days. “I had gotten off the majority of the drugs over the years that they had put me on. But I was like, ‘I want a drug-free life,’” she said.
After she got through that withdrawal, Stone decided to quit smoking marijuana. But she was surprised when that made her sick for a whole month too.
Sharon Stone on Quitting Marijuana and Modern Cannabis Risks
Stone thinks the drug has changed over time. “Once I got off that, I decided I’m going to quit smoking pot. And because I think they put so much stuff in it now—they really do—when I stopped smoking pot, I also got sick,” she said. “It’s not like you’re pulling it out of the ground anymore. It’s not like when we were kids. I got pretty sick for a month.”
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She talked to her neurologist about it, and he gave her a serious warning about how strong marijuana is now. “He said, ‘Sharon, I’ve had people dying in the emergency room from marijuana,‘” she said.
Sharon Stone’s Recovery, Career Comeback and Reclaiming Her Life
It has been over 20 years since the stroke that changed everything for her. In 2001, doctors gave her a 1% chance to live. The recovery was long and hard. She lost her memory and could not speak, walk, or see straight. She also had to fight to get her career back.
“I lost everything. I lost all my money. I lost custody of my child. I lost my career. I lost all those things that you feel are your real identity and your life,” Stone said in an earlier interview with People Magazine. “I never really got most of it back, but I’ve reached a point where I’m okay with it, where I really do recognize that I’m enough.”
The ‘Basic Instinct‘ star has since returned to acting, with roles in shows like HBO’s ‘Euphoria‘. She sees this as a time of taking her life back. Her choice to get sober lines up with a creative comeback too. She has picked up painting again and has made it into a global career. “This has been a period for me in this last year of really reclaiming my life,” Stone said.
Doctors always advise against stopping stroke or seizure medications without supervision. But for Stone, pushing for independence marks a deeply personal new stage in her long public health journey.
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