Sharna Burgess Revisits Her Intense Meth Addiction Phase as a Teenager
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For Sharna Burgess, dancing isn’t plainly passion. It’s the sport that helped her bounce back from a dark phase of her life. The Dancing With The Stars fan-favorite recently looked back at when she suffered from drug addiction and told how dancing directed her to the right path.
Sharna Burgess Reflects on the “Slippery Slope” of Smoking Meth
During the September 25 episode of her iHeartPodcast Old-ish, Burgess shared how she perilously endured the effects of meth addiction. Speaking to her co-hosts, fiancé Brian Austin Green and Randy Spelling, the Australian dancer revealed she had been using drugs since she was 15 years old.
“I was very, very uncomfortable in my reality, so I would escape to this place of euphoria,” she said. “Eventually the things I would take to get to that place of euphoria weren’t strong enough or enough and I do more and have more and more often. And that was the slippery slope for me.”
At one point, Burgess recalled having a sobering moment during a rave. According to the professional choreographer, she had to be treated by paramedics at the time.
“There was a moment at a rave when I was incredibly dehydrated and had taken too many things and started… frothing and foaming at the mouth a little bit because I was so dehydrated,” she said.
Despite the dangerous experience, Burgess stated that she has continued to seek comfort in drugs. As a teenager, her life at home and other several triggers led her to decide that way.
She Had a Moment of Clarity, Went Back to Dancing
Fortunately, after spending time with “20-somethings and maybe even young 30-somethings” passing around a crack pipe, “moment of clarity” hit her. Awake for three days, sitting in the backyard of someone’s house, Burgess realized she needed to change her life.
“I realized that I had come from being an Australian champion ballroom dancer, I represented my country at the World Championships,” she explained. “I was an athlete, the best in the country at the time. And because of a knee injury, I fell off…” she said. “But I realized how far I’d (fallen) and how much I needed to get back to that person, that this was not what I was meant for.”
Recalling the moment, Burgess stated that she was given the “blessing of a moment” to see her situation clearly. As she “understood” her position, she knew she needed “dance back in my life.”
Since then, she decided to escape from the drug scene and move to Melbourne. There, she began to dance again.
“I lost my way of working through things even though I didn’t know that at the time,” she explained. “I think the strength (to stop doing drugs) came from realizing I needed to get back into that (dancing).”
Ever since that dark phase, Burgess was able to recuperate. She participated on DWTS season 13 as a troupe member, then became a regular pro in season 16. In 2018, she was partnered with Bobby Bones, and they won season 27 of the series together.
