Tatum O’Neal expressed her gratitude to the New York City police officers who caught her with cocaine and prevented her from harming herself in an interview with a newspaper columnist.

She told a reporter for the Post, “I’m still sober! Just when I was about to change that and wreck my life, the cops came and saved me. I was saved by the bell, by the guys in the Seventh Precinct.”

According to the actress, the loss of her 16-year-old dog set off a downhill spiral for her, which culminated in her Sunday night drug search through Manhattan’s Lower East Side. ”It triggered that my mother passed away [from addiction] in ’98. My father [actor Ryan O’Neal] and I are estranged.”

During a regular drug raid in her Lower East Side neighborhood on Sunday night, she was taken into custody. Two bags of cocaine were reportedly discovered by police in her trousers pocket.

She spent the night in prison on Monday before being released on her own recognizance and given a return date of July 28. O’Neal, 44, appeared in court dressed in a black tank top and black jeans, without makeup

O’Neal, who was charged with criminal possession of a controlled substance, turned down a settlement that called for a guilty plea to disorderly conduct in return for a two-day drug treatment program, according to the prosecution.

She was sold narcotics by a panhandler, who has been charged with a felony.

Police claim that the actress, who wrote a book about her battle with addiction called A Paper Life in 2004, purchased both crack and powder cocaine, but O’Neal told the Washington Post that she was unaware that she was purchasing crack. ”It’s both?” she asked the Post reporter. ”I didn’t even know what I was buying!”

She added, ”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.”

O’Neal, who is the ex-wife of John McEnroe and the daughter of Ryan O’Neal, has openly discussed her battles with cocaine and heroin addiction. She claimed to have recently been sober and to have been attending daily 12-step recovery meetings.

She admitted to Peyser that she had looked for narcotics Sunday night because she was grieving the loss of her Scottish terrier of 16 years old, but she did not take the drugs. She expressed her desire to mark July 10 as the anniversary of her recovery.

“I couldn’t get out of it. I was going to my psychiatrist. I was doing everything I could do. … One day, I’m walking aimlessly. I found myself doing the wrong thing,” she stated.

Peyser was assured by O’Neal that spending 18 hours in jail wasn’t too horrible.

“I slept on a mattress with a couple of ladies because I was tired. … And I thought the thing that was cool about New York, no special treatment. No special cell. It wasn’t that horrible. I think it’s worse for the people that don’t have a lawyer to get them out.”

She received an Oscar for the 1973 film “Paper Moon” and now appears in the TV series “Rescue Me.”

Her career went off track at some point, but in recent years, she has revived it. She plays the drunken Maggie Gavin in the drama “Rescue Me,” which is now in production for its fifth and sixth seasons on the FX cable channel.

In her book “A Paper Life,” published in 2004, she discussed her drug problems.