Kelly Osbourne opened up about her struggle with addiction, admitting that her drug use began when she was prescribed a post-tonsillitis-surgery pain killer at 13 years old.
“They ended up having to give me some crazy surgery, and then after that, they gave me Vicodin, and that was all I needed,” The Osbournes star said while appearing on Red Table Talk.
“Vicodin to a 13-year-old,” host Jada Pinkett Smith responded, in awe. “I cannot believe that,” echoed Smith’s mother and Red Table Talk co-host Adrienne Banfield-Norris.
Osbourne went on to explain that, at the time, she was extremely insecure, grappling with perpetual thoughts of self-loathing and doubt.
“Every voice in my head [was] like, ‘You’re fat, you’re ugly, you’re not good enough, no one likes you, you don’t deserve this, people only like you ’cause who your parents are,’” she said. But, when she took Vicodin, “every single voice was silenced. It felt like…a hug.”
It didn’t take long for her dependency on prescribed medication for confidence to teeter into dangerous territory. “Very quickly, it went from Vicodin to Percocet, from Percocet to…to heroin, eventually, because it was cheaper,” she said. “I got caught buying it, and then the very next day, my mom put me in rehab.”
The former MTV star also confessed that she was very infrequently sober at the height of her addiction. “I never went to work sober,” she said. “I never went to dinner sober. I didn’t do anything sober.”
“My drug of choice is alcohol,” she said. “I love it. And I don’t love it because I like the way it makes me feel. I like that it makes me not feel. I want to be numb to everything.”
Today, Osbourne is no longer drinking, but taking recovery one step at a time. Healing isn’t linear, something of which she is well aware: In April 2021, Osbourne relapsed after four years sans alcohol, inspired by a couple drinking champagne by the pool.
“I was, like, ‘Oh, I can do that, too,’” she recalled. “And then the next day, I had two glasses, and then the day after that it was bottles.”
“Like full bottles to yourself?” co-host Willow Smith clarified.
“Yeah,” Osbourne said. “Couldn’t even hold back.”
This isn’t the first time Osbourne has acknowledged her addiction — or relapse. In April, she took to Instagram to acknowledge what happened, assuring her followers that she’d learned from the slip-up.
“This is a little hard for me to talk about, but I’ve always promised you that I will always be honest with you about where I’m at and what’s going on in my road to recovery,” she posted to her stories. “I relapsed. Not proud of it. But I am back on track.”
We’re so grateful that Kelly Osbourne is sharing story. Her honesty can and will help so many people experiencing similar issues, and will ultimately assist in eroding the stigma around addiction and sobriety. We couldn’t be prouder!
Before you go, check out some of our favorite mental health apps that are useful and actually affordable:
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