Mamdani picks activist Tamika Mallory with past pill addiction
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New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s pick for his community safety transition team struggled with a spiraling pill addiction, at one point claiming he was taking as many as 20 to 30 pills a day.
Tamika Mallory, the activist who will help shape public safety policy for the new mayor, revealed she struggled with a serious addiction to prescription drugs before checking into rehab earlier this year.
He opened up about his addiction while promoting his memoir: I Lived to Tell the Story and how he relied on pills while maintaining a leadership position at the beginning of national protest movements.
Mallory also turned to former NBA All-Star player Jayson Williams, who now works in recovery and trauma services, for help.
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Activist Tamika Mallory is joining the transition team for Zohran Mamdani, who was elected mayor after overcoming a serious prescription drug addiction detailed in her recent memoirs. (Marcus Ingram/Getty Images)
In an interview on “Breakfast Club“He recalled calling Williams, pretending to seek guidance from a friend, and Williams confronting him and urging him to get real help.
“When I first contacted NBA All Star Jayson Williams, you knew he was on the mend after everything we knew he had been through,” he said.
“My first contact with him was, ‘Hey, my friend is going through something, what can you tell me?’ I said.”
“He let me do this twice, two or three calls. On the third call he said: ‘Sister, I already know what this is. Everything is fine.'”
In another appearance in February “The Angie Martinez ShowMallory attributed the beginning of her addiction to stress, public pressure and a friend’s offer of Xanax.
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Mamdani tapped activist Tamika Mallory for the role of advising the community safety transition team. (Paras Griffin/Getty Images)
“I cut them in half and started taking them. Then I found out Percocets were even better, so I started taking those,” Mallory said.
“Then I was taking 20 to 30 pills a day. One night I was sitting at dinner with a group of girls and this young lady had this as well. She said: ‘You know, it’s a dark hole and it’s not getting any brighter, it’s just getting worse. So you’ve got to stop.'”
“But at the time I was like, ‘Wow, I’m sleeping. I’m feeling a little better. And it was like, you’re not actually doing well at all.'”
According to Mallory, the ability to function normally while on the pill made addiction especially dangerous.
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New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Wednesday announced new executive orders that could be seen as a challenge to Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. (Fox News Digital/Deirdre Heavey)
“Pill addiction is real because it is silent,” he told “The Breakfast Club,” noting that people can appear stable while “taking pills to numb themselves.”
Mallory, a single mother whose son’s father was murdered in 2001, eventually checked into rehab and told her story.
“When I started seeing how many people had the same experience, I knew it was time to publish this story,” he said.
Mallory’s new role at Mamdani comes through the activist group Until Freedom, which she co-founded.
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Mysonne Linen served seven years in prison for armed robbery in the taxi driver robberies of the late 1990s. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images))
Mallory, civil rights attorney Angelo Pinto and rapper-turned-activist Mysonne Linen will serve on the incoming mayor’s public safety and criminal justice transition teams, the organization announced.
“This is a testament to our decades of work advocating on behalf of Black and brown communities and our expertise in gun violence prevention, legislative advocacy, and criminal justice reform,” the group said on Instagram.
“We’re building something different.”
Mallory, a Harlem native, was a prominent figure in left-wing activism; he has often aligned himself with movements to abolish the police, and once expressed his hope that society “might one day abolish the police.”
His ties to Louis Farrakhan also came under scrutiny; the anti-Semitism controversy at the Women’s March; His criticisms of the ADL and his anti-Israel remarks.
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Mallory also faced criticism for her comments about white women in politics and a social media post praising Fidel Castro.
She rose to national prominence as co-chair of the Women’s March, but left office after Mallory repeatedly praised Farrakhan.
Fox News Digital has reached out to Zohran Mamdani and Until Freedom for comment.
