Lucy Hale Recalls Blacking Out Drinking for the First Time Around 12 Years Old

Lucy Hale is opening up and getting candid about her struggle with alcohol and addiction.

The 34-year-old actress recently sat down as a guest on the Call Her Daddy podcast, and opened up for the first time about her earliest recollections of drinking, and the issues it led to for her.

“The first time I ever had alcohol… I was probably 12, or 13? I was in Florida, on vacation… and we drank Green Apple Pucker,” Hale recalled. “I remember my very first experience with alcohol was the same as when it ended. I blacked out — at 12 years old. I don’t remember what happened, I threw up, I got very sick, and I remember being so distraught when I realized what had happened.”

“I was like, ‘Oh my god, my mom is going to be so disappointed in me,'” Hale explained.

She said that she continued to drink “here and there” between 12 and 18, but then she began to really start drinking hard — and it always led her down a dark road.

“I remember shame after every experience drinking, because my drinking was never normal,” Hale said. “Literally every time I drank… it was very clear I was drinking to escape something, even at a young age.”

Hale explained, “I didn’t realize I had a problem until my early 20s,” which is when she first realized how frequently she thought about drinking, and how she felt uncomfortable going out and not having alcohol. Thus, she decided to seek help.

“I went to rehab when I was 23,” Hale revealed. “I don’t think anyone on the show [Pretty Little Liars] knew. And it was my choice too.”

“That was a pivotal moment in my life,” she added. [But] I wasn’t ready to give up drinking, which is why I didn’t get sober until I was 32.”

Before she finally did get sober, Hale said she sought out a slew of different kinds of treatment, but none of them proved successful at first.

“I had tried so many different things: rehab, out-patient, in-patient, trauma center, therapy, medication, you name it,” she shared. “And there was also a very strong desire to want to stop.”

However, being a celebrity in the public eye in Los Angeles in her 20s, it was difficult to stop, especially since she’d seemed to cultivate a collection of friends with similar issues. Soon, the drinking proved to be something of a gateway to drugs and worse decisions, and she kept her inner struggle bottled up.

“There was no way in hell I was going to openly talk about this [back then],” Hale shared. “I was so deeply ashamed of myself and my choices and the person who I was when I drank.”

Now, however, Hale said she’s been clean and sober for two years — and credits her sobriety, at least in part, to having gotten COVID-19 during the pandemic, which forced her to stay in, law low, and avoid a lot of the social situations that would often lead to heavy drinking.

“Without having COVID, I might not have gotten sober — or committed to it,” Hale shared.

For more on Hale’s difficult struggle with sobriety, check out the video below.

RELATED CONTENT: