‘EMPIRE’ CREATOR LEE DANIELS OPENS UP ABOUT HIS SOBRIETY: ‘I HATE F**KING BEING SOBER’


“I’m angsty, and I’m sober, so that is really weird to be going to the Met Ball and to other social activities not intoxicated,” Daniels said. “I hate f**king being sober. It’s a bore. It’s a f**king snooze.”

Daniels, 59, admitted he got into drugs and alcohol to deal with his dad’s unwillingness to accept him as a gay man.
Lee Daniels: I hate f–king being sober

The start of the AIDS epidemic only furthered Daniels’ addictions, as he turned to drugs and alcohol to help numb the pain of all the people he had lost.

“And then all your friends start dying of AIDS. Not one, not two, not three, I’m talking intimate friends that you’ve had sex with, you’ve had dreams with, hopes with, people that are better souls than you, gone,” he explained. “And you can’t figure out, ‘Why the f–k am I still here?’ So then it was like me on drugs and drinking, not even knowing I was an addict but just erasing all the pain.”