NEW YORK — Tatum O’Neal told a newspaper columnist she is grateful to the New York City police officers who busted her for cocaine and saved her from herself.
“I’m still sober!” the 44-year-old actress told New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser in a phone call shortly after being released from custody Monday.
“Just when I was about to change that and wreck my life, the cops came and saved me! I was saved by the bell, by the guys in the Seventh Precinct.”
She was arrested Sunday night during a routine drug sweep in her Lower East Side neighborhood. Police said they found two bags of cocaine in her pants pocket.
O’Neal, the daughter of Ryan O’Neal, has publicly chronicled her struggles with heroin and cocaine addiction.
She said she has been sober in recent months, going to 12-step recovery meetings every day.
She told Peyser she had sought out drugs Sunday evening because she was sad about the death of her 16-year-old Scottish terrier — but didn’t take the drugs. She said she still hoped to celebrate a year of sobriety July 10.
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