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Cara Delevingne is getting candid about her long sobriety journey, and how young she was when she began drinking.
The 31-year-old supermodel and actress recently sat down for an interview with The Sunday Times, and recalled how she tried alcohol at her aunt’s wedding in 2001, and wound up getting intoxicated.
“I got drunk that day,” Delevingne recalled. “I was eight. 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,” the Carnival Row star said, explaining that she’d “gone around nailing glasses of champagne” at the wedding, and wound up trashed.
Looking back at her addictions, Delevingne said she struggled with fame and with the anxiety and scrutiny associated with it, which is how her substance abuse issues got out of hand.
“I used to think drugs and alcohol helped me cope,” she shared. “But they didn’t. They kept me sad and super depressed.”
However, now that she’s managed to get sober and stay sober for several years, Delevingne said, “I feel like I’ve got my power back and I’m not being controlled by other things… I finally feel as though I can be free.”
“I like AA meetings, I go to them when I can. Some people would say I don’t go to them enough,” she added. “But I’m doing it my way and it’s working for me. Everyone’s different. You can go in a million times and it doesn’t work. Some people go in once and walk out. Some do it who don’t need it.”
Delevingne first opened up about her addiction battle in Vogue‘s April 2023 issue, where she opened up for the first time about getting sober after reaching a turning point in September 2022.
That month, the model sparked public concern after being photographed shoeless at a Los Angeles airport. At the time, she had returned from Burning Man and was snapped looking disheveled and riding in an SUV with her feet dangling out the window.
“I hadn’t slept. I was not OK,” she recalled to Vogue in 2023. “It’s heartbreaking because I thought I was having fun, but at some point it was like, ‘OK, I don’t look well.'”
Delevingne checked into rehab in September 2022, and subsequently committed to a 12-step program that helped her get sober.
In her new interview with the Sunday Times, Delevingne — who recently celebrated her 2nd anniversary with girlfriend Minke — says she now attends music festivals sober, and said that, while the experience is different, it’s still great.
“It smelt bad, my feet hurt and I didn’t stay up so late, but it was just as much fun,” she said of her time at the Glastonbury Festival in late June. “I never want my life to change in that way.”
In February 2023, Delevingne spoke with ET about turning 30, and explained how excited she was to be entering a new chapter in her life.
“I think after turning 30, there was a lot that clicked. I think my 20s were brilliant, but there were a lot of different things I wanted to focus on,” Delevingne shared. “I think there was a part of me that still felt like I was insecure in my teenage years and questioning and a bit of self-doubt all the time.”
“[But] that is a real thing, about women being in their prime in their 30s? I just don’t care anymore,” she shared. ”I’m a lot more gentle with myself and nice to myself and I think something’s changed this year, for sure.”
Delevingne explained that, when she was in her 20s, she “did so much for other people’s approval and love,” and she found herself asking, “Why? That doesn’t matter and it’s not going to make you love yourself more. It just doesn’t.”
So now, with the gift of experience and emotional maturity going into her 30s, Delevingne said she’s “taking the time to heal and focus on myself and what I want to do.”
“What I really want to do, not for other people’s sake but for my own,” she added. ”It’s just really nice.”
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