Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard’s daughters, Lincoln, 5, and Delta, 3, know their dad goes to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings every Tuesday night.
“Sometimes they say, ‘I want go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting,” Bell told Us Weekly and other reporters at the Women Making History Awards in Los Angeles on Saturday, September 15. “Because he’s a comedian, [Dax] says, ‘Don’t worry, you will.’ So we keep it light!”
The Parenthood alum celebrated 14 years of sobriety on September 1 — and to mark the milestone, Bell, 38, arranged a tour of the King’s Hawaiian Bread bread factory. According to The Good Place actress, eating sweet rolls fresh off an assembly line had been on her husband’s bucket list and she was happy to make his dream come true.
“We celebrate his sobriety birthday much, much bigger than his birthday,” the Bad Moms star revealed. “I’m happy he was born, but I’m incredibly excited about the fact that he stays alive.”
Bell understands she plays a role in Shepard’s ongoing recovery and has even attended Al-Anon meetings, a group created for family and friends of alcoholics. “It is a disease that can be very, very, very, very, very hard to combat without a support system,” she explained. “He did 99.999 percent of the work himself, but I tried to fill in that little hole of what he needed, because I don’t, I get don’t get him. I get someone who’s laying in a gutter and I want him home.”
The Chips actor has been open about abusing substances. “I just loved to get f—ed up drinking, cocaine, opiates, marijuana, diet pills, pain pills, everything,” he told Playboy magazine in 2012. “Mostly my love was Jack Daniel’s and cocaine.”
Shepard and Bell began dating in 2007 and tied the knot in 2013 when same-sex marriage became legal in the United States. When Shepard forgets their four-year anniversary on October 17, Bell won’t be mad. “We’re so bad with dates,” she admitted. “I think it’s in October. I’m pretty sure it’s in October. When it happens, we get the text from my mom in the morning and we roll over and we go, ‘Happy anniversary!’”
With reporting by Antonia Blyth.
