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Jada Pinkett's mother previously opened up about her heroin addiction on an episode of "Red Table Talk"
Adrienne Banfield-Norris took to Instagram on Wednesday December 22 to mark the anniversary of the day she decided to get sober after struggling with a heroin addiction 31 years ago.
In a video the 68-year-old opened up about her clean living and how she took her sobriety "day by day."
"So I'm outside and I just wanted to take a few minutes to be peaceful and still," she stated. "Today is my anniversary, my clean date. 31 years."
The co-host then quoted the Narcotics Anonymous mantra of "one day at a time" before referencing the program’s basic text, "When at the end of the road we find that we can no longer function as a human being, either with or without drugs, we all face the same dilemma. Either go on as best we can to the bitterends — jails, institutions or death — or find a new way to live."
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Adrienne then took the time to explain to fans and followers what that passage had meant to her in terms of grappling with her addiction.
"That passage couldn't be more appropriate on a day like today because for me, that passage is about surrender," she elaborated on the text. "I spent so many years in that insanity of active addiction, running in and out, and just that revolving door — you know, trying to get my life back together."
"That surrender was a struggle, but it was the surrender that was the beginning of the change in my life," she continued.
Back in 2018, Banfield-Norris previously opened up about her heroin addiction on an episode of "Red Table Talk" where she described the struggles of her condition and her decision to get clean with co-hosts and daughter and granddaughter, Jada Pinkett Smith and Willow Smith.
When she revealed that she had been abusing drugs for "over 20 years", Jada admitted that she had realized her mother's relationship with drugs when she was a teenager.
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View Story"I think I didn't find out my mother was addicted to heroin until I was in my teens," Smith said at the time.
She added that she could "tell when my mother was high" when she couldn't remember to pick her up from school or was "falling asleep in the middle of something."
Although Adrienne admitted that she had decided to get clean after she developed a desire to pursue a relationship with a man who wanted her sober, she eventually reached a point where she wanted a drug free lifestyle for no one other than herself. Banfield-Norris also revealed that she had learned to lean heavily on spirituality as it began to play a huge role in her clean lifestyle.
​​"I had to come to the understanding that there was a power," she concluded. "That God had been looking out for us, you and me both, through all of that. And I just had to let go and surrender so I could receive what he was trying to give to me, through other people."
