Former gymnast Shawn Johnson is opening up about how her past addiction to Adderall has affected her deliveries. Shawn and her husband Andrew East just welcomed their third child, a son named Barrett, earlier this month via C-section, now, she's explaining why she refused to take prescription pain medication during her recovery. Between the time she competed in the 2008 Olympics and her retirement from gymnastics in 2012, Shawn began abusing Adderall pills as a weight loss tactic that didn’t end until she became pregnant with her first child, Drew, after suffering from a miscarriage in 2019.
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Shawn called her latest C-section the 'hardest but smoothest' of her deliveries.
In a recent Instagram Stories Q&A, a fan asked Shawn about the birth of her third child compared to the birth of his older siblings. She explained that her most recent C-section was "the hardest but smoothest" of her three deliveries, despite having a lot of scar tissue removed. Additionally, she had to deal with swelling and discomfort — something that many moms face after a surgery like this.
She shared that she refused pain meds during her recovery because of past addiction issues.
"Feeling great now though. I also refuse all pain meds haha (they make me SO sick and frankly after being addicted to adderall it just scares me so I don’t even mess with it," she wrote.
Shawn revealed that she was 'heavily addicted' to Adderall for seven years.
"Long story short, during my comeback in 2010 I was prescribed adderall to 'curb my appetite and give me more energy' by a not good doctor," Shawn revealed. "Fast forward 7 years of being heavily addicted to it and having it control me, when I finally freed myself of it I swore anything even remotely addictive I’d stay away from. It affected every part of my life and changed who I was. I never want to feel out of control like that again."
She went on to say that if she needs any sort of pain management, she’ll stick to Tylenol or Motrin.
This isn't the first time she's gotten candid about her addiction to Adderall.
Shawn opened up about her pill addiction back in a 2020 video on her YouTube channel. She shared that after competing in the 2008 Olympics, she was left adrift and facing some serious body image issues. As a result, she turned to weight loss drugs and pills including ephedrine and Adderall.
"I started doing any and everything I possibly could to lose the weight and to look like I did at the Olympics," she confessed.
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It took getting pregnant for her to finally beat her addiction.
After several years of eating disorders and seemingly "overdosing" on Adderall, she quit the medication for good when she got pregnant with her Drew.
"Having gotten clean from, you know, the medications and the prescriptions and just the obsessiveness — I wouldn't change anything for the world, I love that I went through it, it was very hard and I don't wish that on anyone," she said. "I've had these tough experiences that make me a stronger mom that will allow me to teach Drew how to be strong as well."
