Jason Biggs recalls snorting cocaine from trash can during addiction battle: ‘Absolutely insane’

Jason Biggs is getting candid about hitting an all-time low when he wanted to get high.

The actor, who shot to fame at 19 as the star of the 1999 comedy American Pie, recently opened up about the darkest days of his battle with addiction, sharing one of the “craziest stories” from his 20s.

“I was doing cocaine by myself in my house, and I did what I said was the last line,” Biggs told Arielle Lorre on a new episode of her Well podcast. He explained that it was 4 a.m. at the time and his wife, Jenny Mollen, was asleep upstairs and had no idea that he was using drugs, so in an effort to get himself back to bed, he threw the baggie of cocaine into their trash can.

“Within 15 minutes, as soon as my last bump is wearing off, I’m like, ‘What am I doing?'” he recalled. “I go into my trash and I take it out and I do a line.”

In another attempt to stop himself, he then went outside and tossed the rest of the cocaine into the trash can in front of their house. 

“‘Okay, I’m done,'” he recalled telling himself, saying he went inside to take an Ambien to help him get to sleep. But he wasn’t finished.

“Before I took the Ambien, I was like, ‘One more,'” he said. “I went outside and I climbed into the trash bin and got the bag of coke and went upstairs and did another line.”

Again, Biggs said he came to his senses. “I was like, ‘What the f— am I doing? This is absolutely insane.'”

The early-morning binge only escalated from there. Biggs said he then got in his car, drove down Sunset Boulevard, dug in another stranger’s trash can, found a Starbucks coffee cup, put the baggie of cocaine in it, and tossed it back into the trash. But he still couldn’t stop himself. He drove back to the trash can, retrieved the baggie of drugs from the coffee cup, and snorted another line.

“I could have easily opened the baggie and dumped it down the toilet, but I didn’t,” Biggs said on the podcast. “That’s too final. I knew I was going to finish that bag the moment I got it, but I kept playing this game with myself. That was very close to rock bottom.”

Noting that he has since come a long way, the Orange Is the New Black alum credited his move from Los Angeles to New York with helping him get clean.

“There’s something about the energy of New York that gives me something, that fills me in a way that Los Angeles couldn’t,” he explained. “I do believe coming to New York helped me. So, I did fall off the wagon here, but that was seven and a half years ago, and it’s been going well.”

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Biggs has been sober since 2017, the same year he and Mollen welcomed their second son. A year later, Biggs reflected on his anniversary of sobriety.

“I first tried to get sober over five years ago, when the weight of my obsession with booze and drugs became too heavy for me to handle,” he wrote in a 2018 Instagram post. “Turns out this s— is hard. After some fits and starts, I’ve managed to put together one year of sobriety. I’m as proud of it as anything in my life.”

“If you’re struggling, know there’s help,” he added. “Don’t be ashamed. We can do this.”

Watch Biggs discuss his sobriety and mental health in the Well episode above.