Erik Madigan Heck for Men’s Health(NEW YORK) — (NOTE LANGUAGE) Ahead of the release of his new memoir, No Time Like The Future, Michael J. Fox opened up to Men’s Health about his struggles with fame, sobriety, and the disease for which he’s become a tireless advocate: Parkinson’s.
The piece details his life and career, as well as his recovery from spinal surgery and a fall at his home that left his arm shattered, and the Back to the Future star incapacitated and alone.
‘”I found myself sitting on that floor going, ‘This is fu**ed-up,” the normally upbeat actor admitted. “I can’t put a happy face on this.’
Fox’s early twenties brought him superstardom from the hit sitcom Family Ties, which led to the 1985 blockbuster Back to the Future — and all the excesses such “famedom” can bring.
“I was a semi-popular kid growing up,” Fox says, “But then when everybody likes you? And every girl? …It was so alien to what I grew up with, I didn’t have any defense mechanisms.'”
At 29 years old, in 1991, Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson’. He admits to drinking heavily then, “…and it was screwing up my relationships and screwing up my marriage and screwing up my work.”
With the love and support of his wife of more than 30 years, Tracy Pollan, Fox found sobriety. “The tools that worked for quitting drinking work even better for [Parkinson’s], which are: acceptance and surrender. Not like, ‘I give up, ‘I quit,’ but you just say, ‘Okay, I cede you the big points.'”
Fox comments, “There’s the stuff you plan — the stuff you work towards…And then there’s things that just happen. And the things that just happen are usually of a more intricate design and a higher purpose than whatever you come up with.”
By Stephen Iervolino
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