Fierce (34 page)

The other big problem was that I was completely out of my old social circle. I’ve got friends there, but not like when I lived there. I left when I was twenty and, even though it had been little more than three years, they’re life-changing years. I didn’t fit in any more.

Girls in LA have a different routine; they wake up at 2 p.m. and their biggest decision of the day is what outfit they are going to wear to lunch at Fred Segal. I find that all so boring!

When I’m in London, I get up, put a massive coat over my pyjamas, roll up the bottoms so you can’t see them and put on my UGG boots. I then walk to my little row of shops. I know everyone there. I know all the staff in Tesco, the ladies in the florist’s and the butcher. I go and find them all and we have a chat. I buy the papers and then I walk back to my house. There, I feel like I’m part of a community.

In LA there is no interaction. Everyone gets in their big cars, drives to the supermarket or the mall, gets out, does their shopping, gets back in the car and goes home again. Or they’ll get in their car, go to the gym and come home. Or they’ll fucking get in their car, go to their plastic surgeon for some Botox and then come home.

There’s very much a culture in LA – especially when you’re the child of a celebrity – that is, ‘I’m famous give me a show.’ Meanwhile, I just think to myself, ‘I’m another celebrity’s daughter, why bother?’ I don’t feel like that in London though. I’m proud of the work I’ve done there. I’m proud of the jobs I’ve had.

We started recording the show at the beginning of the November, which was a mixture of doing stuff in front of a live audience and travelling around America. We did this sketch where we met other Osbourne families and Dad and I went to work in a drive-thru which was hilarious. Dad started throwing fries at people when they got to the window to collect their takeaway.

I thought it was a big risk doing the show, but I was glad to be doing it. It was scary at times because we didn’t know what the public reaction would be. I was out of my comfort zone. I was away from my boyfriend Luke and my best friends. Luke was visiting as often as he could, but he had work commitments too. Everything that had been my life in London – that I had fought so hard for – felt like it was slipping away.

And so the only thing I felt like I had control of was whether I got high again. I didn’t start using straight away. I was trying to fight it for a long time. At the beginning, I would take painkillers, but I could function. I’d take a couple to take the edge off feeling anxious after we’d finished recording. But like with any addiction, my body started to crave more and more pills to get the same effect. It became ridiculous and I was soon back on the phone to my dealer again.

Even I wasn’t prepared for the speed of my downward spiral. It was that quick, it just completely took over. Addiction can be a slow or quick progression. For me, when I was in LA, it was very quick and very painful, and it was so scary. We were having a break from filming the show in the middle of December and I wasn’t leaving the house, I was living in my bedroom. I was not showering, I was not brushing my
teeth and the only relationship I had was with the pizza delivery man. I’d get up, open the door, take the pizza and go back into my bedroom. People probably thought I was fucking dating him. I wasn’t. I just couldn’t be bothered to do anything other than pick up the phone and order food, which was easy.

The only other time I was getting up was to take more drugs so I could fall back to sleep again. I was trying to block everything out.

I’m not a social user – I never have been. I’m not one of those people who walks into a club and starts handing out pills like they’re penny sweets from a goody bag to everyone around me. My addiction is a very lonely and miserable place. I isolate myself. And that’s exactly what I was doing. I was completely isolating myself from everyone who loved and cared about me. Drug addiction isn’t always about snorting cocaine or taking an Ecstasy tablet before you walk into a nightclub, having a great night and then getting up for work the next morning. Drug addiction is a tough place to be in – it’s not fun.

W
E
were due in the studio one day to finish bits of recording. It was a massive struggle for me to get in and it was the first time I’d used while we were filming. But I needed to take something because I’d been spending all day at home.

We were only meant to have been in the studio for half an hour, but it dragged on. One minute I was sitting in a chair on stage, the next minute I’d nodded off. I’d literally fallen asleep in front of everyone – my family and the production crew. I woke up and they were all just looking at me.

I didn’t bother to come up with an excuse. I had lied so much and I was so fed up with myself that I just knew I had to get some help. I’d become so egotistical again and I didn’t like the person that the drugs were turning me into. I hated everyone. I was so angry at myself. I didn’t want to admit it and I felt such shame. The thing that frightened me the most was how quick my downfall was. I’d started using mid-December and I was on my way to rehab on 19 January.

I spoke to my mum. I knew it was the right thing to do. The fact that I didn’t die during that month is a miracle. It was like I was suicidal. I wasn’t sitting there with my pink Venus razor blade, holding it to my wrist. That isn’t me. But it was more like I was taking enough pills to kill any human being. I was waking up in the morning and tapping my body to check it was all there. I simply couldn’t believe I’d survived. But because I’d built up such a tolerance I had been lucky. I had been really, really lucky. Don’t think I don’t know that.

A
FTER
the incident in the studio, I had a chat with my mum and dad. The next day, a really lovely woman from the Hazelden Alcohol and Drug Rehabilitation Center in Newberg, Oregon, came to collect me. I didn’t know what I was packing. At that point I just wanted to fall asleep and not wake up.

In my head I was thinking, ‘I can’t believe I have to deal with this again.’ We had to get on a plane to fly to the centre and I was just sitting there feeling like absolute shit.

I couldn’t believe that I was going to have to go around and tell everyone, ‘Yeah I’m OK now, but I fucked up – again.’ It felt like my life had been
Groundhog Day
since I was sixteen.

I knew I was about to learn more about myself. That was the positive thing and it was what I was trying to concentrate on as I sat on the plane.

A
NNOYED
doesn’t even come near to how I felt when I walked into Hazelden that afternoon though. It is tucked away in the countryside – a white building that sits in twenty-three acres of secluded land. It’s surrounded by fir trees and if it wasn’t for the fact it’s a rehab facility, it would be a nice place to go on holiday.

I felt sheer and utter self-hate and disappointment knowing that the only reason I was walking in there was because something I had done sucked. It really, really sucked. For the first two days I had to
undergo a medical detox. They took all my possessions off me – all I had was the pyjamas I was wearing. I was in a room that had two beds, a bathroom and a TV. I was on my own in there for three days. I only ever saw another person when someone came in every two hours to check my blood pressure, check that I was taking the medicine they had given me to take off the edge off my detox and make sure I was drinking fluids.

I hated it. I was lying on my bed and I couldn’t move. I was throwing up, shaking and sweating. My bones were shaking, I was in such a bad way. It was horrible. I felt horrible. The night sweats were the worst. I couldn’t stop shaking and I was literally soaking wet as the drugs left my system.

A
FTER
three days they gave me my luggage back and I was allowed to have a shower. It was so good to get out of those pyjamas. I was then moved to room which I shared with another patient. From the moment I opened my eyes in the morning, the doctors and nurses kept me busy. I’d get up, do my medication, and then I would shower, have breakfast, a meeting, lunch, then another meeting. It was the same for everyone in there.

The women were segregated from the men. If you even talked to a man you would be kicked out. That wasn’t a problem for me. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. Some of the people in there were being treated for sex addiction, so we had to be mindful of what we wore and keep covered up. But who wants to go into rehab and dress like a slut? I don’t fucking get it. But some of the women were like, ‘I want to wear
this tube top and I don’t care.’ I couldn’t understand who they were trying to look sexy for. They were in rehab, for fuck’s sake.

In the first week, I’d wake up every day and I would see the newspapers laid out on the side and there would be an article on me and how I was a drug addict. People wanted to read newspapers in there. They couldn’t make exceptions for me – why should they? Catching the headlines was horrendous though. It was a massive reality-check and it made it so much harder for me. I’d expected the papers to write about it – I wasn’t being precious. I was the one who had gone into rehab. Going into a facility is humiliating enough without having a whole bunch of people remind you every day. But there was nothing I could do.

In that first week I could speak to people outside, so I called Luke. It was lovely to hear his voice. In the last week, I had family therapy and Mum, Dad and Luke came. Seeing them and having them there really helped me.

My mum has had major issues with admitting that I am a drug addict. Also, this was the first time that my parents had ever come to the family therapy sessions that you have when you’re in rehab. They had never wanted to do them before in the way that the institution wanted them to. In many ways, I can understand why. There had been times in the past when Mum couldn’t come because she had prior work commitments. I understood that she couldn’t just drop everything because I had suddenly decided I needed help, even though she had been trying to help me for years.

The thing that got me, though, was when they had refused to do the family sessions. Mum said she didn’t want us airing our dirty laundry
in front of people. There was me sitting there thinking, ‘We did a reality TV show!’

But this time Mum and Dad came and it really, really helped.

My dad feels terribly guilty about the fact that I am addicted to painkillers. He feels like it’s his fault that I am a drug addict because he’s a drug addict too. My mum also feels terribly guilty. She feels that she wasn’t a good parent and she let me down. She blames herself and says it’s her fault.

Do you have any idea how that makes me feel? It absolutely breaks my heart that my parents feel that way. It really does, and there is nothing I can do about it, and I think about it all the time. I can’t help it. My mum and dad shouldn’t feel that way. They really shouldn’t. What they’re thinking and saying simply isn’t true. My mum taught me right from wrong. I knew exactly what I was doing and there was nothing she could have done to have stopped me.

I was sixteen and old enough to know better. No one forced me to take them. They didn’t shove them in my mouth. I could make my own mind up. I’d also seen what my dad was like when I was growing up and so I knew better than anyone what drugs could do to individuals and families.

It was my choice and I took them.

I blame myself.

A
FTER
thirty days, I left rehab and flew back to be with my family in LA. I felt relieved that I had done it and that I no longer felt the pain I’d been suffering before I’d gone in. And, for the first time,
I felt very hopeful. I knew that I had been given another chance at my life, at my career – at happiness. I wanted to grab it.

If I think about relapsing again, it makes me want to cry. I worry about it, but I’m realistic. For the first time since I started taking painkillers when I was sixteen, I feel like I’ve learned my biggest lesson: there is a strong chance I will relapse. But because I recognise that, I almost feel like I’ve got the strength to fight it.

I think I was too caught up in pretending that I could be clean for ever before and that just put more pressure on me. I suppose I was in denial a lot of the time. Addiction doesn’t take a day off. With anything else in your life, like your job, you may have a good day or a bad day. But there is none of that with addiction. You have to fight it all the time. Now that I know that, I don’t feel so scared. I’m trying to put the right plans in place.

I wish. I wish with every fibre of my being. I really wish, more than anything that it was just as simple as me deciding that I don’t want to do drugs any more. If that was the case, I wouldn’t take them again. But it isn’t. It really isn’t.

For a normal person, that’s what they do – when they don’t want to do something any more, they stop doing it. But when you’re an addict, you can’t. I wish to God I could.

As much as I wish I didn’t relapse, as much as I wish I didn’t fall off the wagon, every time I relapse it’s that little bit more embarrassing. I have to pick myself up and have everyone know I’m back in the same position again. But I’ll fight it. I really will.