Christine Brown is opening up about a past addiction.
Despite sharing her life on the series “Sister Wives” since 2010, the mom of six, 53, has kept some things private.
Brown admitted in her new memoir, “Sister Wife,” out Sept. 2, that she was prescribed oxycodone and became reliant on the medication while married to her ex-husband Kody Brown.
“Just before Maddie and Caleb got married [in 2016], I blew out my knee. I tore my ACL and my meniscus, and I had to have surgery. [My husband at the time] Kody [Brown] brought me home from the hospital and then prepared to leave,” the author penned, per People.
Brown asked her then-husband, 56, what to do but he was also stumped.
“‘What do I need to do?’ I asked, wondering about meds and aftercare. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘They didn’t give you any instructions?’ ‘No,’ he said. But he had gotten my prescription for pain pills filled, and he handed me the bag.”
Instead, Brown relied on her mom and daughters to stick around to help.
“I had never taken oxycodone before — if something hurt, I took ibuprofen or aspirin,” Brown wrote. “Real pain indicates that something’s wrong, and if I take something that masks the problem, I’m not going to fix the problem, so I generally avoid it. With the surgery, I had already fixed the problem, and it hurt, so I took my meds.”
Brown said she felt like she “had the flu” and was also “achy from head to toe.”
In turn, the reality star “took an oxycodone, and all the symptoms went away.”
“It gave me the best high I ever felt. I was on top of the world, and I could accomplish everything!” she explained. “I just dealt with it privately because at the time, it was absolutely devastating.”
“It was very difficult, and even though I was on it for a month, the effects of it lasted at least six. I didn’t feel normal,” continued the TLC star. “I didn’t feel okay for so long. So, once I was done and I felt better, I just felt good to feel better. And I realized that with writing the book, that’s something I didn’t go back and revisit was the addiction to oxycodone.”
Brown added, “Oxy is a terrible, addictive thing if you don’t need it.”
“If you need it and you’re in a lot of pain, there’s nothing better than that, but since I can get addicted to things easily, it seems it’s just best to stay away from that kind of thing,” she elaborated. “But I just wasn’t in a place where I could talk about it on the show. I just really couldn’t. It was so personal, and it was embarrassing, and I didn’t know if I wanted people to know that about me.”
Brown and Kody, 56, tied the knot in 1994 and share kids Aspyn, Mykelti, Paedon, Gwendlyn, Ysabel and Truely. The exes split in 2021.
A year later, Brown opened up about what led to their divorce after 25 years together.
Kody said he was no longer attracted to Brown during an episode of their show.
“It was terrible to hear. And it’s super embarrassing,” Brown admitted during the “Sister Wives: One-on-One” episode at the time.
His confession led her to know that their relationship was “over.”
“It was almost a relief,” the former Brown family patriarch continued. “I’m not going to keep fighting for this, and I’m not going to keep trying and I’m not going to keep doing this if you’re not attracted to me. So everything that I’ve done for you, for the family, means nothing.’”
In the same episode, Kody called his ex a “game player” and insisted that his “stoic” reaction to her leaving was because they had other issues in their marriage.
“I was ambivalent. I was trying to be stoic about it,” he said. “[Christine] is a game player. From the time we were married — manipulation, pouting, temper tantrums, just behavior things.”
Kody also claimed that Brown “lost her s–t” after he wanted to reconcile with his first wife, Meri.
“Meri gave me this really cool birthday present and I’m in this place expressing to Janelle, Christine and Robyn that I might reconcile with Meri,” he reminisced. “And Christine lost her s–t that day. She comes to our family party and yells to one of the kids that she was in a loveless marriage.”
After Brown and Kody split, his second wife, Janelle Brown, also left him after more than 20 years together.
Kody and his first wife, Meri, parted ways in 2022 following 32 years together.
Robyn is the last of the “Sister Wives” to still be with Kody.
In 2023, Brown gushed over tying the knot with her now-husband David Woolley.
The pair celebrated at the Red Cliffs Lodge in Moab, Utah, in front of 330 guests.
“It’s a fairytale,” Brown told People. “It’s everything I never thought I would have. I get to walk down the aisle to David, him just looking at me the way that he does, it’s a dream come true.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
