Columbus Short Talks Drug Issues, Admits He ‘Lost Himself’

Columbus Short has opened up about the drug issues that have blighted his life over the last 12 months.

During a candid interview with Access Hollywood, Short was previously a regular cast member on Scandal, only to be written off because of his struggle with cocaine. The actor admitted that his addiction to the drug had left him lost in an abyss of turmoil.

“I’ll be candid. I was struggling with drugs. I had a lot on my plate, and you know, I was using unhealthy ways to kinds of self-medicate and deal with a lot of heavy duty stuff in my life… The real drugs – I did cocaine. I was doing cocaine and drinking a lot, and trying to balance a 16-hour work schedule a day, and a family, and I just lost myself back then.”

Short’s problems really came to a head in April. This was when he was accused of spousal abuse to his wife of eight years, Tanee McCall. The pair have one daughter together, Ayala, and after the domestic abuse claims, Tanee McCall filed for divorce from Short just a few months later.

Short then announced that he was leaving Scandal. He has now admitted Scandal’s head-writer, Shonda Rhimes, looked to help him through several problems in his life. However, once it became clear that he was still having these issues, she decided to write his character out of the show.

“[Shonda Rimes] did [know]. And if we’re going to be fully transparent, they protected me and they held me down. And that was one of the real reasons – they just wanted me to get my stuff together. Sometimes the bottom has to be dropped out for you to really get it.”

Discussing how his addiction to drugs began, Short explained, “Last year, one of my best friends died, he killed himself, Lee Thompson Young, and that kind of started a spiral. I found out when I was on set, and it really just took my legs out from under me.”

Short then went on to admit that all of pressure that he found himself under soon started to become overbearing.

“It was numbing stuff, it was just numbing,” he noted, “a lot of things I really don’t want to talk about. I was going through a lot, going through a lot in my marriage, I had a lot of loss, tragic loss, so it’s tough.”

Short declared that he is on the road to recovery though. He now lives in Atlanta, where he has been for the last five and a half months, and he is still hoping to return to Scandal in the future too. In fact, he insists that the ensemble there is his “family.”

[Image via YIMG]