A maid found Whoopi Goldberg in hotel closet with coke covering her face: 'Cocaine started to kick my ass'

"I was letting something else run my life and take me over," the Oscar winner writes in her new book "Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother, and Me."

Whoopi Goldberg is recalling her cocaine addiction in the 1980s.

In her new book Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother, and Me, the Sister Act star details how her coke habit began and ended. Goldberg says Hollywood circles highly encouraged substance abuse during social gatherings. “Los Angeles and New York started to redefine what ‘recreational drug use’ meant in the ‘80s,” she writes. “I was invited to parties where I was greeted at the door with a bowl of Quaaludes from which I could pick what I wanted. Lines of cocaine were laid across tables and bathroom counters for the taking. Everybody knew the cops weren’t going to raid the Beverly Hills, Bel Air, or Hollywood Hills house of a big-time producer or actor, so the attitude was very relaxed. Everyone partook. You knew you were going to get high for a couple hours and then get laid before the night was over.”

“I thought I could handle the cocaine thing,” the Oscar winner continues. “It didn’t seem dangerous. Everybody seemed to have access to it, even on TV and movie sets. The cops were never going to raid a studio either.”

The View cohost goes on to explain how after about a year of having fun with cocaine, the drug started to become a major problem in her life. “I fell into the deep well of cocaine and sank to a new low,” she writes. “Cocaine started to kick my ass. I’d go to work and realize I was getting sloppy. I didn’t like it. I knew it wasn’t good. At one point, I hallucinated something was under my bed and I’d be attacked if I got up. So I didn’t move out of bed for 24 hours. That kind of s--- doesn’t end pretty. There’s only so long a person can hold their bladder.”

Goldberg’s ultimate wake-up call came at a New York hotel. “I had one of those slap-in-the-face moments that make you see pretty f---ing clearly that you’ve hit bottom,” she writes. “I was staying in a very upscale hotel in Manhattan for my birthday. Somebody had given me an ounce of cocaine. I was sitting on the closet floor, just putting it up my nose. All by myself. I didn’t hear the housekeeper knock or let herself in the room to clean it up.”

“She opened the closet door,” Goldberg continues. “I screamed. She screamed and backed up and looked like she was going to run. I had to get her quickly and try to calm down. She was staring at my face as I talked. Once she understood it was my room, she calmed down and left. I looked at myself in the mirror near the door and saw cocaine all over my face.”

Goldberg cites her mother and her daughter as her primary inspirations for getting clean. “I’d have been so embarrassed if my mother knew the extent the coke had me in its clutches,” she writes. “I was letting something else run my life and take me over. I didn’t need my mom to be disappointed or pissed at me — I was pissed enough at myself. Is this the version of yourself you’re okay showing your daughter? WTF are you doing? Get up, get out, and fix your life. You’ve been sitting in a closet for two days. It’s not good. Not good at all.”

The actress also said that she felt fortunate that she was able to kick coke fairly quickly. “I didn’t want my kid to think her mom was an addict,” she says. “I didn’t want my mom to think her daughter was an addict. So, I got myself as straight as an arrow — an arrow that gained twenty pounds in the next year. I thought, Okay, this is the exchange. This is what it’s going to look like. If you want to stay alive, you gotta be okay with this.”

Goldberg’s book Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother, and Me, which focuses on the actress’ relationship with her family, is now available from booksellers everywhere.

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