Lee Daniels Talks Former Drug Addiction: “I Hate F*cking Being Sober!”

Lee Daniels Talks Former Drug Addiction: “I Hate F*cking Being Sober!”

“Empire” creator Lee Daniels is being more transparent than ever in a recent interview. In the midst of a rollercoaster first half of 2019, Lee talks about his former drug addiction and how it affects his now-sober life, his own homophobia, and the death of his abusive father.

Shockingly, Lee Daniels, 59, says that after decades of sober living, he hates being sober. Here, he reveals what drove him to drugs:

“I never really even liked to drink, but I drank because my father told me if he ever saw me with a man, he would kill me. And until I was 22, I had to get drunk to actually go through with the process. And then the drug scene came.”

Lee continued:

“I’m angsty, and I’m sober, so that is really weird to be going to the Met Ball and to other social activities not intoxicated. I hate f*cking being sober. It’s a bore. It’s a f*cking snooze.”

The “Star” writer/director, also, comments that he turned to drugs to numb the pain of losing friends to the AIDS epidemic.

“And then all your friends start dying of AIDS. Not one, not two, not three, I’m talking intimate friends that you’ve had sex with, you’ve had dreams with, hopes with, people that are better souls than you- gone. And you can’t figure out, ‘Why the f*ck am I still here?’ So then it was like me on drugs and drinking, not even knowing I was an addict but just erasing all the pain.”

In 1976, Lee Daniels’ father was, tragically, shot and killed during a bar robbery. He says that he is relieved he is dead:

“I regret that I have to say yes. I have come to terms with the love I have for my father, but I would be a liar to say that I wasn’t relieved that he was gone.”

Lee Daniels also touched on homophobia within the LGBT community. He says that his son called him out on his own homophobia as a gay man:

“My son, who’s 23, came home with a guy once who was clearly gay. I knew my son was terminally heterosexual, but I go to my boyfriend, ‘He’s out there with a gay guy.’ And so he says, ‘Do you have a problem with it? Go out and ask him.’ So then I finally mustered up the courage to go out and say, ‘Is there something you want to share with me? You know he’s gay.’ He’s like, ‘And?’ I said, ‘Are you?’ He goes, ‘What if I were? Is that bad? You’re gay, what are you getting at here?’ I felt so stupid. I mean, he dates women, and he made me look a fool.”

Read the rest of Lee Daniels’ Vulture interview here.

Written by Miata Shanay