Allison Holker only learned that her late husband, Stephen “tWitch” Boss, was struggling with drug addiction as she was preparing for his funeral, following his death by suicide in December 2022.
In the weeks after the death of the 40-year-old “Ellen DeGeneres Show” executive producer and DJ, Holker and her friend found a shoebox of his that was housing a “cornucopia” of drugs.
“I was with one of my really dear friends, and we were cleaning out the closet and picking out an outfit for him for the funeral,” the 36-year-old “So You Think You Can Dance” judge recalled to People in its latest cover story.
Among the substances inside were mushrooms, pills and “other substances I had to look up on my phone,” recalled Holker, who was married to Boss from 2013 to his death. Though she was well aware that Boss would smoke marijuana or drink once their kids — Weslie, 16, Maddox, 8, and Zaia, 5 — went to bed “to recharge,” Holker didn’t realize the extent of what was really going on.
“It was very alarming to me to learn that there was so much happening that I had no clue [about],” said Holker, whose new memoir, “This Far: My Story of Love, Loss, and Embracing the Light,” will be released Feb. 4. “It was a really scary moment in my life to figure that out, but it also helped me process that he was going through so much and he was hiding so much, and there must have been a lot of shame in that.”
Boss’ autopsy results, reported on in May 2023, showed no evidence of drugs or alcohol in his system at the time of his death.
In Boss’ journals, which Holker read following his death, she said he alluded to childhood sexual abuse he had suffered.
“He was wrestling with a lot inside himself, and he was trying to self-medicate and cope with all those feelings because he didn’t want to put it on anyone because he loved everyone so much,” Holker said. “He didn’t want other people to take on his pain.”
Holker, though, said she’s publicly sharing the family’s pain, as well as Boss’ own struggles, in hopes that those “dealing with the same thing will help themselves out of the shadows and [know] you’re going to be OK.”