Oscar-winning actor Tatum O’Neal has opened up about the overdose and stroke that landed him in a six-week coma during the height of the covid pandemic.
“Almost dead,” she told people. “I’ve been through a lot.”
During lockdown, O’Neal, 59, felt lonely and experienced persistent neck pain and rheumatoid arthritis pains. In May 2020, she overdosed on painkillers, opioids, and morphine. A friend of hers found her and they took her to the hospital. Her family shared how the difficult conditions of the pandemic made her vulnerable.
“She had become very isolated,” her 37-year-old son Kevin McEnroe told People. “With the addition of morphine and heavier pharmaceuticals, she was getting scary. COVID, chronic pain, all of these things led to a place of isolation. In that place, I don’t think, for her there was a lot of hope.”
The hospital stay was hard for everyone. Her children, including her daughter Emily, 32, and her son Sean, 35, were unable to visit most of the time. Furthermore, her health was in such a precarious state that it seemed unclear whether she would live.
“He also had a cardiac arrest and several seizures,” Kevin McEnroe said. “There were times when we didn’t think she was going to survive.”
O’Neal was in a coma and experienced “damage to the right frontal cortex,” it added. Doctors diagnosed him with aphasia, which occurs when brain damage affects a person’s ability to read, write and communicate with other people.
“Sometimes, it was touch and go,” Kevin McEnroe said. “I had to call my brother and sister and tell them that they thought she was blind, deaf and she might never speak again.”
When O’Neal first woke up from his coma, he found it difficult to speak.
“She didn’t know where she was,” Kevin McEnroe said. “She couldn’t say, ‘I’m scared.'”
O’Neal has come a long way. With therapy, he is trying to improve his memory and strengthening his vocabulary. She also attends 12-step meetings to deal with “the things that made (her) want to take drugs in the first place,” Kevin McEnroe said.
O’Neal has struggled to be in recovery for many years.
“I’ve been trying to get sober my whole life,” she told People. “Every day, I try.”
O’Neal made history when she became the youngest Oscar winner at age 10 for her role in “Paper Moon,” which she starred in with her father, Ryan O’Neal. Over the next several decades, O’Neal had a rocky relationship with her father and then a challenging marriage and divorce with tennis star John McEnroe. She had used drugs over the years, including heroin addiction, and would visit rehab centers in hopes of sobering up for her family.
“I’ve been addicted my whole life, off and on for the last 30 or 40 years,” she said.
While Kevin McEnroe and his brothers have watched their mother work to stay sober many times, this time he sees a difference.
“She has embraced this attempt at recovery,” he said. “She was always a very loving mom, but when she was isolated, I think it was hard to find love for herself.”
O’Neal said: “Every day I try. I want to be with my beautiful three children.”
