Jennie Garthhas detailed the painful experience of having nearly overdosed more than a decade ago.
"I started to remember the little bottles of liquor from the mini bar, how easy it was to drink one adorable bottle in two swigs before moving on to the next," TheBeverly Hills, 90210actress writes in her new book,I Choose Me: Chasing Joy, Finding Purpose & Embracing Reinvention. "I remembered the anxiety pills that my doctor had given me and how I thought swallowing a few of those would help take the edge off my desperate, broken heart."
She says that she was unaware she had called her best friend, Liz, and confessed to having had "dark thoughts."
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Garth's friend flew to Phoenix, where the actress had checked into a hotel.
"When she came to my room, I didn't answer," Garth writes. "She pounded on the door, called me relentlessly, until finally she had to ask the hotel for help. They opened the door, and Liz saw me unconscious on the floor. She called 911 and I was rushed in an ambulance to the hospital, where I had to get my stomach pumped. I was out of the woods. At least physically. "
Emotionally, Garth notes she had been reeling from a therapy appointment that she and her second husband —Twilightactor Peter Facinelli —had traveled to Arizona to attend. It had not gone well.
While Garth explained she believed they went to the session in an attempt to save their relationship, she quickly learned that wasn't what was happening.
The therapist "looked at me gently but without hesitation, and asked, 'Jennie, why do you want to be with someone who doesn't love you?' It was a statement that I will never unhear. The question stopped me cold."
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Garth writes that "it became clear to me why we were here. It wasn't to work on our relationship. He wasn't giving it one last try with the help of a new therapist. He had come here to end our marriage once and for all, in the presence of a third party. I hadn't fully understood what he had been saying for the last few months. I had been clinging to hope, or disbelief, or denial. But now, in no uncertain terms, it was over."
Garth and Facinelli married in 2001, and they split in 2012. The couple share three daughters: Luca, 28; Lola, 23; and Fiona, 19.
At the time of her near-overdose, Garth, who married actor Dave Abrams in 2015. said she felt "desperate."
"Our marriage was breaking down, had already broken down maybe, and this was my last-ditch effort to save us," she writes. "I suggested this appointment, and I was grateful that he agreed. It had been my last hope."
The realization that her second union would not survive — Garth was briefly married to Dan Clark in the '90s — hit her deeply.
Garth, who portrayed Kelly Taylor on90210for all 10 of its seasons, from 1990 to 2000, ultimately checked into rehab, and is now sober.
"Everything I thought I had built came crashing down that day," she writes. "The vision I'd clung to—the perfect little family I'd worked so hard to protect —shattered. While we had clearly been struggling, I hadn't let myself consider that he might really be finished. I needed to dull the edges of the sharp knives of pain. I needed to quiet the relentless noise in my mind. So I had a drink. And then another. We know where the night went from there."
Entertainment Weeklyhas reached out to reps for Facinelli.
I Choose Meis available in bookstores.
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