Hayden Panettieres battle with addiction as actress dies at 36

Hayden Panettiere had shared candid details of the toll that addiction took on her health before her death on Sunday at age 36.No official cause of death has been named for the “Nashville” star, but in recent years she reflected on her battle with addiction to alcohol and opioids.At one point, it grew so serious that she was once hospitalized with jaundice, a condition in which the skin and whites of the eyes turn yellow due to poor liver function.“Doctors told me my liver was going to give out,” she told People in 2022, later elaborating in her memoir: “A doctor told me that if I didn’t stop drinking, I’d be dead within five years.”The star said the door to addiction was opened for her as a teenager, when someone on her team began giving her “happy pills” before red carpets.“They were to make me peppy during interviews,” she said.Later, she started abusing alcohol after moving to Tennessee to star in the hit series “Nashville” in 2012.“I was being told how to be and how to live by so many people in my life,” she told Women’s Health UK in 2023.“I wanted certain decisions to be my own, and nobody could stop me.

What I put in my body was like an act of defiance.”The actress, who battled postpartum depression, said that her drinking “ramped up” following the birth of her daughter, Kaya, in 2014.Shortly after, Panettiere was prescribed opioids after an “old neck injury flared up.” She said she quickly developed a dependency on the pain pills and that her “tolerance got so high so fast that it became a problem.”The actress first checked herself into rehab in 2015, saying she felt as if she was “drowning.”But she relapsed, saying that alcohol became a crutch that helped ease anxiety and the pressures of being in the public eye.“I [also] struggled with sleep deprivation,” she said.“Sleep is massive.

It affects your motor skills, your ability to think, and your overall health.”At her lowest point, she said, “...