Sara Gettelfinger on Overcoming Cocaine, Alcohol and Gambling Addictions

Sara Gettelfinger is shedding light on her darkest days.

The stage veteran — who is currently starring on Broadway in the musical adaptation of Water for Elephants — opened up about her journey to sobriety in an episode of The Broadway Show with Tamsen Fadal that aired on April 20, detailing how she overcame an addiction to cocaine, alcohol and gambling that she says nearly destroyed her life.

“The No. 1 thing that I want people to take from my story is, especially at a time when so many people have so many struggles, is there is always hope,” Gettelfinger, 47, told Broadway.com’s Editor-in-Chief Paul Wontorek. “As long as you are breathing, there is a way to do something different and better. That can create a seed of strength that can end up being limitless in how it can change your life and give you a second chance.”

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Gettelfinger had steadily worked on the Broadway boards since her debut in 2000’s Seussical, appearing alongside stars including John Stamos, John Lithgow and Jeffrey Wright in hits like Nine, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and A Free Man of Color, respectively.

But after wrapping her run as Morticia Addams in the first national tour of The Addams Family in 2012, Gettelfinger’s “major demons’ came to the fore.

“I was not in a good place,” she recalled. “That year of that Addams Family tour was sort of the ‘after’ of going from being a partier to very regularly using drugs and alcohol. I hit the end of the road … not only [was] it not giving me those perceived superpowers of ‘I have all this energy, I’m thin, I can do anything,’ but I was crashing and burning big time.”

“When I say I crawled over the finish line of the tour, I’m not exaggerating,” she added.

Then months into 2013, Gettelfinger went to rehab in her hometown of Louisville, Kentucky to get treatment for drug and alcohol addiction.

“My health was really deteriorating,” the actress shared. “I was in the worst physical shape — and when I say the worst mental shape that I’ve ever been in, just paranoia to where I wasn’t able to leave the house, I wasn’t able to just take care of basic things in terms of just being able to maintain an apartment. And I had a very dear friend in Brooklyn who had been in a program, and there was just one evening where I was very much in a panic attack and I just remember taking a car to her apartment and saying, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ And she said, ‘Give me your phone, we’re going to call your parents. It’s time.’ And the next day, I flew home.”

Gettelfinger briefly returned to New York to star in the 2014 Off-Broadway rock musical, Atomic. But she “always felt unsettled” in her work, and knowing that she previously turned to substances while constantly “chasing validation” from outside sources, she decided to move back home to Kentucky.

It was there, though, that Gettelfinger began experiencing a “crippling” struggle with impulse control and a gambling addiction — something she hadn’t previously experienced. Turns out, it stemmed from a side effect of a medication prescribed to Gettelfinger by her doctor.

She wouldn’t come to understand that until years later, when she saw a law commercial seeking out victims of the medication who had their lives “ruined by gambling and other compulsive behaviors.”

One could say that Gettelfinger’s life had, in fact, been ruined by that point.

In the years she was on the medication, her disordered gambling had led Gettelfinger to once again create a double life for herself. She had become estranged from her family, due to things she did at “the depths of desperation.” An arrest for theft in 2015 could have been a breaking point, but even after being sentenced to three years probation and ordered to live in a sober halfway house for women, Gettelfinger was “still thinking about gambling every day.”

It got to the point where she considered suicide.

“I’m in a head space where I’m like, ‘Well, I guess I’m just a monster and it doesn’t matter what I give up, I’m going to find something else to be addicted to that’s not only going make me dangerous for anyone around me, but I’m going to find a way to destroy myself,’ ” she told The Broadway Show. “I couldn’t trust myself. And I still could not fathom how, especially at two years clean, I had somehow sought this new activity out. ‘I am hell bent on destruction and anyone who comes near me … they’re at risk … If this is all that’s left for me, I don’t even want to be here.’ ”

Seeing the law commercial changed everything for Gettelfinger. After calling the number and speaking with the law office rep, she met with a doctor to get off the drug. Her urge to gamble disappeared approximately three weeks later.

“It was like a spell was broken,” she said, noting that she felt “unbelievable relief” but also anger that the medication did that to her. “There was this new lease on life when I found out what was wrong with me and I was able to remove it. I got a shot at living. And when I say that I mean, ‘I got a shot of being above ground.’ ”

That doesn’t mean that she doesn’t take responsibility for her actions. “While it was horrible luck that this affliction was ignited by this drug, it was the addict in me that, instead of saying to a doctor, ‘I’m having these impulses, it doesn’t make sense, I’m multiple years sober now, I’ve never thought about this,’ [kept me quiet].” 

From there, Gettelfinger began rebuilding her life, now with the benefits of sobriety and without “these dark tormented feelings and struggles every day.”

“The first step was just realizing, very simply, I’m not a monster,” Gettelfinger said. “I am an addict. and I have done terrible, hurtful things, but I am not sentenced to this affliction for the rest of my life.”

To help, she leaned on the same drive that brought her to the stage in the first place. “All this tenacity and determination I always had that served me in this very difficult career of showbiz, now it was like, ‘I’ve got to put one foot in front of the other, one day at a time, to stay clean,’ ” she said.

Getting back on stage was never particularly in Gettelfinger’s plan. She worked a sea of unconventional jobs before settling on a career teaching music and movement to preschoolers in Indiana, as well as privately coaching voice and acting. But a return was sparked after she reunited with the cast of Seussical for both a 20th anniversary Zoom reunion during the pandemic in 2020, and an in-person concert at 54 Below the year after.

Encouraging Gettelfinger to get back out there was her husband, Eric Popp. The two former grade school classmates reconnected in the fall of 2017 and married in 2020, with Gettelfinger becoming stepmom to his two middle school-age children. He was by her side at her 54 Below concert, and gave her a pep talk while on their walk back to the hotel that night.

“My husband said, ‘I don’t care what we have to do, I don’t care what it takes, but you are not done,’ ” Gettelfinger recounted. “And he made me promise that I would reach out to my agent, who I hadn’t spoken to in 10 years.”

Gettelfinger officially returned to the stage in 2022, in a production of The Cher Show in Ogunquit, Maine. In February, she began performances on Broadway as showgirl Barbara in Water for Elephants, the critically acclaimed musical based on the novel by Sara Gruen. Starring Grant Gustin and featuring a book by Rick Elice and a score by PigPen Theatre Co., the show officially opened on March 21 and is now playing an open at the Imperial Theatre in New York City.

“I get to step out there and tell this story and do what I love,” said Gettelfinger, sharing the thrill of appreciation she feels every night. “I actually view the curtain call as a thank you to the audience because I love what I get to do every night, regardless, and I feel gratitude to them because they’ve shown up.”

And she’s now more in touch with her instrument and present in “the most profound way” that has allowed her to actually appreciate every performance.

“I don’t wonder what I did on stage, I’m here and I’m experiencing it. And it is one of the most incredible gifts of my life because I not only don’t question it or worry about it; I’m able to enjoy it,” the Broadway star explained to Wontorek. “I can feel myself connected to the earth every night … Every moment, I am there and anchored.”

“It is the most profound gift on a different level of joy and fulfillment from performing that I have never experienced,” Gettelfinger said. “And it just makes me realize that even when I thought I was knocking it out of the park, I had no idea what it meant to just truly be strong and clear … on a stage, doing what I love. It takes my breath away every night, it really does.”

Tickets for Water for Elephants are now on sale. The Broadway Show with Tamsen Fadal airs weekends in syndication (check local listings).

If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, please contact the SAMHSA helpline at 1-800-662-HELP. If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741741 or go to 988lifeline.org.