Former child star Jeremy Miller has opened up about his battle with alcoholism, revealing he has been sober for over two years.

The Growing Pains star tells In Touch magazine he turned to alcohol to "suppress painful emotions" while he was dealing with "family stuff" in his 20s.

He says, "I definitely had to grow up faster, being a child star... but I'm not your classic child star gone bad. My problems didn't begin until well after the show.

"At my worst point, I'd wake up and rush to the store to pick up a couple of cans of malt liquor. By noon, I'd start working on a bottle of hard alcohol. I'd drink all day, then black out and pass out at night. It was horrible, absolutely horrible."

He finally decided to get clean when he realised how much his heavy drinking was upsetting his kids: "They were scared to be around me. That was the tipping point."

Miller hit the headlines last week (ends21Mar14) when two famous ex-girlfriends, Candace Cameron-Bure and Danica MCKellar, shared notes about their romances with him while competing on U.S. show Dancing With the Stars.

Cameron-Bure told MCKellar that Miller had ended his teenage fling with her to date The Wonder Years star, who, in turn, revealed she had shared her first kiss with the young stud.