Jessica Simpson Celebrates 6 Years of Sobriety By Looking Back at ‘Unrecognizable’ Photo of Herself

Jessica Simpson is celebrating a milestone in her sobriety journey. The 43-year-old star shared a photo of herself looking “unrecognizable” on the day she decided to quit drinking alcohol, marking her six year anniversary of getting sober. 

Posting the throwback image on her Instagram Story, Simpson simply wrote “6 years ago.” 

In the shot, Simpson wears a pink tracksuit as she sits on a small pouf on the floor. She’s surrounded by darkness save for a sliver of what appears to be sunlight on half her face. She gazes away from the camera with her hands clasped together. 

“This person in the early morning of Nov. 1, 2017 is an unrecognizable version of myself,” she posted in the image’s original caption, which was first shared in 2021. 

“I had so much self discovery to unlock and explore. I knew in this very moment I would allow myself to take back my light, show victory over my internal battle of self respect, and brave this world with piercing clarity,” she continued. “Personally, to do this I needed to stop drinking alcohol because it kept my mind and heart circling in the same direction and quite honestly I was exhausted. I wanted to feel the pain so I could carry it like a badge of honor. I wanted to live as a leader does and break cycles to advance forward – never looking back with regret and remorse over any choice I have made and would make for the rest of my time here within this beautiful world.” 

Simpson talked more about her decision to quit drinking in her memoir, Open Book, where she shared that a hazy Halloween in 2017 led her to quit for good.

“I’m very conscious in my mind even if I’m not speaking it. Like, ‘Ugh I cant believe you have to do this.’ I was disappointed in myself, but I would still pour the drink because I didn’t know how I could make it through,” Simpson told ET in Feb. 2020. “I didn’t know I could be strong enough without it, and really I’m way stronger without and I didn’t realize. I thought that that was gonna me help me through life. I didn’t know that it was keeping me from living my life.”

In a more recent interview with ET, Simpson shared in August that she was busy working on new music while shopping a docuseries to TV networks and streaming services. 

“That’s in the process. That’s very exciting,” she says, before teasing that her kids will “definitely a part of that” as viewers will get to “see some real life stuff with us.”

Simpson shares Maxwell, 11, Ace, 10, and Birdie, 4, with Eric Johnson, with whom she tied the knot in 2014.

In addition to the forthcoming docuseries, Simpson is also recording new music.

“It’s not necessarily country; it’s blues, it’s pop, it’s rock and roll, it’s grunge, it’s everything,” she teases of her new music. “I feel genre-less and I feel like I go across generations. I feel like it’s a generational type of record that I’ve been doing. I’ve been making tons of Spotify playlists. I know exactly what I wanna do.”