Book review: Guts by Kristen Johnston

KRISTEN Johnston is best known as the brash, tough-talking alien in TV show 3rd Rock From the Sun, but that character's toughness has nothing on Johnston.

KRISTEN Johnston is best known as the brash, tough-talking alien in TV show 3rd Rock From the Sun, but that character's toughness has nothing on Johnston, who discusses her lonely childhood, rise as an actress and battles with addiction in a candid new memoir.

In Guts: The Endless Follies and Tiny Triumphs of a Giant Disaster, Johnston reveals that she grew up mortified by her height (she was almost 182cm tall by the time she was 12), which made her feel like a "freak", spent years in denial about an escalating addiction to booze and pills, and finally survived a near-fatal eruption of her intestines.

Serious stuff, but Johnston, now sober, recounts it all with brassy, almost defiant, humour, poking fun at herself while at the same time revealing how she used drugs and alcohol to mask how raw and painfully alone she felt.

While she admits that an actress with addiction problems is about as unique as a "manila envelope", part of what sets Johnston apart, besides her wit and frankness in dealing with the topic of addiction, is the harrowing brush with death that sets her on the path to sobriety.

In 2006, right after a play she was doing in London opened, a peptic ulcer in her stomach burst, aggravated by the 30 to 40 codeine pills a day she was taking in England to replace her stateside Vicodin habit. Johnston found herself alone in her apartment in crippling pain, covered in vomit and blood.

Guts
Kristen Johnston
Simon & Schuster, $29.99