The actress Jaimie Alexander is opening up about how it took a near-death experience for her to come to terms with her alcoholism.
The 41-year-old Thor actress admitted in a Substack post published this week that it was only after she came down with appendicitis after an unpleasant trip with a new boyfriend that she realized her daily drinking was an addiction.
Alexander said the incident that set her on the course to sobriety occurred in 2018, which would have been in the midst of her five-season run on the popular crime drama Blindspot, which aired from 2015 to 2020.
According to the actress, she was in the midst of a ‘relatively new relationship with this cute guy’ when the two decided to leave New York City for a trip a couple hours upstate so that he could check out some properties.
But the trip didn’t go as planned, as a massive snowstorm swept the state, making impossible for them to drive back to the city.
Alexander and her new beau made the best of the situation by renting a cabin for a cozy night in amid the snow, with their only guest being her boyfriend’s cute three-legged dog.
The actress Jaimie Alexander, 41, revealed in a Substack post this week how she only realized she was struggling with alcoholism after almost dying from appendicitis in 2018; pictured November 12 in NYC
The actress shared this photo taken after she had surgery
But instead of being a romantic getaway, the extended trip turned into ‘absolute hell’ after the snowfall prevented the two from going out to stock up on supplies.
‘Sure, we had a few bottles of water and some snacks… but do you know what we didn’t have? ALCOHOL,’ Alexander wrote.
Alexander wrote that she started to ‘panic’ because she couldn’t find any booze in the rental property, and she hadn’t brought her flask with her.
‘Honestly, I had no clue how I was going to survive the night sober while pretending everything was fine in front of my new boyfriend,’ she wrote.
Her desperation was particularly awkward, as the new man she was seeing was totally sober.
The Kyle XY actress managed to make it through the night, though her boyfriend noticed that she seemed ‘frazzled.’
The weather had calmed down enough by the following evening that they were able to make the drive back to her apartment in Brooklyn, where all she could think about was ‘getting home and pouring bourbon down’ her throat.
But Alexander recounted feeling ‘dizzy in a way that felt dangerous’ once she got home late that night. She poured herself a tall glass of bourbon — neat — but then for some reason couldn’t bring herself to down it.
Alexander was drinking daily, but when she was snowed in on a trip upstate in New York with her new — sober — boyfriend, she panicked about not having any booze around; pictured on The Blindspot
‘I remember feeling like some kind of magnetic force was separating me from the bourbon,’ she explained.
The next day, Alexander woke feeling ‘shaky,’ and at work she started to feel ‘irritable and unsteady.’
Her workout that evening came to a halt because of her trainer’s concerns.
‘You don’t look so good,’ Alexander recalled her trainer saying. ‘You’re off balance, and you’re even more pale than usual.’
Before bed, she again tried to have a glass of whisky, only to stop herself for an unknown reason.
‘It felt like someone was physically pulling the glass out of my hands,’ Alexander wrote.
It became clear that something was wrong with her the following day, when she started to suffer from a stomach ache that simple antacids couldn’t resolve.
An on-set nurse offered to massage her stomach, but after hours of alternating that with Tums, Alexander wasn’t feeling any better.
They made it back to Brooklyn the next night, but Alexander found that for some reason she couldn’t drink, even though she wanted to; pictured in April 2024 in NYC
While filming The Blindspot that week, Alexander was overcome with intense stomach pain. A doctor on set wondered if it could be ruptured ovarian cysts, but a visit to her OB-GYN confirmed that she was suffering from appendicitis; pictured in NYC in July 2023
‘By lunchtime, I could barely stand,’ she wrote, adding that the pain had expanded from her the top of her abdomen to her lower right side.
Alexander wrote that she was alarmed enough to ask for a doctor to visit the set, and he asked if she had ovarian cysts, which could have possible ruptured.
After her pain got worse, to the point that she was ‘curled up in the fetal position’ on the floor of her trailer, Alexander had to be taken to her OB-GYN’s office, which was ‘when the contractions started.’
Alexander described it as the ‘worst pain’ she had ever experienced, despite having suffered a litany of injuries throughout her life.
The worsening symptoms cued in her doctor on what was going on, and he ordered her driver to take her to the hospital immediately instead of waiting for an ambulance to arrive.
‘Your appendix is rupturing. If they don’t remove it right away, I’ll come do it myself,’ she recalled him saying.
Tests at the hospital revealed her appendix had already ruptured, and she was beginning to suffer from sepsis, so doctors prepped her for surgery.
Alexander recalled thinking that she was ‘dying’ as she waited for someone to move her to the operating table.
The Thor star was rushed to the hospital for surgery. While waiting for the OR, a voice in her head asked her if she was ready to die
But at that moment, all the fear that had been building up evaporated and was replaced with a sense of ‘love.’
‘I was free,’ she recalled thinking.
Alexander remembered having a conversation with a voice in her head as she mused about whether she was ready to die.
But after she decided that she wanted to stick around on earth, the voice responded, ‘Then you can never drink again.’
Alexander wrote that sense of ‘pure clarity’ washed over her, and she finally realized the extent of her addiction to alcohol.
Alexander’s surgery went well, and she was released from the hospital five days later.
The illness that could have killed her instead became ‘exactly what I needed to become aware of how I was living and what I needed to do to change so that I could have a shot at reaching my full potential.’
Alexander noted that she turned to her boyfriend for help maintaining her newfound sobriety, and it was he who pushed her to go to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
Since that time seven years earlier, Alexander said she has been able to remain sober.
