Robin Williams Checks Into Rehab For Continued Sobriety
The Huffington Post | By Cavan Sieczkowski


Posted: 07/01/2014 1:40 pm EDT Updated: 07/02/2014 1:59 pm EDT

Robin Williams has checked into rehab for continued sobriety, The Huffington Post confirms.

"After working back-to-back projects, Robin is simply taking the opportunity to fine-tune and focus on his continued commitment, of which he remains extremely proud," his representative told HuffPost on July 1.

The 62-year-old actor is currently at Hazelden Addiction Treatment Center in Minnesota in a program aimed at maintaining long-term sobriety, TMZ first reported. He will remain there for several weeks.

Williams has struggled with substance abuse since the 1980s. He previously admitted to cocaine and alcohol addiction and entered rehab in 2006 for alcoholism after 20 years of sobriety. He later told ABC's Diane Sawyer that his falling off the wagon was "very gradual."

"It's [addiction] -- not caused by anything, it's just there," he said in a 2006 interview. "It waits. It lays in wait for the time when you think, 'It's fine now, I'm OK.' Then, the next thing you know, it's not OK. Then you realize, 'Where am I? I didn't realize I was in Cleveland.'"

He admitted he once thought he could handle addiction on his own.

"But you can't. That's the bottom line," he said. "You really think you can, then you realize, I need help, and that's the word ... It's hard admitting it, then once you've done that, it's real easy."

FOR MOST normal folks, drinking means conviviality, companionship and colorful imagination. It means release from care, boredom and worry. It is joyous intimacy with friends and a feeling that life is good. But not so with us in those last days of heavy drinking. The old pleasures were gone. They were but memories. Never could we recapture the great moments of the past. There was an insistent yearning to enjoy life as we once did and a heartbreaking obsession that some new miracle of control would enable us to do it. There was always one more attempt--and one more failure.

The less people tolerated us, the more we withdrew from society, from life itself. As we became subjects of King Alcohol, shivering denizens of his mad realm, the chilling vapor that is loneliness settled down. It thickened, ever becoming blacker. Some of us sought out sordid places, hoping to find understanding companionship and approval. Momentarily we did-then would come oblivion and the awful awakening to face the hideous Four Horsemen--Terror, Bewilderment, Frustration, Despair. Unhappy drinkers who read this page will understand!

Now and then a serious drinker, being dry at the moment says, "I don’t miss it at all. Feel better. Work better. Having a better time." As ex-problem drinkers, we smile at such a sally. We know our friend is like a boy whistling in the dark to keep up his spirits. He fools himself. Inwardly he would give anything to take half a dozen drinks and get away with them. He will presently try the old game again, for he isn't happy about his sobriety. He cannot picture life without alcohol. Some day he will be unable to imagine life either with alcohol or without it. Then he will know loneliness such as few do. He will be at the jumping-off place. He will wish for the end.