Jessica Simpson Celebrates Six Years of Sobriety With Jarring Throwback Photo

Jessica Simpson marked six years of sobriety this week, and as she looks forward to the new life she’s created for herself, she took a moment to look back, too. 

On her Instagram Stories Thursday, Simpson shared her own post from 2021 which marked her fourth anniversary of getting sober. The post features a photo of Simpson sitting alone on November 1, 2017, with a caption where Simpson says she sees “an unrecognizable version of myself.”

“I knew in this very moment I would allow myself to take back my light, show victory over my internal battle of self respect, and brave this world with piercing clarity,” she captioned the photo. "Personally, to do this I needed to stop drinking alcohol because it kept my mind and heart circling in the same direction and quite honestly I was exhausted. I wanted to feel the pain so I could carry it like a badge of honor.”

She addressed the stigma around the word “alcoholic” and wrote, “The drinking wasn’t the issue. I was. I didn’t love myself. I didn’t respect my own power. Today I do.”

She shared another photo to her Instagram on Thursday, possibly referencing the milestone in her caption. She poses with her daughter Maxi, writing, "Choose to be kind today because you never know how much someone might need it."

In her 2020 memoir, Open Book, Simpson was candid about her struggles with alcohol and pills, recalling her infamous “glitter cup” that she kept filled with booze.

In the book, she writes about making the decision to get sober. She’d had drinks at a Halloween party, and didn’t feel up to helping her kids get into their costumes, so she hid.

“I was terrified of letting them see me in that shape,” Simpson wrote in the memoir. “I am ashamed to say that I don't know who got them into their costumes that night.”

She took an Ambien, then slept in the next morning to avoid facing them. She drank again. Then, friends came over and Simpson faced her journey.

“I need to stop,” she writes that she recalled saying. “Something's got to stop. And if it's alcohol that's doing this and making things worse, then I quit.”

Simpson burst onto the pop scene with her first single, “I Wanna Love You Forever,” in 1999. Since then, she has sang and acted, participating in both reality TV and movies like The Dukes of Hazzard. She’s been a subject of paparazzi fascination, and recently shared that even now, she gets comments about her weight, and says that people still question her sobriety.

In a post celebrating the five-year mark last year, she wrote, “As much as I have learned to block out destructive noise…peoples’ comments and judgments can still hurt deeply with their incessant nagging ‘you will never be good enough.’”

“The most important thing I have learned through the last 5yrs without alcohol being a guard for escapism, is that I CAN and ALWAYS WILL get through it. I am capable of pretty much anything I care enough about to put my mind to.”