Shawn Johnson says she did not take painkillers after giving birth because she was 'addicted to Adderall'

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Shawn Johnson who is currently recovering from addiction has revealed that she decided not to take any painkiller after giving birth to her and husband Andrew East’s third child because she is fearful of falling back into old habits, US Magazine reports.

The Olympic gymnast made the revelation during a Q&A via her Instagram Stories on Friday, December 22, saying "Third c-section was definitely the hardest but smoothest (if that’s possible HA)". She then added, “Feeling great now though. I also refuse all pain meds haha (they make me SO sick and frankly after being addicted to adderall it just scares me so I don’t even mes [sic] with it.”

Shawn Johnson says her followers were shocked

The 31-year-old's admirers were left stunned when they got to know she did not take any drugs after her Cesarean delivery, especially since she also shared doctors had to cut out “so much scar tissue.” The mother-of-three instead said that she took Tylenol and Motrin to help ease her aches and pains.

What led Shawn Johnson towards drug addiction?

Johnson then provided further insight into her addiction past, sharing it with the followers that the root of the problem began when she was prescribed pills by a “not good doctor” to curb her appetite and give her more energy. 

“Fast forward seven years of being heavily addicted to it and having it control me, when I finally freed myself of it I swore anything even remotely addictive I’d stay away from,” she wrote over an image of her in a hospital bed after welcoming her baby. “It affected every part of my life and changed who I was. I never want to feel out of control like that again," she added.

Shawn Johnson previously opened up about her pill usage

The four-foot-11 athlete previously disclosed her struggles in a video she posted on her YouTube channel in June 2020. She said at that time that she turned to extreme methods to lose weight after she gained 15 pounds once she stopped training as a pro-gymnast.

“I started taking weight-loss pills, I started taking ephedrine, I started taking Adderall,” she shared, adding “I started doing anything and everything that I possibly could to lose weight and to look like I did at the Olympics.”

Johnson said her “dark kind of spiral” of taking medications to try and “spike” her metabolism lasted a few years. She shared that in 2012 she hit rock bottom when she was training to make the Olympic team again that year and started taking “heavy doses of Adderall” again.

“I continued to compete into 2012, where I just started to get depressed, I think as a consequence and a side effect of Adderall,” the gold medalist said in the YouTube video, adding that she thought she was “overdosing” on the drug typically used to treat narcolepsy and ADHD.

When did Shawn Johnson quit taking Adderall?

Johnson shared she ultimately quit taking Adderall after she got pregnant following a heartbreaking miscarriage. “There was something that switched when I got pregnant, where it was no longer about me or my body or the vanity or the calories, or what I looked liked or what I weighed", she said in her video, adding “I could’ve cared less, it was about protecting my baby.”