Dax Shepard Reluctantly Credits Bradley Cooper for Convincing Him to Admit Relapse

The actor and Armchair Expert podcaster said that he was considering whether or not to come clean with his audience when Cooper dropped a kernel of wisdom on him that "was kind of the tipping point."

The conversation went down over burger and fries, as Shepard relayed the unexpectedly impactful moment to Jesse Tyler Ferguson on the Modern Family alum's latest Dinner's on Me podcast. At the time, Shepard said he was leaning on keeping his relapse a secret.

In particular, Shepard said that he told Cooper he was concerned about what kind of impact going public would have on wife Kristen Bell, who was doing the promotional circuit for her latest project.

"Kristen's out in the world, doing tons of interviews. I don't want her to have to f--king spend half of every interview, 'What's it like being married to an addict?'" he explained. "Like, it just doesn't feel fair to her."

He also conceded that he was afraid about admitting his relapse, too, which may have been the bigger concern. After all he'd been sober for years at that point and talked openly about it on his popular podcast. He worried that the good he was doing as a recovering addict might be undone.

"I don't want to admit to it," he recalled saying. "Just, to be honest, I'm so afraid of losing that thing that people liked about me, and that I might be helping people."

At the same time, he struggled with the idea that lying about it would have "felt so dishonest," even as he really didn't want to do it. But, "the bond and the agreement you have with the audience would have just felt like a huge violation of all these people who had been listening for years and maybe looking to me as a role model."

But it was at this moment that Cooper offered him a different perspective. "He said, 'Well, let me tell you this. There's nothing helpful about a guy that's 16 years sober and married to Kristen Bell and is rich,'" said Shepard. "'What's helpful to somebody is someone who just ate s--t and gets back up.'"

For Shepard, that was enough for him to reevaluate all of his reasons and excuses for not being truthful about it. "So, if I'm sincere about what I like about it is that I'm being helpful, then I really have only a single option," he said he realized.

As such, Shepard had no choice but to give it up for Cooper. "F--k it, I'll give him credit," he said. "He earned it."

"And he's sexy, too," Shepard added. "It'd be easier if he wasn't so sexy."

As noted by Entertainment Tonight, Shepard alluded to Cooper when he first acknowledged his relapse on his own podcast, back on September 25, 2020.

Just seven days sober at the time, Shepard mentioned a "close friend" who laid it out plainly for him, telling him that his "arrogance" was getting in the way of his promised transparency, and that he "needed to be honest with everyone."

In fact, Shepard had even been lying to his co-host Monica Padman about his relapse into overusing prescription medications, which came as a result of pain from surgeries following a motorcycle accident.