NEW YORK — Tatum O’Neal told a newspaper columnist she is grateful to the New York City police officers who busted her for cocaine and saved her from herself.

“I’m still sober!” the 44-year-old actress told New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser in a phone call shortly after being released from custody Monday.

“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.”

O’Neal is due back in court July 28 to face a misdemeanor charge of possession of a controlled substance. She was arrested Sunday night during a routine drug sweep in her Lower East Side neighborhood.

— From wire reports