Tatum O’Neal Says Dog’s Death “Set Me Off”
![](http://www.celebritique.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/tatum-oneil-is-arrested1.jpg "Tatum O\'Neal Says Dog\'s Death \\"Set Me Off\\"")
The former child star and recovering drug addict Tatum O’Neal says the death of her 16-year-old Scottish terrier almost caused her to relapse.
Almost? I would consider getting busted with crack and cocaine a relapse no matter how you look at it.
“There’s no excuse for what I did,” the 44-year-old actress told the New York Post on Monday, the day of her arraignment.
While in a funk, Tatum said she had met Alan Garcia, the drug dealer busted for selling her the drugs.
“One day, I’m walking aimlessly,” O’Neal said. “I found myself doing the wrong thing.”
O’Neal — who detailed her struggles with addiction in her 2004 memoir, A Paper Life, and completed rehab in 1996 — thanked police for preventing her from relapsing.
“I’m still sober!” she insisted. “Just when I was about to change that and wreck my life, the cops came and saved me!
“I’m eternally grateful, as sort of grim as the situation was, that I didn’t get to do what my disease was telling me to do,” she went on. “I’m still going to get my year on July 10!”
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