Selma Blair started drinking when she was just seven years old and has been raped "multiple times" when she was drunk.
Selma Blair has opened up about her alcohol dependancy
The 49-year-old actress recalls how hitting the bottle from a young age was a "huge relief" because it provided a "coping mechanism" for her anxiety, and her alcohol abuse escalated in her teens and early 20s.
She told People magazine: "I don't know if I would've survived childhood without alcoholism. That's why it's such a problem for a lot of people. It really is a huge comfort, a huge relief in the beginning. Maybe even the first few years for me because I did start really young with that as a comfort, as my coping mechanism."
And in her extract from her upcoming memoir, 'Mean Baby', she wrote: "The first time I got drunk it was a revelation. I always liked Passover. As I took small sips of the Manischewitz I was allowed throughout the seder a light flooded through me, filling me up with the warmth of God.
"But the year I was seven, when we basically had Manischewitz on tap and no one was paying attention to my consumption level, I put it together: the feeling was not God but fermentation. I thought 'Well this is a huge disappointment, but since it turns out I can get the warmth of the Lord from a bottle, thank God there's one right here.'
"I got drunk that night. Very drunk. Eventually, I was put in my sister Katie's bed with her. In the morning, I didn't remember how I'd gotten there."
In her early years of drinking, the 'Cruel Intentions' star didn't get drink but would take "quick sips" whenever her "anxiety would alight".
She added: "I usually barely even got tipsy. I became an expert alcoholic, adept at hiding my secret."
Selma also told of a traumatising incident during a college spring break trip when she was raped after a day of drinking - and admitted it wasn't the only time she's been sexually assaulted when drunk.
She wrote: "I don't know if both of them raped me. One of them definitely did.
"I made myself small and quiet and waited for it to be over. I wish I could say what happened to me that night was an anomaly, but it wasn't. I have been raped, multiple times, because I was too drunk to say the words 'Please. Stop.' Only that one time was violent. I came out of each event quiet and ashamed."
Apart from telling her therapist, the 'Cruel Intentions' star - who has been sober since 2016 - hadn't previously spoken about being raped many times but writing it down in her book has helped her to heal.
She said: "Writing that stopped me dead in my tracks. My sense of trauma was bigger than I knew. I did not realize that assault was so central in my life. I had so much shame and blame. I'm grateful I felt safe enough to put it on the page. And then can work on it with a therapist and with other writing, and really relieve that burden of shame on myself."
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