Sister Wives’ Christine Brown Reveals ‘Devastating’ Oxycodone Addiction (Exclusive)

Much of Christine Brown Woolley‘s life has appeared on her family’s hit TLC series Sister Wives since the show premiered in 2010. Still, there were things she chose to keep to herself — until now.

In her new memoir, Sister Wife, out Sept. 2, Christine opened up about privately battling a brief addiction to oxycodone offscreen. Her reliance on the medication occurred after she was prescribed to use it following an injury.

“Just before Maddie and Caleb got married [in 2016], I blew out my knee. I tore my ACL and my meniscus, and I had to have surgery. [My husband at the time] Kody [Brown] brought me home from the hospital and then prepared to leave,” she wrote.

“‘What do I need to do?’ I asked, wondering about meds and aftercare. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘They didn’t give you any instructions?’ ‘No,’ he said. But he had gotten my prescription for pain pills filled, and he handed me the bag.”

“My mom and daughters stayed to help. I had never taken oxycodone before — if something hurt, I took ibuprofen or aspirin,” she continued. “Real pain indicates that something’s wrong, and if I take something that masks the problem, I’m not going to fix the problem, so I generally avoid it. With the surgery, I had already fixed the problem, and it hurt, so I took my meds.”

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Christine recalled feeling like she “had the flu” while also being “achy from head to toe,” so she “took an oxycodone, and all the symptoms went away.” She added, “It gave me the best high I ever felt. I was on top of the world, and I could accomplish everything!”

Now, Christine tells PEOPLE why she opted to keep that chapter of her life away from the cameras.

“I just dealt with it privately because at the time, it was absolutely devastating,” the reality star, 53, shares.

“It was very difficult, and even though I was on it for a month, the effects of it lasted at least six. I didn’t feel normal,” she continues. “I didn’t feel okay for so long. So, once I was done and I felt better, I just felt good to feel better. And I realized that with writing the book, that’s something I didn’t go back and revisit was the addiction to oxycodone.”

Christine says that “oxy is a terrible, addictive thing if you don’t need it.”

“If you need it and you’re in a lot of pain, there’s nothing better than that, but since I can get addicted to things easily, it seems it’s just best to stay away from that kind of thing,” she explains. “But I just wasn’t in a place where I could talk about it on the show. I just really couldn’t. It was so personal, and it was embarrassing, and I didn’t know if I wanted people to know that about me.”

In Christine’s new book, she also opens up about her upbringing in the Mormon faith, her marital struggles with her ex-husband Kody and more. She is “hoping more than just female readers” find something they can relate to in her story, she says.

“I think there are a lot of people that were in situations like mine, men and women, and people just in general who were in, are in relationships where they feel less than, or they feel like their opinion doesn’t really matter, or they feel mistreated,” she shares.

“I feel like there’s so many people like that, and I think overall, what I would love is for people to realize that you got to find yourself, and you got to make sure that you live life for yourself,” she continues. “You got to make your decisions.”

Christine admits that “there were so many times where I would just kind of go along with the flow, and I didn’t really spend a lot of time getting to know what I really wanted.” 

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“It was when I started realizing what I really wanted was when I was like, ‘I don’t think I’m going to find it here,'” she adds. “I think I have to make some choices here that I have to leave. But there was a long time where I realized that I needed to make life what I wanted it to be, but the choices weren’t necessarily mine. I had to find my own choices.”

Sister Wife: A Memoir of Faith, Family, and Finding Freedom is now available for purchase.

If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, please contact the SAMHSA helpline at 1-800-662-HELP.