What Happened to Jeremy Miller? Helping Others Get Sober in 2026

If you watched ABC on Tuesday nights in the late ’80s, you knew Ben Seaver — the smart-mouthed middle kid who got the punchline in nearly every scene of “Growing Pains.” Jeremy Miller played him from age eight to sixteen, growing up in front of a national audience. Then the show ended, and Miller mostly vanished from screens. What followed was harder than anything the Seavers ever dealt with in twenty-two minutes. Here’s where Jeremy Miller is in 2026.

01Profile

That “chef” line in the occupation row isn’t a hobby, by the way. It became the thing that kept him afloat when acting didn’t — and, briefly, the thing that nearly sank him.

02The Rise: Growing Up as Ben Seaver

A sitcom that defined an era

“Growing Pains” premiered on ABC in 1985 and ran for seven seasons, ending in 1992. The premise was gently revolutionary for its time: Dr. Jason Seaver (Alan Thicke) moves his psychiatry practice into the house so his wife Maggie (Joanna Kerns) can go back to work as a journalist. Around them orbited three kids — heartthrob Mike (Kirk Cameron), studious Carol (Tracey Gold), and Ben, the youngest boy, played by Miller.

Miller was eight when the show started and sixteen when it wrapped. That’s not a job; that’s an entire childhood spent on a soundstage, hitting marks and landing laugh lines while everyone watching at home measured his growth spurts season by season.

The kid who got the laugh

Ben Seaver was written as the family’s comic relief, and Miller had genuinely sharp timing for a child performer — the kind that can’t really be coached. He won Young Artist Awards for the role. He also worked outside the show, most memorably voicing Linus van Pelt in Peanuts animated specials including “Happy New Year, Charlie Brown!” (1986) and “Snoopy!!! The Musical” (1988). For a stretch of the late ’80s, a lot of American kids heard Jeremy Miller’s voice more often than they realized.

He later returned to Ben for two reunion movies, in 2000 and 2004, reuniting the cast that had, by then, become something closer to family than colleagues.

03After the Cameras Stopped

The show ended when Miller was fifteen going on sixteen, and the structure that had defined his entire life simply evaporated. He has been unusually candid about what happened next.

In interviews and in his book, Miller has said his relationship with alcohol began astonishingly early — he has stated publicly that he started drinking at age four, a disclosure that reframes the whole story. What looked from outside like a post-fame spiral had roots that predated the fame entirely.

1985Joins "Growing Pains" as Ben Seaver at age eight.
1986–1988Voices Linus van Pelt in Peanuts animated specials.
1992"Growing Pains" ends after seven seasons. Miller is 15.
2000 / 2004Returns for two "Growing Pains" reunion television movies.
2008His catering company collapses in the financial crisis, leaving him, in his words, "on the brink of homelessness."
2011Begins sustained recovery after treatment involving a naltrexone implant.
2016Alan Thicke dies at 69.
2019Publishes "When I Wished upon a Star" with Dr. Brandon Lane Phillips.

By his own account, the drinking eventually became a full-time occupation. He has described a routine of starting each day at the liquor store and drinking until he passed out. Speaking to Fox News in a 2022 interview about the lowest stretch of his addiction, he recalled the night that finally turned things around: “I pounded a half pint of vodka, probably would have drank a lot more, and I got pulled over for a DUI, and from that point on, I got back into working on my recovery.”

That’s a hard thing to say out loud in public. Miller has said it repeatedly, in detail, for more than a decade now — which is arguably the most important fact in this entire article.

04The Rescue and the Road Back

What actually worked

Miller has said that the conventional routes — inpatient and outpatient care, meditation, holistic therapy, the twelve steps — didn’t hold for him. What did work, according to his own repeated accounts, was medical: a naltrexone implant, a concentrated form of the drug placed under the skin to blunt cravings. He has described the effect as nearly immediate, comparing it to a light switch being turned off.

He dates his recovery to 2011. He has been open that it wasn’t a clean line — he has referred to stumbles along the way — which is a more honest version of the recovery story than most public figures offer.

The phone call to Alan Thicke

The other rescue was human, and Miller only told the full version of it publicly in recent years. When his catering company went under after the 2008 crash, he found himself with a family to support and no income. He made a phone call to his television father.

In an August 2025 appearance on the Youngstown Studios podcast with Scott Austalosh — an interview picked up by Fox News, TV Insider and others — Miller described what Alan Thicke did next. Thicke, he said, “was on the phone for the next two days, making connections and doing everything he could to try and help me,” setting up interviews with restaurateur friends in Santa Barbara and elsewhere so Miller could put his chef training to work. Kirk Cameron, who played his older brother Mike, also stepped in to help during the same period.

Alan was one of the most caring, generous, and loving men you could ever know. He really did fill that father role. He was my other dad. — Jeremy Miller on Alan Thicke, Youngstown Studios podcast, August 2025

Thicke died in 2016, at 69. Listening to Miller talk about him now, nearly a decade later, it’s clear the on-screen father-son relationship was not entirely a performance.

05What He Is Doing Now

Recovery advocacy and the book

Miller’s main public work these days isn’t acting — it’s advocacy. He speaks publicly about alcoholism and recovery, and has served as a patient advocate connected to recovery programs, mentoring people going through what he went through.

In 2019 he co-authored “When I Wished upon a Star: From Broken Homes to Mended Hearts” with Dr. Brandon Lane Phillips, a pediatric cardiologist. The origin story of that partnership is genuinely lovely: Phillips, as a child with a serious heart condition, was granted a wish through the Starlight Children’s Foundation to visit the “Growing Pains” set and meet Miller. Decades later they wrote a dual memoir together. Miller has continued to promote and discuss the book in interviews, including a 2025 appearance on the Pop Culture Retro podcast.

The convention circuit and the kitchen

Miller keeps a steady schedule of comic con and collectibles-show appearances, doing signings, photo ops and panels — the working rhythm of a lot of beloved ’80s and ’90s TV actors. His official site also advertises private cooking classes for small groups, filmed cooking segments, hosting and emcee work, and virtual meet-and-greets. The chef skills that Alan Thicke helped him monetize in 2009 are still part of how he makes a living.

Still part of the Seaver family

He remains warmly connected to the show that made him. In March 2026 he posted a throwback photo to the episode in which baby sister Chrissy was born, captioning it “When you realize you’re not the baby anymore! #throwbackthursday” and tagging his former castmates. He’s married to Joanie Miller and has three stepsons.

06Summary

Jeremy Miller’s story doesn’t have the tidy arc of a comeback. He didn’t return to television in triumph. What he did instead was survive something that kills a lot of people, talk about it honestly, and spend the years since helping others do the same.

Jeremy Miller in 2026: Quick Facts

Played Ben Seaver on "Growing Pains" from 1985 to 1992, ages 8 through 16
Also voiced Linus van Pelt in Peanuts animated specials in the late 1980s
Has spoken publicly about alcoholism, saying he began drinking at age four
Dates his sustained recovery to 2011, following treatment with a naltrexone implant
His catering business collapsed after the 2008 crash; Alan Thicke and Kirk Cameron helped him find work
Co-authored the 2019 memoir "When I Wished upon a Star" with Dr. Brandon Lane Phillips
Now works as a recovery advocate, chef and convention-circuit regular; married to Joanie Miller

There’s a version of the child-star story that ends in a tabloid headline, and for a while Jeremy Miller looked like he was headed there. Instead he made a phone call, took the help, got sober, and turned the whole ugly middle chapter into something useful for other people. Ben Seaver always got the last laugh. Turns out Jeremy Miller did too — it just took him a lot longer, and it cost a lot more.