Sharna Burgess’ experimentation with drugs as a teen led her down a destructive path.
The “Dancing With the Stars” alum reflected on her troubling past during Monday’s episode of her “Old-ish” podcast, which she co-hosts with her new fiancé, Brian Austin Green, and Randy Spelling.
Burgess, 38, said she began dabbling in drugs when she was just 15.
“We were sitting at the backyard of someone’s house, and a crack pipe was being passed around with meth in it, and we were all taking hits of it,” she recalled.
Burgess, who was 17 at the time, said meth was fairly “new” to her, so she wasn’t smoking it “every day. Therefore, she didn’t consider herself to be “hooked” on it.
However, the professional dancer and choreographer noted that she “was partying pretty much three to four days a week” at the time.
She remembered taking a second to look around that backyard before experiencing a moment of “clarity” of what her “future looked like.”
“Here I was, 17 years old, high awake for three days, watching 20-somethings and maybe even young 30-somethings passing around this crack pipe just waiting to get a little bit more out of it,” she explained.
“I realized that I had come from being an Australian champion ballroom dancer, I represented my country at the World Championships, I was an athlete, the best in the country at the time. And because of a knee injury, I fell off.”
Burgess “realized how far [she’d fallen] and how much [she] needed to get back to that person” as she thought to herself, “This was not what I was meant for.”
She had struggled with substance abuse for many years.
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The mother of one told Green, 50, that she experienced other “scary moments” in her life, going on to detail the time she was dehydrated at a rave and “had taken too many things” that she “started frothing and foaming at the mouth.”
She noted that “you sober up very quickly when you’re in fear of your life like that.”
However, that “still wasn’t enough for [her] to stop,” as she acknowledged that her home life and relationship with her father were a few “triggers that sent [her] back into it.”
“I was very, very uncomfortable in my reality, so I would escape to this place of euphoria,” she shared.
“And eventually, the things I would take to get to that place of euphoria weren’t strong enough or enough, and I do more and have more and more often. And that was the slippery slope for me.”
Ultimately, Burgess credits dance with giving her “the strength” to clean up her act.
The blonde beauty and Green — who share 1-year-old son Zane — got engaged during the “Beverly Hills, 90210” alum’s surprise birthday party in July.
They didn’t announce their happy news until last week.
If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s National Helpline at 800-662-4357.