Tatum O’Neal is one lucky lady, at least legally. The actress comes from a long line of family members who have famously battled with addiction. The actress was busted for trying to buy crack and cocaine in early June. She subsequently claimed that she was still sober, but had almost relapsed. Oh and she thanked the cops for arresting her. And seemed to be in a fair amount of denial about the whole thing.

Instead of facing the original drug charges, O’Neal pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct, and will get off with a pretty lenient sentence.

Crime may not pay, but for Tatum O’Neal, it doesn’t exactly cost all that much, either. The former wild child actress has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct stemming from her June crack bust. Prosecutors in turn dropped more serious charges, including drug possession.

To atone for her misdoing, Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Elisa Koenderman sentenced the youngest ever Oscar winner to spend two half-day sessions in a drug-treatment program and pay a $95 fee.

Should the 44-year-old Rescue Me star make good on both conditions of her sentence by Sept. 4, when she’s due back in court, the case against her will be dismissed. O’Neal turned down a nearly identical deal from prosecutors last month in which they offered her the chance to plead guilty to disorderly conduct and spend two days in a treatment. No word on what caused the change of heart.

[From E! News]

That’s one hell of an easy deal. $95 bucks and a total of one day in a treatment program? How is that even a consequence? Or if you don’t want to be retributive, then how is that even helpful? $95 isn’t a punishment, and a day in treatment isn’t helpful. Essentially the court is saying, “You can get away with breaking the law” and/or “We don’t care enough about you to try to get you some help.” The courts have failed from either angle you take in terms of how drug users should be treated.

Let’s hope Tatum cares enough about herself and her family to get herself into some serious and long lasting treatment.

Here’s Tatum O’Neal at the Season Three New York premiere Screening of ‘Rescue Me’ on May 24, 2006. Photographer: Doug Meszler. Images thanks to WENN.

After her drug bust this past weekend actress Tatum O’Neal called up the New York Post to give a media-quote-friendly, upbeat, positive interview. A little too much so, in my opinion. I tend to be ridiculously optimistic, but by the end of reading O’Neal’s interview – in which she repeats every addiction cliché in the book – I was left feeling like she was reading from a script. She was just way too bubbly, everything considered. She even went so far as to say New York was “cool” for not giving her any special treatment, implying that she would have gotten it somewhere else. I doubt she thought it was cool while her ass was in jail.

Tatum also claims that she’s still sober, because she was buying drugs for the first time. So Tatum says she’s thankful she was arrested and didn’t actually relapse.

“I’m still sober!” she announced to me, two hours after being sprung from a night in jail, rumpled but far more rested and relaxed than I might look after a warm shower and heavy doses of caffeine. “Just when I was about to change that and wreck my life, the cops came and saved me!” Tatum crowed. “I was saved by the bell, by the guys in the Seventh Precinct.”

[From the New York Post]

Tatum once again blames her almost-relapse on the death of her 16-year-old Scottish terrier. She claims she was doing everything she was supposed to – visiting her psychiatrist, going to AA meetings daily – but that she just couldn’t handle the extreme grief she felt. She said she was wandering around aimlessly this weekend, without even intending to buy drugs, and then she did.

“One day, I’m walking aimlessly. I found myself doing the wrong thing.” Tatum, 44, told me how, in a funk, she met Alan Garcia, 33, “a drug addict who was panhandling,” and bought coke. I told her she was charged with buying crack, too.

“It’s both?” she asked, surprised. “I didn’t even know what I was buying!”

Tatum wants to reach out to the dealer, who was charged with a felony, while she faces a misdemeanor drug-possession charge. “I’m going to try to see if I can help him. He’s not a drug dealer. He’s a panhandler who sold drugs. I’m going to talk to my lawyer.”

[From the New York Post]

“It’s both?” Oh I love that. How naive and precious you are, Tatum O’Neal. I think that was the point in the article when I no longer bought it. Up until then I was still trying to go with the whole “the death of my dog made me want to use crack,” thing, even though I couldn’t imagine going there myself. But everyone has a right to their own emotions, and I’m sure some people are that attached to their pets. And I even tried to go with the whole, “I’m just wandering around, thinking about buying a soda, and I bought some crack instead,” idea. But to pretend to not even know what she was buying or know what she was charged with is utterly ridiculous. Come on, you had to find out from a Post reporter? Too far.

Get this. Tatum, who’s never been in jail before, is glad she was busted. “It was a shock to me, and a huge wakeup call. I’m eternally grateful, as sort of grim as the situation was, that I didn’t get to do what my disease was telling me to do. I’m still going to get my year on July 10!”

How can you not love her?

Eighteen hours behind bars wasn’t so bad. “I slept on a mattress with a couple of ladies because I was tired,” she giggled. “And they were nice! And I thought the thing that was cool about New York, no special treatment. No special cell.

[From the New York Post]

I really hope Tatum gets better, and does whatever it takes to keep her addiction under control. I’m guessing part of that will involve getting real with herself, which I don’t think she’s done yet.

Here’s Tatum O’Neal at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 25th. PR Photos doesn’t list the people with her, but they look like her three kids with ex-husband John McEnroe. Images thanks to PR Photos.

Tatum O’Neil is like the female equivalent of Robert Downey Jr. The former child star has been battling substance abuse for years and comes from a family that’s filled with similar problems, including her half brothers, Griffin and Patrick, both of whom have served jail time for drug related charges. O’Neil lost custody of her children with tennis star John McEnroe due to her heroin addiction, and in the years since has worked hard to clean up her act for her kids’ sake. But it looks like she has slipped up again- big time. The actress was arrested in New York over the weekend for buying crack and cocaine.

TMZ has confirmed that Tatum O’Neal has been popped by the NYPD for allegedly scoring crack and coke last night.

The NYPD tells TMZ that O’Neal was “observed” allegedly buying crack on the Lower East Side near her apartment there. She was charged with criminal possession of a controlled substance and was held at the Seventh Precinct downtown. We’re told that she’s waiting to see the judge now to be arraigned at Central Booking in Lower Manhattan.

Tatum has admitted to battling drug addiction for years. Her rep couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

[From TMZ]

Hopefully, Tatum will get treatment and get back on track. But with the courts involved, her visitation with her children could be at stake. I don’t know how she could risk that over drugs- but then again, I’m not an addict.

I have liked Tatum since she was a kid in movies like “Little Darlings” and “The Bad News Bears.” I read her memoir, and her childhood sounds like it was no picnic- she says she was molested by one of her father’s friends, and both her parents had substance abuse problems. Not that these are excuses for her drug addiction, but there’s a definite pattern of drug use that she grew up around- as evidenced by the similar problems her brothers have had.

Note by Celebitchy: The Today Show had more details this morning. (This is nearly verbatim from the report below.) “She initially told police she was researching a role as a junkie, but when they found crack and cocaine on her she said this was her first relapse. She was arrested three blocks from her house during a drug sweep of the area, and was seen handing money over to a man thought to be a dealer. She was found with two dime bags and a crack pipe. She was arrested with the dealer and will face a misdemeanor charge of criminal possession of a controlled substance.”

Tatum O’Neal is shown with her daughter Emily McEnroe on 4/25/08 at the Tribeca Film Festival, thanks to WENN.

I get kind of annoyed with celebrities chiming in with obvious statements like “Britney needs help with her addiction” “Lindsay needs help with her addiction” “Paris needs help with her drinking…” wait, am I starting to see a pattern here? Are a lot of starlets struggling with addiction? Huh. Anyway it’s really annoying when they think they’re making these profound statements that are really helpful, but Tatum O’Neal is a big exception, because she’s been in Britney’s shoes – in fact their case are eerily similar. O’Neal lost her kids to husband John McEnroe - a guy who was generally considered a douche bag (major temper, etc) – after she became addicted to heroin.

“Tatum O’Neal, who’s led her own troubled path on the road of motherhood, says that Britney Spears must get treatment and shield her children from media attention. She ‘needs to be in recovery and get her disease of addiction together,’ said O’Neal, 43, who can empathize with the 25-year-old pop star. ‘I relate to her and feel really sad for her,’ O’Neal told Entertainment Tonight in a interview to air Thursday.

“‘I did everything that she doesn’t want to do,’ said the Oscar-winning actress (for 1973’s Paper Moon, which costarred her father, Ryan O’Neal). ‘I did the drug testing … It was very humbling, but I wanted those kids back.’ In 1986, O’Neal wed tennis superstar John McEnroe, and the couple had three children: Kevin, Sean, and Emily. The couple divorced in 1992 and remain openly hostile toward one another. When O’Neal became a heroin addict in 1995, McEnroe took custody of their kids, something he has retained ever since. ‘Not being able to see my kids is like part of me is missing,’ a recovering O’Neal told PEOPLE in 2002. ‘Part of my soul is missing. Hopefully she will figure [it] out,’ O’Neal told ET. ‘But it’s going to be hard and she will do it publicly and that sucks.’”

[From People]

I will point out that Britney is pretty strongly courting the publicity (I mean she actually handed her kids over to Kevin Federline in a convertible, so the paparazzi could get lot of super-clear photos.) But I think O’Neal’s advice is really clear, and spot-on: Britney is going to have to humble herself. She’s going to have to do what the judge says. It seems like she’s locked in a parent/child power struggle, except Brit is the kid and the judge is her parent. Whatever he tells her to do, she does the opposite just to show him that she doesn’t have to listen. And while that’s never a good idea in a court of law, when your kids are at stake it really says something about you. I keep wondering what it’ll take Britney to realize she needs to let her ego go, but I’m still not sure what that’ll be.

Picture Note by Jaybird: Here’s Tatum with her son Kevin McEnroe. Images thanks to PR Photos.