“I was just feeling like I needed a sense of community and home. I felt far away from myself, and that has been a touchstone for me since I was young,” the 33-year-old singer said of her own experience with alcohol and substances.
JoJo knows all too well about the pitfalls of addiction.
The “Leave (Get Out)” singer, whose real name is Joanna Levesque, opened up about seeing her parents struggle with drugs and alcohol growing up in her new memoir, Over the Influence.
In the tell-all, out now, the 33-year-old musician recalls spending much of her young childhood in church basements while her parents, mom Diana and late father Joel, attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. While she thought that seeing their struggles would be enough to keep her from playing out similar patterns, she later found herself abusing alcohol and substances during a tough time in her life.
“For a while, I was super self-righteous and thought I’d never be like my parents. I was like, ‘No, because I’m the strongest. I’m wicked strong,'” JoJo told People. “But then I was like, ‘Oh, what I’m doing is no better or worse. I’m my parents’ child, and I need to be awake to what’s happening within myself.'”
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JoJo’s parents even met in AA — Diana an alcoholic, and Joel used substances, including pills. They divorced when she was 5 years old, and she moved in with her mom, who helped foster her career as a child star, starting small with auditions for local TV programs before her powerhouse vocals were discovered on the national stage, with JoJo performing on Destination Stardom, The Rosie O’Donnell Show and America’s Most Talented Kids, among others.
While her mom was skeptical of the entertainment industry, JoJo was insistent on becoming a star, and was willing to do what she needed to turn that dream into a reality and keep her and her family from poverty.
“I think I really somehow felt the sense that things weren’t going to be okay, and things weren’t okay,” says JoJo, who moved around with her mom quite a bit and often stayed with friends or family. “I was just like, ‘That’s fine because I am going to be famous.'”
After turning down multiple offers, Diana allowed JoJo to sign with Blackground Records at age 12 — but required she manage her own daughter. About a year later, JoJo earned a chart-topping single with 2004’s “Leave (Get Out),” became a celebrity and started touring the world. “I was like, ‘Oh, well, it’s taken my whole life, so it’s about time,'” she recalled.
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The new lifestyle, however, proved difficult, both for JoJo and for her mother.
“She was a single mom, she was a singer, she did what she needed to do to make money by cleaning houses, and then she became the manager of this young phenom,” JoJo said. “That’s so weird and scary.”
As her daughter’s fame level continued to rise, Diana started hearing murmurs about shady business in the music industry and grew paranoid — that’s when she relapsed.
Drinking again, Diana experienced mental health struggles and even contemplated suicide, with a teenage JoJo helping to talk her out of it.
“I’m just so grateful that she’s here,” she told the outlet. Choosing to including dark moments like those in her memoir wasn’t either for JoJo, or her mom, but before she started writing the book, JoJo said she told Diana she’d be writing about “some of the hardest moments in my life” and promised to paint her as “a full human being” within its pages.
Once her mother read a polished draft, JoJo says, “She was proud of me, and that meant a lot to me.”
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The mother-daughter duo remains close to this day and even lived together throughout the COVID pandemic,
JoJo featured her on the song “Proud” from her 2020 album, Good to Know, and Diana attended her daughter’s opening night as Satine in Moulin Rouge! The Musical on Broadway last year.
“I admire her for many things — her sobriety, her commitment to health and her ability to take accountability. I love that about her so much,” JoJo gushed. “She’s such a beautiful person.”
While JoJo had an on-again, off-again relationship with her father, they connected over music, but as he too relapsed into his addiction their relationship weakened. She tried to help him and even set him up with a place to live and access to professionals who’d help him get back on his feet, but he wasn’t able to commit.
“I think my dad was trapped in his body. He had so many struggles in his mind,” she says of Joel, who died in November 2015. “In his passing, I had to learn that some people, as much as we want them around, sometimes that’s the completion of their journey.”
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Through years of therapy, she realized, “I could not be responsible for the life or happiness of either of my parents — because I did feel responsible for a long time.”
As for her own experience with drugs and alcohol, that came when she was a teen, during a night on tour. She was later caught by Diana and stayed away from drinking for years. As she neared adulthood, her label, Blackground, lost its distribution deal and could no longer properly release music, but still had the rights to her commercial recordings under her contract.
Frustrated with various elements of her life, she started drinking more regularly and using drugs like Adderall and Xanax in both personal and professional settings. On multiple occasions, she even drove a car while blackout drunk.
Getting out of record label limbo in 2014, plus subsequently going to therapy and focusing on her physical health, helped JoJo find a healthier relationship with alcohol and substances, but still, she felt unresolved, until the tail-end of her book-writing process in 2023.
It was then JoJo came to terms with various repeated patterns of addiction in her life and decided to attend an AA meeting of her own, with a friend.
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“You can feel less alone at an AA meeting when people are sharing, and AA does stand for Alcoholics Anonymous, but people go for a multitude of things. People who are love addicts or sex addicts or food addicts, or whatever, they’re going to get what they need,” JoJo, who noted she is not sober today, said. “I was just feeling like I needed a sense of community and home. I felt far away from myself, and that has been a touchstone for me since I was young.”
Opening up about her own struggles in Over the Influence wasn’t easy either, but if it’s able to help any readers process their own trauma, for her, it’s worth it.
“I just hope that people are encouraged to release any shame that they felt about different things in their life,” she added, “and to live unapologetically and freely and clear-eyed, no longer under the influence of things that really aren’t true to them.”
If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, get help. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) National Helpline (1-800-662-4357) provides 24/7, free, confidential support for people in distress.
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