I was a mother who took cocaine… until this shameful moment with my four-year-old daughter made me realise I’d crossed the line. I can still barely think about it: BRYONY GORDON
I’ll never forget the shameful moment my four-year-old daughter came into the kitchen asking for breakfast, only to find me still awake from the night before and very much still under the influence of all the cocaine I’d ingested as she slept upstairs in her bed.
I was trying to tidy up from my binge, when she appeared in her pink pyjamas asking for toast and the Trolls movie. I somehow scrambled a breakfast together, shoved her at the freshly-cleaned kitchen table with an iPad, and started trying to work out how on earth I was going to be a parent for the remainder of the day.
My husband was away for work (hence the wild behaviour in my house, which I would usually have kept to the pub) and I knew in that moment that I’d crossed a line there was no coming back from.
I ordered us a taxi to my mum’s house, where I broke down and told her I thought I was an addict. It was this event that ultimately led me to check into rehab, and over nine years later, it still fills me with a shame so deep I’ve had to stop writing this column several times to take some deep breaths and remind myself that we aren’t there anymore, and that my daughter is okay and hasn’t seen me high – or drunk – since.
So why mention it now? Because it all came flooding back to me when I watched the Katie Price documentary this week, and saw the heartbreaking interviews with her children Princess and Junior, as they recalled the chaos they endured as youngsters when their mother was taking cocaine.
‘I remember this one time I was in her bed, waiting for her to come back and I woke up at 3.30am to some loud noises and I see her come in the room,’ said Junior, who was just 13 at the time. ‘I’ll never forget the look on her face. She was obviously on stuff… I could see it in her eyes. It scared me because I’ve never seen my mum like that. Mum was on drugs and she couldn’t look after us and that’s the reality of it.’
Junior would go on to live with his dad, Peter Andre. ‘It made me feel like I wasn’t good enough because she wasn’t fixing herself for me, or us,’ he added. ‘Are we not good enough for you?’
His sentiments were echoed by his sister, Princess, who recalled that when she was only 11, her primary attachment to her mother was via a blanket that Price sprayed with her perfume. ‘I remember after school I used to go home and feel so lonely, I used to cuddle into the blanket and just cry.’
Katie Price’s new documentary, Katie Price: Nothing To Hide, sees her confront the devastating impact that her drug addiction had on her children
Junior and Princess Andre, who broke down in tears, said Price’s drug use made them question whether they were ‘good enough’ as children
These heartbreaking details will, of course, lead many to criticise Price, who has since got back on the straight and narrow, at least where drugs are concerned. She says that the way she affected her children ‘breaks my heart’. But I’m grateful for the family’s honesty, because it shines a light on a subject that few people talk about, and that’s the many children who live with a parent struggling with drugs and alcohol.
According to the most recent data, 478,000 children have a parent with problem alcohol or drug use. This huge number is partly why I talk so openly about my own shameful behaviour when my daughter was a toddler – because recovery is possible, and I really, really wish more women were aware of that.
When I was pregnant, I knew nothing about addiction. I genuinely thought that a baby would cure me of my hard-partying ways. It was a shock, then, when just a week after giving birth I found myself craving booze and drugs. I was so ashamed, I buried my dependency under layers and layers of denial.
I count myself lucky that my husband was a sober, present dad – as Peter Andre so clearly was – because had he been anything like me, I’m pretty sure social services would have taken our daughter from us. Similarly, I am so, so grateful to have been able to go to rehab, because recovery has gifted my daughter the mother she deserved all along.
There are many people who find it completely unfathomable that a woman might not be able to find the willpower to stop doing drugs after she’s had kids. To these people I’d like to say: lucky you, because you’ve clearly not had to encounter the misery of addiction.
It’s a remarkably common – and remarkably misunderstood – illness, one that thrives in the shame and stigma attached to it. When I got clean, I couldn’t believe the number of women I met who had almost identical stories to mine. Like me, they’d put off speaking to a GP or a therapist because of the fear their child might be taken away from them.
I remember hearing their stories and thinking, ‘If only I’d known you existed, I might have got help earlier.’ This is why I’ve repeated that unpleasant memory of utterly neglectful parenting, despite knowing full well people will judge me terribly for it – because there might be a woman out there who needs to know that she isn’t a bad person, just an ill one who sometimes makes bad choices because of that illness.
So let’s applaud Princess and Junior Andre for speaking so frankly about their childhood experiences, and Katie Price for not trying to minimise or deny what they went through. In doing so they send out a powerful message: that you can only tackle a problem by acknowledging it’s there in the first place.
Zendaya’s a goddess… but she must be melting!
Congratulations to Zendaya – not for her star turn in Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster The Odyssey, but for going to the London premiere in a frock that made her look like an actual Greek sculpture.
Hollywood star Zendaya stuns at the London premiere of The Odyssey in a Schiaparelli dress
The actress’s Schiaparelli couture dress was flown in on a private jet straight from the Paris catwalk it had appeared on that morning, and featured a breastplate that looked hotter than the Ithacan sun.
No wonder she changed into a free-flowing Valentino gown the moment she entered the cinema.
Who knew that Wimbledon had an on-site pharmacy? All the women hobbling along to it with aching feet, that’s who.
Turns out that Compeed blister plasters have been one of the bestselling items at the All England Club’s chemist, with sales up sharply on last year, perhaps due to a dramatic rise in celebrities and influencers attending in their stilettos.
All of which proves once and for all that while tennis runs the risk of injury, there’s no more competitive sport than fashion.
Hey Jude, I’m loving your bromance
Many will be glued to the England vs Norway game on Saturday, not to analyse the football, but instead to get a glimpse of the iconic bromance between Jude Bellingham and Erling Haaland
I’ll be glued to the England game against Norway on Saturday night, mostly to check in on how Jude Bellingham and Erling Haaland are coping having to play against each other.
The iconic duo have something of a bromance going, and the internet has been chock-a-block with videos of them gazing lovingly into one another’s eyes from back when they used to play together at Borussia Dortmund.
Forget about Heated Rivalry – this is more like Cleated Rivalry!
Stay cool with a hot water bottle
How are you getting on during the latest ‘mass sleep deprivation event’, as Greenpeace has taken to describing Britain’s heatwaves? Having tried all the hot weather hacks – ice in front of a fan, blinds down and windows shut during the day – I’ve finally alighted on the best trick, which is to shove my hot water bottle in the freezer, and then fall asleep clinging to it as I do in deep midwinter. Unlike an air conditioning unit, it’s cheap to run and useful all year round.
