Inside drug, sex fuelled life of Carrie's dad

Actress Carrie Fisher and her father, Eddie Fisher. Photos / Getty

Carrie Fisher's father, singer Eddie Fisher, did drugs in front of his kids and passed on a "genetic predisposition for addiction, infidelity and financial idiosyncrasy," according to an explosive new memoir.

Carrie's half-sister, Hollywood actor Joely Fisher, has opened up about the family's struggles in her new memoir, Growing Up Fisher: Musings, Memories and Misadventures.

Eddie Fisher and Joely Fisher during a sighting at Marcello Restaurant - November 3, 1987. Photo / Getty

Joely, 50, described one incident where she saw her father take drugs and also claimed he asked his daughters to "show me your tits".

"I had a baby's eye view of my own father tying off, prepping a needle and injecting drugs into his veins," Joely said, according to an extract published by the Daily Mail.

"He loved the fame, the feeling of being Eddie Fisher."

Writing in Growing Up Fisher, Joely said she also "had issues with addiction my whole life, but I also, for some reason, never succumbed to it...meaning, I am still alive".

1954: Singer Eddie Fisher talks with actress Debbie Reynolds between performances at the Cocoanut Grove. Photo / Getty

She described addiction as a "family trait" and said surviving it was a "personal victory of the most epic proportions".

"You don't get addicted to something just because you're exposed to it," Joely wrote.

"My father was predisposed to be an addict; so was my mother; so were we all.

Eddie Fisher. Photo / Getty

"I think the reason you drink, smoke, eat, shop is that you're trying to quiet that inner critic, that feeling of worthlessness, or lack, or inadequacy."

Joely, whose mother is Hawaiian Eye actor Connie Stevens Fisher, also recounted her father's romantic entanglements.

He famously divorced Carrie's mother Debbie Reynolds only to marry Elizabeth Taylor three and a half hours later in 1959, Daily Mail reports.