Cara Delevingne “wasn’t okay.”
The model and actress opened up in a cover story for Vogue about how childhood trauma led her to become addicted to drugs and alcohol before getting clean and sober.
Delevingne, who was very public Fall from grace in 2022Said his trauma comes from spending most of his childhood Caring for her bipolar and heroin addicted motherPandora, and many people believe her life was easy.
“In a way, a lot of people have looked at my childhood or my family and thought ‘she’s spoiled, there’s nepotism, she grew up with too much privilege’ which I did, don’t get me wrong,” 30-year-old For Vogue’s April cover story, released on Wednesday. “But life was not so easy for other reasons.”
The British actress said she was introduced to alcohol at the age of 7 at a family wedding.
“I woke up in my bedroom at my grandmother’s house with a hangover, in a bridesmaid dress,” Delevingne said. “I passed around champagne glasses.”
According to the “Suicide Squad” actress, by age 10, she was already taking sleeping pills to manage her insomnia.
He was also diagnosed with dyspraxia, a neurological disorder in the brain that results in lifelong impairments in motor, memory, judgment, processing and other cognitive skills. According to the Dyspraxia Foundation.
“It was the beginning of mental health issues and unintentional self-harm,” Delevingne said, noting that her seemingly normal childhood was not normal at all.
“And then as a teenager, it all came down. It was also when I started drinking and partying,” Delevingne confessed. “There was a need to escape and change my reality because I was just bombarded with big questions: ‘What am I doing here?’ ‘Who am I trying to be?’
It wasn’t until the Covid-19 lockdown that Delevingne started to spiral out of control.
“In the beginning, I was living with people in this Covid bubble in LA. We thought it would be a weeklong thing, and so it was fun,” said Delevingne, who was living with his then-girlfriend Ashley Benson. “And then I was alone, really alone… it was a low point.”
“Instead of really learning something new or taking the time to do something new, I became so miserable, wandering and partying. It was a very sad time indeed. “
As pandemic restrictions began to lift, Delevingne began to fall back into old habits.
“I’m classically good at avoiding things, I didn’t want to deal with my issues,” Delevingne said. “And these are the things I’ve been running from since childhood.”
Delevingne appeared in a six-part documentary on Hulu called “Planet Sex” — which explored sexuality and gender — and forced Delevingne to confront several personal demons.
“It was very personal and I didn’t really realize how personal it would be,” recalled Delevingne, who said she cried on set on the first day of filming.
“I really only learned how to show emotion when I was acting because I didn’t feel like I could feel those things. With ‘Planet Sex,’ I was initially very emotional in front of the camera. It was uncomfortable because it was like, ‘Oh my God, I have to be myself.’
However, tragedy struck while Delevingne was filming the show: Delevingne’s aunt, who cared for the actress more than her parents, passed away.
“When I heard he had died I had to process a lot of things because I hadn’t seen him since Christmas a year ago. I was really trying to put everything I had into the work, and every night I would come back from shooting and sit alone and cry, Delevingne said. “By the time I got to the Met Ball two weeks later, I was exhausted.”
He said that during the event, he was in constant pain Because of her eczema And after the incident, she said she became drunk.
“I went and blacked out afterwards. It was like, ‘What am I doing?'” the model said. “Later that day, I had to attend my grandmother’s funeral. It was terrible. “
“I always knew things would be different in my 30s,” Delevingne revealed. “Because the way I was living was not sustainable.”
According to the actress, she had planned an “Alice in Wonderland”-themed 29th-birthday party but when it came time for the party, Delevingne said she felt a sense of foreboding “inside a gently beating drum.” .
“There was a need to change, but I was fighting it a lot,” Delevingne explained.
“I was welcoming this new time but I was also sad. It was like a funeral for my past life, a farewell to an era. And so I decided I was going to party as hard as I could because it was the end.”
Things took an even further downward turn when Delevingne went to Burning Man after her party.
“There’s an element of feeling invincible when I’m on drugs,” she said. “I put myself in danger in those moments because I don’t care about my life.”
“I would climb anything and jump off things…it felt horrible,” Delevingne continued. “It’s scary for the people around you who love you.”
Several members of Delevingne’s family watched helplessly as she spun around.
“It was scary, we were desperate for something to change, but you can’t project it onto someone else,” said Melinda Stevens, Delevingne’s aunt. “There was a plan to do something about it, a lot of coordination with her sisters and close friends. We spent a lot of time with each other that summer, and it was hitting a pitch.
After Several paparazzi photos that show Delevingne looking scruffy were issued, The model’s friends gathered around her and urged her to get help.
“I love my friends so much, but it feels like a lot of times, they were shallow relationships just because I wasn’t honest about the things I was going through,” Delevingne confessed. “Since September, all I needed was support. I needed to start reaching out. And my old friends that I’ve known since I was 13, they all came and we started crying. They looked at me and said, ‘You deserve a chance at happiness.’ “
Delevingne said she has tried many “quick fixes” in the past but is now ready to make a full recovery.
“Before I was always into the quick-fix fix, going back a week or going on a course for trauma, say, and that helped for a minute, but it never really got to the nitty-gritty, deep stuff. did not arrive Delevingne said. “This time I realized that 12-step treatment was the best thing, and it was about not being ashamed of it. The community made a huge difference. Addiction has the opposite connection, and I really found that in the 12-step.
Delevingne said that she has experienced many highs and lows, however, she is still committed to the process.
“Obviously there are ups and downs in this process, but I’m starting to feel a lot. People want my story to be an after-school special where I just say, ‘Oh look, I was a drug addict, and now I’m sober and that’s it.’ And it’s not that simple,” Delevingne said. “It doesn’t happen overnight … Of course I want things to happen immediately – I think this generation especially, we want things to happen quickly – but I’ve got to dig deep.”
