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Gypsy Rose Blanchard opened up about her decision to become sober while she was in prison in her new memoir, My Time to Stand.
After Gypsy, 33, grew dependent on prescription drugs during her childhood, she continued abusing the substances while she was behind bars. Gypsy explained that her late mother, Dee Dee Blanchard, gave her the prescription drugs after the matriarch convinced her that she had many illnesses that she never actually had.
While she would get sober and relapsed a handful of times, Gypsy revealed that there was one turning point in her recovery when she decided to become sober for good.
“Numbing myself with Suboxone was not the answer. For a million reasons, I needed to stop. The main reason I had turned to painkillers in the first place was to leave my world behind. Now, to heal, I needed to be present, not vacant,” Gypsy wrote in her memoir, which was released on Tuesday, December 10, about her drug use. “I was so afraid of the withdrawals. They were brutal back at County. Could I go through them again?”
After noting that she felt dependent on the substances, Gypsy revealed that she ultimately hit her “rock bottom” while serving time at Chillicothe Correctional Center.
“I lied to [stepmother Kristy Blanchard] and asked her for fifty dollars because I told her I broke this girl’s CD player and needed cash to reimburse the girl. Kristy trusted me and I hurt that trust,” she recalled of the defining moment. “I used the money to buy drugs. I told Kristy how sorry I was, that it wasn’t right I hurt that trust.”
Gypsy seemed to change her thought process regarding her drug use when Kristy gave her a forgiving response. “She said, ‘I forgive you. I love you all the same.’ Her forgiveness surprised me. It gave me the courage to quit. Cold turkey,” the Lifetime star wrote. “I told myself that this time around, at least I knew what to expect. Facing my demons had to be done sober.”
The Louisiana native now has a close relationship with Kristy and her father, Rod Blanchard, though they were estranged for most of her childhood until they offered her support following her arrest.
Gypsy – who first made headlines in 2015 for killing Dee Dee alongside then-boyfriend Nicholas Godejohn following years of abuse – opened up about several tough subjects in her new memoir, including their decision to kill Dee Dee and glimpses into her romances with Ken Urker and Ryan Anderson.
Ahead of the book’s release, Gypsy shared insight into her feelings about people finally hearing her side of the scandal in the memoir. “It brings me a lot of pride and joy to have this exciting moment,” she told People on Monday, December 9, adding that the experience was “nerve-wracking” and “stressful.”
“You want to do your story [justice], you want to tell it with as much honesty and vulnerability as possible,” she added of the project. “So it was quite a roller-coaster ride.”
English (US) ·