Tatum O’Neal reveals 3-year recovery from drug overdose and stroke: ‘I almost died’

Long after Tatum O’Neal first become famous in 1974 for winning an Academy Award at age 10, she made headlines due to her epic struggles with drug addiction and her stormy relationships with her movie star father, Ryan O’Neal, and her tennis legend ex-husband, John McEnroe.

Now 59, Tatum O’Neal is making headlines for another epic challenge in her life. She revealed to People magazine that she’s spent the last three years recovering from a stroke and six weeks in a coma — both the result of a drug overdose that occurred in May 2020, when she was using and abusing a combination of prescription pain medications and opioids.

“I almost died,” O’Neal told People in an interview published Monday. Her son, Kevin McEnroe, the oldest of her three children with John McEnroe, said his mother’s overdose led to cardiac arrest and seizures and damage to her brain’s right frontal cortex.

“There were times we didn’t think she was going to survive,” Kevin McEnroe said. Even if she survived, he said, there was concern that she had been left permanently blind and deaf and might never speak again.

For the past three years, O’Neal has been in various rehabilitation facilities trying to regain her strength, her memory and her ability to read and write, as she and her family told People. She and her children say that her recovery from her stroke and from addiction has been remarkable. “I’ve been through a lot,” O’Neal said.

O’Neal probably isn’t just referring to the past three years, but to a troubled life that’s been mostly played out in public. After winning the supporting actress Oscar for co-starring with her father in the hit 1973 comedy, “Paper Moon,” O’Neal enjoyed a stint as a precocious child star. But like many child stars, she encountered difficulty as she tried to transition into adult roles.

O’Neal also grew up with little in the way of nurturing parental support, as she reveals in her 2004 memoir, “A Paper Life,” and her 2011 follow-up, “Found: A Daughter’s Journey Home,” the Los Angeles Times reported in 2018.

After her actor parents, Ryan O’Neal and Joanna Moore, divorced in 1967 when she was 4 years old, she and her brother Griffin went to live with their father.

But Griffin O’Neal said they had to deal with the “Love Story” star’s volatile temper and alleged drug abuse, according to Vanity Fair. Griffin O’Neal famously claimed that their father gave him cocaine to try when he was 11, while O’Neal said she suffered physical and emotional abuse as a result of her father’s drug abuse, Vanity Fair also reported. In “A Paper Life,” O’Neal alleged that her father seduced her friend Melanie Griffith; that she had been sexually molested by one of his friends; and that Griffith had taken her to an orgy after they had smoked opium. While Ryan O’Neal denied many of his daughter’s claims, the two eventually reconciled after the 2009 death of his long-time partner, Farrah Fawcett.

O’Neal’s marriage to McEnroe also was volatile. Her romance with the tennis star began in 1984, and they married in 1986. Together, they had three children, Kevin, Sean and Emily. Following their separation in 1992, O’Neal’s drug problems re-emerged and she developed a heroin addiction, prompting McEnroe to successfully sue for full custody.

O’Neal eventually sobered up and got her children back, the Los Angeles Times reported. O’Neal told People that she’s spent much of her life “trying to get sober.”

O’Neal relapsed in 2008, and she was arrested for buying crack cocaine near her New York City apartment building. The arrest prompted her to go back into recovery.  As of 2018, she was sober, she told the Los Angeles Times.

O’Neal’s most recent relapse occurred in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, she and her children told People. She began abusing prescription pain medication, some of which were prescribed for her back and neck pain and rheumatoid arthritis.

“She had become very isolated,” Kevin McEnroe said. “With the addition of morphine and heavier pharmaceuticals, it was getting scary. COVID, chronic pain, all these things led to a place of isolation. In that place, I don’t think, for her, there was much hope.”

In May 2020, she overdosed on a combination of pain medication, opiates and morphine, People reported. A friend found her in her Century City apartment, and she was rushed to the hospital.

O’Neal spent six weeks in a coma. “At times, it was touch and go,” Kevin McEnroe said. “I had to call my brother and sister and say she was thought to be blind, deaf and potentially might never speak again.”

When O’Neal came out of the coma, she was diagnosed with aphasia, a disorder that results from damage to the part of the brain that is responsible for language. “She didn’t know where she was,” Kevin McEnroe said. “She couldn’t say, ‘I’m scared.’”

Since then, O’Neal has remained under medical supervision and has undergone therapy to regain her memory and her speech. Her vocabulary continues to improve, but she and her son, Kevin McEnroe, said she still has a ways to go.

O’Neal continues to work on her recovery from drug addiction, with Kevin McEnroe saying that he sees his mother wanting to live and to stay sober. “I think it’s a miracle. I think it’s beautiful. I’ve never been more proud to be her son. She’s full of love and full of heart.”

“Every day I am trying,” Tatum O’Neal told People. “I want to be with my beautiful three kids.”