Healthy Skepticism Library item: 732

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Publication type: news

Opera Singer Talks About Addiction
jointogether.org 2005 Jan 5

Full text:

Free from her addiction to painkillers and tranquilizers for eight and a half years, opera singer Andrea Gruber, 39, is coming forward to talk about her addiction and her road to recovery, the New York Times reported Jan. 3.

Gruber recounted the evenings when she was so stoned on Percocet that she had no recollection of singing. “Try being a functioning junkie at the Metropolitan Opera,” said Gruber. “I felt like such a fraud.”

Once, Gruber lied about a flood damaging her medication so she could get a prescription refilled and twice elected to have sinus surgery so she could get more painkillers.

Gruber, once banished from the Metropolitan Opera, has returned this month in the title role of “Turandot.” Along with the performance, Gruber is talking openly about her addiction with the hope of helping other people addicted to alcohol and other drugs.

She discussed her painkiller addiction for the first time in the United States in an article in the current edition of Opera News, which is published by the Metropolitan Opera Guild.

“I believe it’s important for people to know that there are people in all walks of life who come from hell and fight their way out,” she said.

According to Gruber, she began smoking marijuana at age 11. She took acid and heroin as a teen and used cocaine while attending the Manhattan School of Music.

“The only constants in my life were trouble and drugs and music,” Gruber said.

Although she entered a treatment facility, Gruber said she became addicted to painkillers when she was given a prescription for Percocet for a root canal. For a decade, she would take dozens of painkillers and tranquilizers.

Gruber considers herself fortunate that the drugs hadn’t damaged her voice. She would push her voice to compensate for her swollen vocal cords, which were numbed by the drugs.

“Somehow I managed to function well enough not to get fired while I was singing,” Gruber said. “I was just not rehired.”

After a third stay at a rehabilitation facility, Gruber is sober and says she is happy to have been given a second chance with her opera career.