Addiction and a Bed Pig: The Demise of Tori Spelling and Dean McDermott

By Emily Richardson | Celebrity | November 16, 2023 |

By Emily Richardson | Celebrity | November 16, 2023 |

Tori Spelling and Dean McDermott, pictured above in 2005, are currently going through a less-than-amicable split. Each party is taking shots at each other through the press: quotes from “inside sources”, suspiciously timed pap photos, and public make outs with their new partners.

But it sounds like Dean is done with the passive-aggressive media stunts. He’s ready to be mature and direct about the end of his marriage. So, naturally, he sat down for an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail.

56-year-old Dean reveals that he and Tori’s problems were exacerbated by his alcohol and prescription drug addiction. He says:

“All Tori’s ever done to this day is want me to be happy and healthy and I inflicted a lot of damage and pain on that woman. I’m taking accountability for that today. And it’s the biggest amend that I’m ever going to have to make.”

Dean says that, by the end of their marriage, he was getting high and drunk every night and flying into alcohol-fuelled rages that “petrified” Tori and their 5 kids. In June, a wasted Dean took to Instagram to announce he and Tori were through. Even though he quickly deleted the post, he’d moved out by the end of the month. Dean says he spent the summer in rehab and has been sober ever since:

“Alcohol made me feel good enough. I started feeling good enough until it got to a point where it didn’t - it ended up in isolation. It ended up with me drinking a fifth of tequila every night, seven days a week, and a handful of narcos [prescription meds] by myself with a beautiful family in the other room.

That’s what it led to and that’s what led to the brokenness and to what happened between me and Tori. I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t live that life anymore. I was tired of the anger and the yelling.”

Dean hasn’t seen his family since he left in June. But he says that he and Tori have been texting a bit and he’s desperate to see his kids again. Also, Dean makes it clear he doesn’t regret his marriage:

“It was a total fairytale. I mean, it was a beautiful love story. Love at first sight and getting married in the most beautiful way possible.

It was a dream come true. And then we had to come back to Hollywood and deal with all the sh** people gave us. After we got married, they were all saying “give it six months”. Well, so much for six months - we showed you because it’s been 18 years and five kids.”

Dean tells the Daily Mail that he and Tori have not shared a bedroom since 2017. After getting clean during a 2014 stint in rehab (triggered by a very public cheating scandal), Dean relapsed and began drinking again. Things were tense between the couple, and Tori’s pets didn’t help matters: she had a pig that slept in their bed, multiple dogs, and a single chicken living in the bathroom. HUH. Dean explains:

“We know dogs have accidents, and our particular dogs were having a lot. And I just couldn’t deal with that anymore,” he recalled. “So, I created a healthy boundary for myself and I said, ‘I can’t do this. I can’t live and sleep in this kind of condition.’ I drew that boundary for myself and moved to another room and things just progressed from there. There were no efforts to sort of remedy the problem to get back into the room.”

Dean admits the worse his substance abuse issues got, the more he isolated himself from Tori and the kids. He says he and Tori were more like roommates than spouses and rarely spent any time together:

“It made me feel worse because I knew I was a big part of [the problem] and I was at a place where I felt there was nothing I could do about it. Add in the fact that we’re not sleeping in the same bed — it’s like docking your iPhone at night. If you don’t dock your iPhone at night, you wake up with a dead battery.”

“I believe that the marital bed is the docking station for your relationship. Where you connected each other. It’s where you download information. It’s where you spend time together. It’s where you’re intimate, it’s where you love. You laugh and you cry. So that’s gone. The relationship suffers greatly, greatly. When you’re in a roommate situation and there’s no connection or intimacy, what do you expect is going to happen?”

Dean says he got so lonely and depressed that he didn’t want to live anymore. He pledges to spend the rest of his life “making amends” for destroying his marriage. Here’s Dean’s post about the interview:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Dean McDermott (@imdeanmcdermott)

Ugh, I hate that I can’t look at Dean McDermott anymore without seeing Glenn Powell (thanks a lot, Lulubelle in the comments). Now how am I supposed to enjoy his upcoming rom-com with Sydney Sweeney? Sigh…