Love, Strength, Sobriety: Kristen Bell’s Touching Message to Dax Shepard on 21-Year Milestone

Kristen Bell is celebrating her husband Dax Shepard’s latest sobriety milestone.

On Thursday, Sept. 4, the Emmy-nominated actress, 45, posted an Instagram roundup celebrating Shepard’s 21 years of sobriety. She included several photos of the 50-year-old actor hugging their daughters, Delta, 10, and Lincoln, 12, as well as a sweet photo of him and Bell kissing one another.

“This is what 21 years of sobriety looks like. Lots of hugging. Hugging everyone and everything. Hugging life,” she captioned the post. “Thank you for getting sober, @daxshepard. I am eternally grateful to have you. We all are .”

Shepard replied in the comments: “Well this is a low blow. Even for you. Makin’ a guy cry when he can’t turn to booze?!?!”

Several friends and fans celebrated the actor’s acheivement in the comment section. Nina Dobrev wrote, “.” Rachel Bilson commented, “.” Meanwhile, Cheyenne Jackson added, “Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.”

The Parenthood actor first got sober in 2004. Years later, on Sept. 25, 2020, during an episode on Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast, he announced he had relapsed after 16 years of sobriety.

He explained that he used painkillers following a motorcycle accident. The episode was recorded on Sept. 21, 2020, when Shepard was seven days sober.

On the podcast, Shepard said he began purchasing his own pills after breaking his hand in an ATV accident and also suffering multiple injuries during a separate motorcycle accident last year. He then began lying to the people around him, which he said helped him realize that he needed to quit.

Shortly after he went public with his relapse, Bell said during an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, that Shepard is “addicted to growth.”

“He’s addicted to evolving,” Bell explained. “He was like, ‘I don’t want to risk this family and I did, so let’s put new things in place to make sure it doesn’t happen again,’ ” Bell remembered her husband saying.

His decision to be open about the relapse was in part thanks to Bradley Cooper.

“He said, ‘Are you going to?’ ‘Cause I told him I relapsed. And then he said, ‘Are you going to tell everyone?’ And I said, at that point, I was like, ‘I don’t think so,’ ” he recalled on Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s podcast last year.

“He said, ‘Well, let me tell you this. There’s nothing helpful about a guy that’s 16 years sober, and married to Kristen Bell, and is rich. What’s helpful to somebody is someone who just ate s— and gets back up.’”