Cara Delevingne has opened up about her past drug use, saying that she used to think they helped her cope, but in fact they made her “sad and super depressed”.
The Suicide Squad and Paper Towns star has been sober for two years now and in a new interview with The Times, she has reflected on how drugs and alcohol had affected her life since childhood.
She spoke specifically about a family wedding in 2001: “I got drunk that day, I was eight,” she said. “What a crazy age to get drunk.”
“I woke up in my granny’s house in my bedroom with a hangover in a bridesmaid’s dress.”
She recalled how she had spent her time at the reception “nailing glasses of champagne”, and noted that she believes her unhealthy relationship with substances can be traced back to that day.
“I used to think drugs and alcohol helped me cope,” she added. “But they didn’t. They kept me sad and super depressed.”
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She said a series of photographs of her at an airport after Burning Man Festival in her socks was the wake-up call that she needed to turn things around.
“It was a stupid decision to go straight from a festival to work,” she said. “I should have waited a day. But it was going to happen to me anyway, there were plenty of photos out there of me looking wasted. Listen, I signed up for this, this is my job, it’s what I do. But without that would I be sober now?”
She continued that she feels like she has mastered her issues now and is grateful to Alcoholics Anonymous and the 12-step program.
“I feel like I’ve got my power back and I’m not being controlled by other things,” she said.
In March, Delevingne’s Hollywood Hills mansion caught on fire, leading to the collapse of its roof. The Studio City property became engulfed in a deep-seated blaze, which took 94 firefighters two hours to extinguish. Nobody was harmed in the incident.
The actor and model was not at home at the time, as she was completing her run as Sally Bowles in Cabaret at the Playhouse Theatre in London.
“Thank you from the bottom of my heart to the firefighters and people that have showed up to help,” Delevingne wrote in a post on Instagram at the time. She also shared a photo of her two cats with the caption: “My heart is broken today. I cannot believe it. Life can change in a blink of an eye so cherish what you have.”