Anyone battling substance abuse knows that calling it an “uphill battle” is an understatement.
Kim Richards acknowledged this in a feature for People Magazine.
“Yes I’ve made mistakes, but I try and try again,” she said. “Because I do love myself, and I love my children and I want to get this right.”
Richards told the magazine that her battle against alcoholism started when she was 24 and dealing with the end of her second marriage to oil heir Gregg Davis.
Prior to that, Richards said she had “sips” of alcohol “every now and then,” but it was at that age when she admits she had her “first real drink.”
Growing up in show business, Richards said she took care of herself.
“I was always disciplined and driven about my body and what I put into it,” she explained.
“But the pressure with the divorce and the custody battle, it got to me.”
Richards said she would have a glass of wine at night, but her alcohol consumption increased gradually.
“I started noticing I was drinking a lot,” she remembers. “That’s when my issue started.”
Over the next twenty years, Richards struggled with the addiction, and went to rehab in 2011.
Joining The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills in 2010 was “disorienting” for the actress.
“The drama started, and there was fighting and traveling, and I got overwhelmed.”
Things came to a blow with her sister, Kyle in the season one finale, when Kyle told Kim inside a limo she was sick and “an alcoholic.”
After an April 2015 arrest at the Beverly Hills Hotel, as well shoplifting charges at a Van Nuys Target a few months later, Richards is now “in a very good place.”
She tries to keep the guilt at bay.
“I’m sorry for people I’ve let down,” she told the magazine. “But my concern is to myself and to my children, first and foremost.
“I don’t beat myself up because it makes it worse. I have to own it and accept it and move on.”
