The Top 7 Most Shocking Mid-Life Celebrity Relapses

Posted at 9:00 AM Aug 29, 2008

By Kenny Herzog

It’s only been a couple of days since Mackenzie Phillips ill-advisedly brought cocaine and heroin as party favors to LAX’s security quarters, but it’s still tough to wrap our heads around this unanticipated indiscretion. Maybe we’ve seen too many Lifetime profiles of celebs like Mackenzie, glamorizing their rise from drug-addled Hollywood brat to beacon of charitable energy, but this is one dope arrest that smacked us over our naïve heads like a kilo of bricks. But as we learned from fellow kid star Tatum O’Neal’s recent crack-down, it’s never too late to fall off the wagon, as evidenced by the one-time co-stars and five other 40-plus trainwrecks.

7. Dwight “Doc” Gooden

The storied Mets phenom-cum-Yankees superstar had supposedly put his well-documented struggles with cocaine and alcohol behind him by the late ’90s. It was one of those triumph-of-the-human-spirit stories particularly beloved and glossed over by sports media. And then, between 2002 and 2006, Doc threw his inspired fanbase a curveball by getting busted for a DWI, fleeing the scene of a DUI, allegedly hitting his girlfriend, and showing up to a probation meeting blasted on the white china, which lead to seven months of imprisonment. Meanhwile, Daryl Strawberry somehow managed to stay comparatively clean, even if he still can’t erase “Chocolate Strawberry” from his rap sheet.

6. David Hasselhoff

The ‘Hoff was known as many things during his deceptively illustrious television-and-recording career: purveyor of majestic chest hair on Knight Rider, the casting director of teenage America’s masturbatory fantasies as mastermind behind Baywatch, self-anointed savior of German unification. But during his bizarrely lengthy peak as an A-list celeb (seriously, how many people in the last 30 years had as consistent a stretch run of success─qualitative measurement of said achievements aside─than the curly haired manhunk?), he never had a prevailing reputation as an alcoholic. That was, of course, until he made the mistake of having a daughter. And giving her a video camera.

5. Mackenzie Phillips

Given her less-than-spritely age (48), the too-soon passing of habit-forming musician dad John Phillips and her vocal position as anti-drug advocate, you’d figure Mackenzie had been through enough rounds with the ’ol tourniquet. Or at least one has to presume that was her heroin-consuming method of choice, as her nostrils must have already been occupied with copious amounts of coke. But apparently, we should have waited one day at a time before giving the former sitcom/movie prodigy a pass on her clean bill of abuse.

4. Carnie Wilson

Ok, she never had a drug problem (excluding Dexatrim), but every good Phillips reject needs a recovering Wilson, right? And after becoming the poster girl for stomach-stapling and exposing her (NSFW) erection-killing anatomy in the pages of Playboy, I think we were all a bit stunned to see her emerge on Celebrity Fit Club, plump and pleading for weight-loss assistance. Granted, most of the surprise was a result of seeing her on a major network period, but her resurrection as a fatty was icing on the pound cake.

3. Joe Namath

Dec. 23, 2003, a day that will live in infamy. Or as legendary Jets quarterback Joe Namath may have put it that night, “a day tharst wilstf lirfgy in tiffany.” Although on this particular evening, he only had eyes for ESPN sideline reporter Suzy Kolber. A wasted Namath proclaimed (twice!), “I want to kiss you” on live television while staring her down with a seductive undressing only the 7-year-old niece of a sexually abusive uncle could love. Namath would apologize and subsequently open up about his decades-long battle with the bottle. But thanks to the Internet, his worst moment of public regression will never have a cork put in it.

2. Tatum O’Neal

Not that anyone should put faith in the good judgment of a woman who married John McEnroe (we’re talking to you, Patti Smyth), but hardly anyone saw her June ’08 bust for purchasing crack from a homeless man coming. Except maybe the hobo, who likely caught a glimpse of the flashing lights but was, ya know, a bit too fucked up on crack to warn her. Less shocking than the arrest itself was O’Neal’s depressingly low-class pursuit of the rock, perhaps making her the anti-Whitney Houston of mid-life drug admissions. The 44-year-old notoriously claimed she was researching for a part and that it was her first relapse in ages. Because everyone who sporadically slips has the instinct to pursue derelict street merchants on shady corners of downtown Manhattan.

1. Courtney Love

Remember that time in the late ’90s when Mrs. Cobain transformed into a Versace-clad model of personal retribution, even if she looked vaguely like she was trying out for a remake of Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls inspired by What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? Neither does she, given her alarming descent back into weight/talent/charisma-diminishing drug abuse over the last half decade. This is arguably the most unfortunate of all recent Hollywood redemptions gone awry, and kind of makes you wonder what equivalently horrific trajectory Kurt Cobain would have endured were he still alive and by Courtney’s side.

Stay tuned for Tuesday’s vaguely similar list of actors and actresses whose thespian status fell startlingly from grace.