JoJo Details Battles With Alcohol and Drug Addictions

How 5 Defendants, Including Matthew Perry's Assistant “Took Advantage” of the Actor’s Addiction

More than a decennary ago, Joanna "JoJo" Levesque began warring a backstage battle.

The singer, who roseate to fame arsenic a teen successful the aboriginal aughts with singles specified arsenic "Leave (Get Out)" and "Too Little Too Late," details successful her new memoir struggling with addictions to intoxicant and the medicine drugs Adderall, a stimulant, and the anti-anxiety medicine Xanax.

In 2023, arsenic she was finishing her book, she decided to be an AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) gathering with a friend.

"I was conscionable feeling similar I needed a consciousness of assemblage and home," JoJo, 33, told People successful comments published Sept. 17, the time her publication Over the Influence was released. "I felt acold distant from myself, and that has been a touchstone for maine since I was young."

The Aquamarine actress—who added she is not sober today, per the magazine—wrote successful her memoir that some of her parents had besides battled addiction and had really met successful AA. JoJo besides noted that 1 of her earliest puerility memories, from erstwhile she was a toddler, was of her accompanying her parent to an AA meeting.

JoJo's father, Joel Levesque, died astatine property 60 successful 2015. "I missed you adjacent portion you were here," she wrote successful a tribute to him astatine the time. "I volition miss you infinitely much present that you're gone. Thank you for holding connected arsenic agelong arsenic you did. I cognize you tried your best. You are escaped now. I volition emotion you always, Dad."

In November 2016, JoJo spoke astir her dad's death, which she said followed a cause overdose, and the opioid situation successful the United States successful a video titled "Why I Vote," released up of the statesmanlike election.

"I spot it destroying families. I spot the mode it's breached my ain family," she said. "I mislaid my begetter to addiction."

Joel and her ma Diana, who battled intoxicant addiction, divorced erstwhile JoJo was a child. Her ma became her manager aft she signed a grounds woody astatine property 12.

"I respect her for galore things—her sobriety, her committedness to wellness and her quality to instrumentality accountability. I emotion that astir her truthful much," the vocalist told People. "She's specified a beauteous person."