Maureen McCormick's Rocky Past Reopened With Latest TV Appearance

Maureen McCormick, best known to the world as Marcia Brady, is having her rocky past with addiction made public again with her current appearance on British reality television.

The 58-year-old is currently appearing on I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here, where her drug past has briefly come up in conversation with fellow castmates. McCormick has now been clean for decades, but opened up about her past cocaine and eating disorders struggles in the explosive 2008 tell-all, Here’s the Story: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice. She spiraled into cocaine addiction at the age of 18 and even admitted to trading sex for drugs.

“I sought refuge in seemingly glamorous cocaine dens above Hollywood. I thought I would find answers there, while in reality I was simply running farther from myself. From there, I spiraled downward on a path of self-destruction that cost me my career and very nearly my life,” she wrote. “If there was coke, I had to stay up and do every last flake even if it meant going without sleep for days. Nothing else mattered.”

McCormick’s drug addiction stemmed in part from learning that her grandmother had died from syphilis while in a mental institution and that her mother had contracted the disease in utero. The pressure of trying to be thin and beautiful eventually led to her developing a battle with bulimia.

But after attending rehab in the early ‘80s, she met her future husband Michael Cummings shortly after, who she credits with turning her life around. She also admits to taking medically prescribed antidepressants, which help tremendously in keeping her off former drugs of choice.

“I started taking antidepressants more than a decade ago, and that's when my whole world really changed,” she told Newsweek in 2008. “I started to feel like a normal person for the first time in my life. My husband will tell you that he thought the difference was night and day. At the risk of sounding like one of those TV ads, I can honestly say that antidepressants changed my life…for the first time in my life, I feel like it’s okay to be imperfect and it’s okay to tell my story.”

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