Mila Kunis has opened up about how she and her family witnessed a woman, who was experiencing homelessness, overdose on drugs while on the streets of Los Angeles.
The 39-year-old actor recalled the incident with her husband Ashton Kutcher and their two children, Wyatt, eight, and Dimitri, five, during an appearance on the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast on Sunday.
After acknowledging how the number of “people experiencing homeless on the streets” of Los Angeles has continued to rise during the Covid-19 pandemic, she recalled an experience where her family went out for ice cream.
“We were super isolated and one point we’re like, ‘We gotta get the kids out of the house. Like, let’s go get ice cream. Let’s just go and get them ice cream, put on masks. We’ll be safe,’” Kunis told TV host Conan O’Brien. “You know, this was when we all thought that Covid was still attacking us. Like it could just come out of nowhere.”
The That’s 70s Show star noted that as her children, who were “six and four at the time,” took off their masks to eat their ice cream outside, they were then approached by a woman.
“This woman experiencing homelessness who’s clearly dealing with mental health issues, walks down of Ventura, sits down next to us and decides to have an overdose next to my children and my husband and our friends,” Kunis said.
She also recalled how her children “started asking questions”, beyond just if an “ambulance” was coming and that they asked if that woman was “ok” and what was “happening”.
Kunis then acknowledged that the experience allowed her and Kutcher to have “a logical conversiation” about drugs with their children, which included the Two and a Half Men star getting “super detailed” about the topic.
“And we ended up having to have a very logical conversation with them about what are drugs, what they do to you,” she continued. “My husband went super detailed and I was like, ‘Babe, they’re six and four. I’m not sure this is gonna work, the tactic.’”
O’Brien then laughed at the story, before poking fun at Kutcher for how he spoke to his children about drugs.
“I love that Ashton had morgue photos,” he joked. “‘Look at this! 22-years-old. Dead. Six weeks dead.’”
Kunis laughed at and agreed with the comedian’s comment, before sharing that Kutcher also told their children “details of what the chemistry of the drug does to [one’s] brain”.
She then shared how that conversation has affected her children’s perspective on drugs today, adding: “Anyways, if you talk to them now, they have that, they’re like, ‘No, it messes up your brain. And I don’t want.’”
The actor also noted how the encounter with the woman experiencing homelessness was “one way of starting this conversation” about drugs. She also shared that before this incident, her children didn’t “know anything” about the topic beyond simply taking an “antibiotic”.
“Mind you, they’ve literally taken an antibiotic for their earache and they didn’t know of anything else in the world existed until that moment,” she added.
Throughout the last year, reports have shown that the number of homeless people counted in Los Angeles has continued to go up. In a federally required tally that was conducted in February and released by Los Angeles County last month, figures showed that 69,144 people were homeless on any given night, a 4.1 per cent rise from 2020.
LA County is also one of the most populated areas of the country, with 10 million people, according to data from the federal tally. Findings went on to reveal that out of the 326,000 homeless people nationwide, one in five of them live in the LA County.
