Cara Delevingne “wasn’t okay.”
The model and actress started out on a cover story for Vogue about how childhood trauma caused her to turn to drugs and alcohol before she managed to cleanse herself and sober up.
Delevingne, who had a large audience fall from grace in 2022said her trauma stems from most of her childhood taking care of her bipolar and heroin addicted motherPandora and many people assumed 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 extremely privileged,’ which I did, don’t get me wrong,” said the 30-year-old for Vogue’s April cover story, released Wednesday. “But life wasn’t so easy for other reasons.”
The British actress said she came into contact with alcohol at the age of 7 during a family wedding.
“I woke up at my grandmother’s house in my bedroom with a hangover, in a bridesmaid dress,” said Delevingne. “I had gone around nailing glasses of champagne.”
According to the “Suicide Squad” actress, she was already taking sleeping pills at the age of 10 to manage her insomnia.
She was also diagnosed with dyspraxia, a neurological disorder in the brain that results in lifelong impaired motor skills, memory, judgment, processing and other cognitive skills. according to the Dyspraxie Foundation.
“This was the beginning of mental health problems and accidental self-harm,” Delevingne said, pointing out that her apparently normal childhood was not normal at all.
“And then, as a teenager, it all came crashing down. That’s when I started drinking and partying too,” Delevingne confessed. “There was a need to escape and change my reality when I was hit with huge 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 week so it was fun,” said Delevingne who lived with her then-girlfriend Ashley Benson. “And then I was alone, really alone… it was rock bottom.”
“Instead of taking the time to really learn something new or do something new, I got very involved in misery, revelry and partying. It was a really sad time.”
As the pandemic restrictions began to lift, Delevingne began to fall back into old habits.
“I’m classically good at avoiding things. I just didn’t want to deal with my problems,” said Delevingne. “And those are things I’ve been running from since I was a kid.”
Delevingne appeared in a six-part docuseries on Hulu called “Planet Sex” — which explored sexuality and gender — and forced Delevingne to confront several personal demons.
“It was super personal and I didn’t really realize how personal it would be,” recalled Delevingne, who said she cried while on set during the first day of filming.
“I hadn’t really learned how to show emotions while acting because I didn’t feel worthy enough to feel those things as myself. With ‘Planet Sex’ I just felt so uncomfortable in front of the camera at first because it was like, ‘Oh, God, I have to be myself.’”
However, disaster struck while Delevingne was filming the show: Delevingne’s aunt, who took care of the actress more than her parents, died.
“When I heard she passed away, I had a lot to process because I hadn’t seen her since Christmas last year. I really tried to pour everything I had into my work, and every night I would come back from filming and sit alone and just cry, Delevingne said. “By the time I got to the Met Ball two weeks later, I was dead tired.”
She said she was in constant pain during the event because of her psoriasis and after the event she said she got drunk.
“I went and then blacked out. It was like, ‘What am I doing?’” the model said. “The next day I had to go to my grandmother’s funeral. It was horrible.”
“I always knew things were supposed to be different when I was 30,” Delevingne revealed. “Because the way I lived was not sustainable.”
According to the actress, she planned an “Alice in Wonderland” themed 29th birthday party, but when it came time for the party, Delevingne felt this sense of doom like a “slowly beating drum inside.”
“There was a need for change, but I fought it so hard,” explains Delevingne.
“I was welcoming in this new age, but I was also grieving. 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 this was the end.
It went down even more 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 wild,” Delevingne continued. “It’s scary for the people around you who love you.”
Several members of Delevingne’s family watched helplessly as she continued to spin.
“It was scary, we longed for something to change, but you can’t project that onto someone else,” said Melinda Stevens, Delevingne’s aunt. “There were plans to do something about it, a lot of consultation with her sisters and best friends. We spent a lot of time together that summer and it reached a climax.
After several paparazzi photos of Delevingne looking ragged were released, the friends of the model gathered around her and urged her to get help.
“I love my friends so much, but it often felt like they were superficial relationships just because I couldn’t be honest about the things I was going through,” Delevingne confessed. “From September I just needed support. I had to start reaching. And my old friends that I’ve known since I was 13, they all came over and we started crying. They looked at me and said, “You deserve a chance to have joy.” ”
Delevingne said she’s tried several “quick fixes” in the past, but is now ready to commit fully to healing.
“I used to always be into the quick fix of healing, like going to a week-long retreat or going to a course for trauma, and that helped for a minute, but it never really got to the root, the deeper stuff,” said Delevigne . “This time I realized that a 12-step treatment was best, and it was about not being ashamed of it. The community made a huge difference. The opposite of addiction is connection, and I really found that in 12-step.”
Delevingne said she’s been through several highs and lows, but she’s still committed to the process.
“This process has its ups and downs, of course, but I have come to realize so much. People want my story to be this after-school special where I just say, ‘Oh look, I was hooked, 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 instantly – I think this generation especially wants things to happen quickly – but I’ve had to dig deeper.”
