laura clery

Editor's Note: This story discusses addiction and its impact on families. If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction, the SAMHSA’s National Helpline is a free, confidential, 24/7, 365-day-a-year treatment referral and information service (in English and Spanish) for individuals and families facing mental and/or substance use disorders. Call 1-800-662-HELP(4357) for assistance.

Coparenting after a breakup or divorce can be hard, especially if the relationship didn't end on good terms. But sometimes, it's not just the relationship ending that causes coparenting to be difficult. Sometimes it's something that directly impacts the wellbeing of the children you have together: substance abuse. Major cultural differences and parenting styles can be hard to overcome, but substance use can affect the mental and physical safety of the children you both love.

Comedian and actor Laura Clery has been open about her own previous struggle with addiction, and has remained sober for more than a decade. The YouTuber got married, welcomed two children, and has since gotten divorced since then, maintaining her sobriety the entire time. But her ex-husband, Stephen Hilton, has had very public relapses since their divorce and, in a recent joint podcast, they shared that one of his relapses contributed to the breakdown of their marriage, leaving Clery on the rollercoaster of coparenting with someone in active addiction.

At the filming of the joint podcast, Hilton, a film score composer, revealed he's been sober. Unfortunately, it was shortly after the filming that he relapsed again. Since clearing the air about their struggles with Hilton's addiction to narcotics, (including fentanyl), Clery has been very vulnerable with sharing what it has been like to coparent with someone in active addiction. Their young children, Alfie, seven, and Poppy, four, are accustomed to seeing their father regularly, and Clery has aimed to continue this normalcy as much as possible even through Hilton's active addiction stages.

In a recent video, she explains how she found out he was in active addiction again and the boundaries she enforced when the producer relapsed.

When speaking about their coparenting relationship, she says, "It's feeling good. It's feeling functional...and I just feel like wow, everything is good. You know, even in his life, he's gotten some music opportunities that are really exciting, and I feel like I'm getting some opportunities with my podcast and making progress on my book. It's just, life is feeling good and then I open up Instagram three days ago to a video of him talking about he's in active addiction, and he's using and he's documenting the whole thing" she adds. "And my heart is broken. And I feel so stupid, and I feel so angry because you were just picking up my kids from...our kids from school."

The best-selling author continues to express disbelief as she recounts all the time he's had parenting the children alone while simultaneously documenting his relapse on the Internet. Clery explicitly states that she still loves Hilton and her goal isn't to bash him, explaining that she views addiction "as a cunning, baffling, powerful and progressive disease. So I don't think he's evil or bad. I think he's sick right now."

Clery explains later, "I guess it just makes it a little trickier when you've got kids in the mix and it's really f***ing sad to me because again, he's such a good dad, especially when he's clean. He's so loving, he adores them and we have so much fun together and yeah, my heart just breaks for the kids." She starts tearing up thinking about boundaries she has to put in place to keep them safe. "Yeah, like over the weekend he was supposed to have them on Saturday. It's like no, you're not seeing the kids. You're on drugs, you're not seeing the kids and they ask for 'daddy, daddy, daddy' and it's like 'no we're not doing daddy's house this weekend, you know, he's busy.'"

In another video uploaded to YouTube, Clery explains that, since his relapse, she holds a firm boundary that he cannot be alone with the kids. She has to be present to ensure safety, which she admits is hard as she says it feels like solo parenting all the time while he's actively using. Thankfully, Hilton has restarted his sobriety journey though it's unclear if he's sticking to it—which was a topic of their most recent joint podcast together.

In the joint podcast, Hilton admits to planning to do "controlled using" where he has periods of sobriety and periods of active use saying, "I've got a feeling that I'm not going to get away with this for very much longer. I feel like I'm walking a tight rope, like my original plan was to stop for 30 days and start again. Cause my point was that I'm blowing my life up anyway. I live on my own, there's nothing to lose. My kids don't live with me, I don't have anything to lose."

Hilton admits to struggling with depression which leads to him feeling the desire to use drugs. While Clery continues to reinforce the boundary around visitation with the children, she remains supportive throughout the episode. At one point she offers up a program that brought him joy in the past: when he was telling his story to people in hospitals and prisons who were struggling with addiction. It's clear that the composer wants to do the right thing and Clery wants him to be better for himself and their children, but boundaries are still required until longevity in sobriety is achieved again.