Jennifer Aniston.

Hollywood actress Jennifer Aniston suffers from dry eye disease, admitting she was “addicted to eye drops” and has trouble reading scripts due to dry, itchy eyes, in an interview with Health magazine.

She’s struggled with chronic dry eye disease for years, she said, not knowing it was a diagnosable condition, thinking her swollen and irritated eyes were a result of allergies until she received her ‘aha’ diagnosis.

“I was constantly using eye drops. It got to the point when I was using eye drops two to three times every hour to feel relief because it was so painful and so irritating and itchy. It got in the way of the joys of my daily life,” said Aniston. At that point, Aniston was asked in an interview if she had any addictions, as she was literally putting in an eye drop. “Well, eye drops!” She said. A couple of weeks later, she was contacted by an executive of the pharmaceutical company Shire, a division of Novartis, who suggested she could be suffering from dry eye disease. Aniston consulted her doctor and was diagnosed shortly thereafter. “It was such a wonderful relief, like I can’t even explain to you, to get myself weaned off the eye drops,” Aniston said.

The actress partnered with Shire during 2016 and 2018 to spread awareness about dry eye disease.