"Final wake-up call"

Rob Lowe got sober after family emergency

Rob Lowe spoke to People magazine about his alcohol addiction and how he finally got sober after a family emergency.(Bild: APA/Getty Images via AFP/GETTY IMAGES/Roy Rochlin)

According to Rob Lowe, he finally faced up to his alcohol addiction over 30 years ago after abandoning his family. 

"I remember it like it was yesterday," the 60-year-old told the US magazine "People". After his grandfather suffered a heart attack, his mother begged him to talk to her on the answering machine.

"The final wake-up call"
"I couldn't deal with it in the state I was in and had to go to sleep," Lowe reported. He also immediately reached for a bottle of tequila. "That was the final wake-up call. I've been sober ever since."

According to "People", Lowe went to a rehab clinic in 1990. Before that, other experiences over the years gradually led him to take this step, Lowe explains.

Sex video leaked
A "first glimmer of a conscience" for him was the comedy "Shampoo" with Warren Beatty. "It's a great movie, but in the end he's a bon vivant, a charming playboy who ends up with nothing."

Even when video footage was leaked at the end of the 80s showing Lowe having sex with two young women, he re-evaluated his life, he explains. "But the thing that really changed me was that I wasn't able to be there for my family and myself."