“To cut a long story short things got really dark. I gave up on everything in my life but most of all I gave up on myself.”
When Demi Lovato ended up hospitalized last month for an apparent overdose, one celebrity to speak out and support her was Kelly Osbourne.
Osbourne has been public in the past about her own battles with substance use, but she only recently spoke out about her own relapse and celebrating one year of sobriety in a post on Instagram.
“To cut a long story short things got really dark,” she wrote. “I gave up on everything in my life but most of all I gave up on myself. Life on life’s terms became too much for me to handle. The only way I knew how to function was to self-medicate and go from project to project so I never had to focus on what was really going on with me.”
Osbourne thanked her family for the role they have played in the past year of her sobriety.
“I want to take this time to thank my brother @jackosbourne who answered the phone to me one year ago today and picked me up from where I had fallen yet again without judgment,” she wrote. “He has held my hand throughout this whole process. Thank you to my Mum and Dad for never giving up on me.”
In 2009, Osbourne spoke to People about her battles, beginning at the age of 13.
“I had my tonsils taken out, and they gave me liquid Vicodin,” she told People. “I found, when I take this, people like me. I’m having fun, I’m not getting picked on. It became a confidence thing.”
In the next few years, Osbourne says she started seeking out pills from friends and doctors. In 2002, during filming of The Osbournes, she says she was self-medicating every day to manage her anxiety and “not be me.”
In 2004, People reports, Osbourne’s parents sent her to Promises Treatment Center in Malibu. Then, in 2005, she went to treatment again. For the following three years she lived in London, with what she tells People were high and low points.
When she returned to Los Angeles in 2008, Osbourne says she hit an ultimate low and an intense relapse. When her friends and family stepped in and demanded she get help, she says she was relieved.
“I knew if I didn’t go, I would die,” she told People. “I thought, ‘Thank God someone’s going to make this pain go away.’”
While it isn’t clear how long of a stretch of sobriety Osbourne had previous to this relapse, she says she is now content with where she is and where her sobriety stands.
“I still don’t know who the fuck I am or what the fuck I want but I can wholeheartedly confess that I’m finally at peace with myself and truly starting to understand what true happiness is,” she concluded in her Instagram post.
