The memory still makes me wince: my four-year-old daughter wandering into the kitchen for breakfast, while I was still awake from the night before and still unmistakably affected by the cocaine I had taken as she slept upstairs.
I was in the middle of trying to clear away the evidence of my binge when she padded in wearing pink pyjamas, asking for toast and the Trolls film. Somehow, I managed to make her something to eat, sat her at the newly wiped kitchen table with an iPad, and began panicking about how I was supposed to get through an entire day as her mother.
My husband was away on business — which was why the chaos had spilled into my home rather than remaining, as it usually did, at the pub — and in that instant I understood I had gone beyond a boundary I could never uncross.
I booked a taxi and took us to my mother’s house, where I fell apart and admitted that I believed I was an addict. That moment became the turning point that led me into rehab. More than nine years on, the memory still carries such a heavy sense of shame that I have had to pause several times while writing this, breathe deeply, and remind myself that life is different now — that my daughter is safe, and that she has not seen me high or drunk since.
So why bring it up now? Because it all came rushing back when I watched the Katie Price documentary this week and listened to the painfully honest interviews with her children, Princess and Junior, as they described the turmoil they experienced growing up while their mother was using 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 later went to live with his father, 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?’
Princess described a similar heartbreak, remembering that at just 11 years old, her closest connection to her mother came through a blanket Price had 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.
