The Doc from 'Back to the Future', the actor Christopher Lloyd, confesses his addiction to cocaine

BarcelonaChristopher Lloyd (Stamford, 1938) rose to fame in the 80s thanks to the movie Back to the Future (1985), where he played Doc, a hyperactive scientist who always appeared with wide eyes and disheveled white hair. That character became one of the most beloved in cinema history and later paved the way for his professional career, which continued with dozens of films and television series. Four decades later, Lloyd reviews his life in a memoir that has just been published in English and is titled In my own time: A memoir. In these pages, the actor explains that for years he had to fight against his addiction to alcohol and cocaine.

Lloyd recounts that the first time he used drugs was in the 70s in Los Angeles. He got into a stranger's car, did "a couple of lines," and was hooked right away. "I loved it from the beginning, and that is where my cocaine abuse started," the performer explains. The consumption ceased to be occasional and he also added alcohol and marijuana to it. Even so, in the book he emphasizes that he never appeared on stage or in front of cameras under the influence of drugs. "I wasn't asking myself what that meant or what it brought me. I simply knew that I liked it and, in a short time, it had already trapped me," writes Lloyd.

Throughout the memoir, the actor also remembers one of the toughest episodes related to drug use. It happened in May 1984, when the actor was going through a relationship crisis. After having slept away from home, Lloyd returned and discovered he could not enter, because he had been denied access, so he began to bang on the windows. "The next thing I remember is that I was lying on the floor of my kitchen, bleeding out, while paramedics were treating me," he explains. The actor lost so much blood that he had to have plasma transfusions. Later on, he also had to do several physiotherapy sessions to regain movement in his hand.

In 1993, Lloyd entered a rehabilitation center where he stayed for five weeks. After attending psychological therapy, he began to understand the harm he was doing to those around him and began a long detoxification process. "That was the beginning, but not the end. I had several relapses until years later, on April 1st, I achieved sobriety," says the actor.