Christopher Lloyd, Doc Brown in “Back to the Future”, is 88 and has just shared in his memoir, “In My Own Time”, what he kept hidden for decades. He says his first time was in the 70s, outside a comedy club in Los Angeles, in the car of a woman he had just met. “That was all it took. I got hooked almost immediately”, he writes. “I just knew I liked it, and before long it had me hooked”.
Coke, alcohol, and weed became part of his routine. In 1983, with “Taxi” freshly canceled after five seasons, he argued with his girlfriend while drunk and high, and hit the windows of the house where she had left him outside.
He woke up on the kitchen floor, bleeding heavily, surrounded by paramedics. He had lost so much blood that he was given plasma, and later needed surgery and physical therapy to fully straighten his fingers again.
In 1993, he spent five weeks in rehab. “It was the beginning, but not the end”, he admits: there were relapses before he achieved lasting sobriety.
He says he never acted under the influence. Is it possible to believe that anyone could come through a battle like that unscathed?