Gypsy Rose Claims She Was Addicted To Vicodin For Years

Gypsy Rose Blanchard has revealed that she struggled with pill addiction for years, both under the care of her mother and while in prison.

As you know, Gypsy Rose suffered years of abuse at the hands of her mother, Dee Dee, who claimed her daughter had various illnesses and disorders, convincing doctors to prescribe her medication.

Some of the medical diagnoses Dee Dee claimed Gypsy had been given include asthma, cancer, down syndrome, epilepsy, and others. Gypsy Rose also underwent multiple surgeries, including gastrointestinal operations, eye procedures, and the removal of her salivary glands -- all of which Gypsy reportedly never needed.

Previously, Gypsy described how her doctor's visits with her mom would typically go, stating, "I always had this stuffed animal or a Barbie doll, [and Dee Dee would] just tell me [to] ‘play with your Barbie doll and when the doctor comes to examine me, just stay in the wheelchair; be calm; play with your doll, and don’t move your legs’.”

While seeing various doctors, Dee Dee was able to manipulate the medical professionals and have them prescribe various medications.

“I was just as much in the dark as much as everyone else,” Gypsy continued, adding, “[The] only thing I knew is that I could walk. As for everything else, the leukemia the epilepsy, I was taking medication that [Dee Dee] said was cancer medicine.”

In addition to the medications Dee Dee claimed were for cancer, she also had doctors prescribe Gypsy pain medications, such as Vicodin, that Gypsy took following those unnecessary surgeries.

“Nobody knows that I even had an addiction before prison, let alone in prison,” Gypsy revealed in her Lifetime docuseries, 'The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard'.

One of the medications Gypsy was prescribed for pain following one of her surgeries was Vicodin, which has a high risk for addiction and dependence.

“The doctors had prescribed me pain medication after the surgery,” she says in the docuseries. “But when the pain medication ran out, I was still in pain and my mother had a prescription for Vicodin."

She continued, "And so when she wasn’t looking, I would just go and take one or two from her bottle. I didn’t know what addiction really was. I just knew that it was a craving that was all I could think about. I wanted another one.”

It is unclear of the dosage of the Vicodin prescribed to Gypsy Rose.

As her tolerance built up, Gypsy says she continued to take more and more pills -- and that addiction followed her after her mother's murder and into prison.

“In the first couple years of my incarceration, I coped using drugs,” she said in her docuseries. “I think I first started to learn that drugs were available in prison when I started seeing other women get high. I tried Suboxone and it gave me the same high as taking pain pills. Instantly, I was brought back to the addiction that I had to pain pills back when I was living with my mother.”

Gypsy Rose Blanchard says she is now sober.