“What I thought was bad and the worst thing to ever happen to me ended up being good and the best thing that ever happened to me,” Alexander said.

Blindspot star Jaimie Alexander reveals how ‘almost dying’ led to her sobriety: ‘Worst pain of my life’

"What I thought was bad and the worst thing to ever happen to me ended up being good and the best thing that ever happened to me," Alexander said.

By Sydney Bucksbaum

Sydney Bucksbaum

Sydney Bucksbaum is a staff writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2019 and is a published author. Her work has previously appeared in *TV Guide Magazine*, E! News/E! Online, *The Hollywood Reporter*, Mashable, Bustle, IGN, DCComics.com, Inverse, *The Daily Northwestern*, and more.

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November 17, 2025 6:24 p.m. ET

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Jaimie Alexander on 'Blindspot'. Credit:

Barbara Nitke/NBC/Warner Brothers

*Blindspot* star Jaimie Alexander has revealed that "almost dying" led to her "accidental sobriety."

On Sunday, the actor — who also plays Lady Sif in the Marvel Cinematic Universe — posted a lengthy note on her Substack detailing how a scary brush with death in 2018 is what caused her to become sober.

Alexander revealed she was an alcoholic who used to "drink heavily, make terrible decisions, and justify some pretty s---ty behavior" for years, but has been in recovery ever since her appendix burst and she went into sepsis in March 2018.

She first realized she had a problem days earlier when she got snowed in while on a trip with a new romantic partner, who was sober. Because of the snowstorm, she was stuck in a cabin without access to any alcohol, which she called "absolute hell."

"No booze *anywhere*. Believe me — I checked every nook and cranny," Alexander wrote. "I should probably mention that, at this point, I hadn’t gone a single day without a drink in years. Yikes. Panic started creeping in. I didn’t have my flask with me, and honestly, I had no clue how I was going to survive the night sober while pretending everything was fine in front of my new boyfriend."

Alexander revealed that was the first day of her "accidental sobriety," which continued when she returned home the next night and found herself physically unable to drink a glass of bourbon despite craving it for two days.

"I started feeling dizzy in a way that felt dangerous," she said. "I couldn’t drink it. Me — the person who would have drunk even with pneumonia — put the glass back down on the counter. I remember feeling like some kind of magnetic force was separating me from the bourbon."

The next day, she remembered "eating massive amounts of sugar, feeling irritable and unsteady," while on set filming *Blindspot*. Later that night, her personal trainer stopped her while working out because she didn't "look so good," and was "even more pale than usual." She found herself unable to drink a glass of bourbon again afterward, and went to sleep "unaware that I had become a ticking time bomb."

Jaimie Alexander on 'Blindspot'.

Virginia Sherwood/NBC

The next morning, she felt "exhausted, with a stomach ache," but thought it was due to the junk food she'd eaten the previous day.

"I was still shaky, and the peculiar dizziness had returned," Alexander said. "I remember it kind of feeling like I was extremely drunk. Except I wasn't."**

She went to work on the *Blindspot* set again despite feeling unwell, and her stomach pain became unbearable hours later.

"By lunchtime, I could barely stand," she said. "I noticed the pain had gone from my upper abdomen down to the lower right side. At this point, I started to feel very confused and extremely nervous... Soon I was sweating, pale as a ghost, curled up in the fetal position on the floor of my trailer, unable to stand. I reached for my phone and called a producer for help. That producer put me in a set van and had me driven to my OB-GYN, whose office happened to be near our filming location."

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When she arrived at her doctor's office, she began feeling contractions, which she described as "THE WORST pain of my life — and if you know anything about my laundry list of injuries, you know that’s saying something." (Alexander has previously revealed she ruptured and herniated multiple discs in her spine, chipped vertebrae, broke her nose, dislocated her shoulder, tore her rhomboid muscle, and broke multiple fingers and toes doing stunt work on *Blindspot* and *Thor: The Dark World*.) Her doctor realized immediately that her appendix was rupturing and needed to be removed, so he told her driver to take her to the hospital.

"I was screaming in pain," Alexander remembered. "At the ER, I was rushed through a CT scan. They told me my appendix had fully ruptured and I was entering sepsis. They stripped me, wiped me down with something orange, and prepped me for emergency surgery. I remembered feeling extremely hot. Like my body was on fire from the inside."

Before the surgery began, Alexander remembered feeling "a warm, powerful sense of peace" wash over her, and thought she was dying. She then heard a voice that told her "you can never drink again" if she wanted to survive. She made that promise — to herself, to that voice — and has been "sober ever since."

Jaimie Alexander on 'Blindspot'.

Barbara Nitke/NBC

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"Looking back, what I thought was bad and the worst thing to ever happen to me ended up being good and the best thing that ever happened to me," Alexander said. "I was given a second chance by something greater than myself, and I chose to take it... It took almost dying for me to wake up and start living."

The actor also encouraged anyone going through tough circumstances, "whether it be in the throes of addiction, a difficult situation, financial turmoil, heartbreak, or simply overwhelmed by the current state of the world," to ask for help, and "dig deep within yourself, because that is where you will find the courage you were born with."

Read Alexander's full note regarding her health and sobriety on her Substack.

Alexander starred on *Blindspot* for five seasons from 2015 to 2020. She has also appeared as Asgardian warrior Lady Sif in Marvel's *Thor* (2011), *Thor: The Dark World* (2013), *Thor: Love and Thunder* (2022), *Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. *(2013-2020)*, *and *Loki* (2021).**

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