Daytime talk queen Wendy Williams admits she was a ‘functioning’ coke addict

The celebrity gossip superpersona said in an interview that she would show up during her radio shifts high on the drug

Jul 20, 2018

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Wendy Williams is used to being a lightning rod for controversy in showbiz. She’s been at the top of the celebrity gossip world for decades, dishing the dirt on pop culture left and right. But this time she openly dished the dirt on herself.

The daytime talk show host told Entertainment Tonight that she was once addicted to cocaine during the early part of her career as a radio host.

“I report to work on time, and I’d walk in and all my co-workers, including my bosses, would know but since I would have my headphones on and walk in the studio and they wouldn’t fire me because I was making ratings,” Williams said, calling herself a “functioning addict.”

“A functioning addict has several alarm clocks, you’re organized,” she said. “It’s a miracle I was able to stop.”

Williams, who made her name as a controversial radio host, was a mainstay in radio for 20 years, including stints at the former Kiss FM, Hot 97, and WBLS in New York as well as Philadelphia’s Power 99 between 1989 until she left radio in 2009.

Williams, 54, who revealed earlier this year that she has Graves’ disease, didn’t exactly specify the time period that she was addicted to cocaine. She previously talked about her issues with addiction in 2012 following the death of Whitney Houston and said that it could’ve been her if she hadn’t gotten clean.

Williams is telling the story now in order to help others battle substance abuse problems. She’s teaming up with The Hunter Foundation, a nonprofit she founded with her husband and son, to launch the “Be Here” national campaign designed to combat drug addiction and substance abuse in communities.