Kristen Bell speaks out about making a ‘stronger plan’ after Dax Shepard’s relapse

Kristen Bell is continuing to support her husband Dax Shepard following his recent admission that he relapsed after 16 years of sobriety. Bell appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show (weekdays at 3pET/PT on CTV) on October 14 and praised her husband for his continued commitment to growing, evolving, and most importantly, to his sobriety."He is actually doing really great,” Bell told DeGeneres when asked about Shepard. “Everybody is up against their own demons. Sometimes it's anxiety and depression. Sometimes it's substance abuse." On September 25, Shepard released an episode of his Armchair Expert podcast with cohost Monica Padman. In the 47-minute episode, Shepard chronicled his recent relapse following an ATV accident earlier this year and a second motorcycle accident in August that left him with a shattered shoulder, a broken pinky finger and four broken ribs.“The thing I love most about Dax is that he was able to tell me and tell us and say, 'We need a different plan,'" Kristen said. "We have a plan. If he has to take medication for any reason, I have to administer it. But he was like, 'We need a stronger plan.’”Bell says her husband has recognized that he "needs to do some sort of emotional work to figure out why I wanted to use again," but added she’s confident in his abilities to put in the effort necessary to maintain his sobriety. "He's also addicted to evolving," she elaborated. "He was like, 'I don't want to risk this family and I did, so let's put new things in place to make sure it doesn't happen again.’"Bell noted she and Shepard, who in the past have publicly talked about couples counseling, will once again see a therapist together. "I will continue to stand by him because he's very, very worth it," she asserted.

 

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Dad is safe and sound and recovering at home in his @lazboy (which he convinced me belongs back in the center of the room). Thank you for all the week wishes and to the wonderful doctors and nurses who helped our family! EDIT: for those asking, he was in an accident last friday and shattered his shoulder, broke his pinky and 4 ribs.

A post shared by kristen bell (@kristenanniebell) on Aug 21, 2020 at 3:21pm PDT

In his emotionally raw and revealing podcast episode, Shepard said that his first relapse was in 2012 following a motorcycle accident, which happened around the same time his father was dying. Shepard said that he was taking Vicodin for the pain, which Bell was administering, but flew to visit his father without any medication. It was then that Shepard took some of his father’s Percocet and doubled his dosage. Feeling guilty, Shepard talked to Bell about his slip and the pair agreed he needed to attend an AA meeting, but should not lose his eight years of sobriety for using while under an extreme amount of physical and emotional pain."That was eight years ago," said Shepard on AE. "I've now had this experience where I did that, I felt bad, but there wasn't any fallout from it. It was like, I felt bad, I said I felt bad, and then I did just move on and it was fine."[video_embed id='1990896']RELATED: Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard open up about how quarantine has affected their relationship [/video_embed]Things were not so easy to move past this time around. Recorded on September 21, seven days into Shepard’s new sobriety count, the comedian and actor revealed to listeners that he had begun abusing prescription pain medication following his first accident earlier this year, which resulted in a broken hand. Describing his actions as "shadier and shadier," Shepard said he knew things had gotten bad when he ran out of the medication that had been prescribed to him and began buying it.“For the last eight weeks maybe, I don't really know, I'm on them all day. I'm allowed to be on them at some dosage because I have a prescription. And then I'm also augmenting that. And then all the prescriptions run out and I'm now just taking 30 ml Oxys that I've bought whenever I decide I can do it," he said. It wasn’t until Padman confronted Shepard that he finally decided to come clean to his cohost and close friend as well as his wife about his relapse. Shepard admitted he was using when he celebrated his 16 years of sobriety in September, telling his listeners that having his friends in AA give him a cake was “the worst hour of my life.” Shepard went back to a meeting the next day and confessed to his friends and fellow addicts about what had really been going on."It turned into the most incredible, like, 90 minutes I've ever experienced, where there was just so much love and so much understanding and kindness and unconditional love," he said. "There's probably been many others, but it's the only experience I can remember having that was just grace, the definition of grace.”Watch The Ellen DeGeneres Show weekdays at 3pET/PT on CTV.[video_embed id='-1']BEFORE YOU GO: Cutest puppy birthday parade you will see today [/video_embed]