Kelly Osbourne says relapse turned ugly quickly: I 'did embarrassing sh**'
Kelly Osbourne is sharing more details about her relapse — and it's clear things went south quickly.
The TV personality appeared on her old friend Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert podcast and, with them recently both experiencing slips in sobriety, they got right to the topic. Osbourne, 36, said she made it through lockdown before her sober world turned upside-down, revealing it started with one glass of Champagne — and said it was a look from her boyfriend of five months, Erik Bragg, that ultimately led her to get help.
Osbourne, who had been nearly four years sober of drugs and alcohol, said she was very involved with her 12-step program, serving as secretary and having several sponsees.
"I was Miss Program," she said. "It was everything to me."
When quarantine happened, she "changed," she admitted. She said she didn't like the online meetings. "Slowly but surely, I stopped calling my sponsor. Slowly but surely, I stopped connecting with my" sponsees. "Slowly but surely, one ... relapsed. And another ... relapsed. And then all my friends relapsed."
Osbourne, on the other hand, "made it all the way through. The worst part of the lockdown," she said. But when suddenly everything was looking good in her life — professionally as well as a new relationship with Bragg — she mistakenly thought, "Oh, I'm normal now" related to being able to handle alcohol. "I don't need any of this sh** anymore," she thought of her steps program. "I lasted this whole pandemic without anything."
One day she was sitting by a pool solo and saw another woman there enjoying a glass of Champagne, so she got one too. (Osbourne has said that when she used alcohol and drugs before getting sober in 2017, she'd often do so alone.)
"And I just had one and it was fine," she said of her first drink. "I had a great time and I didn't think anything of it. A couple weeks went by and I thought ... I can do that again. Two weeks later, done. F**king done. Did not last long. Did embarrassing sh**. Blacked out. I can't drink the same that I used to. It wasn't fun."
She said it was alcohol only, no pills, which she previously had a problem with. She explained to Shepard that she's on anti-depressants and was told it would have been a lethal combination.
Osbourne said she when she started drinking again, she tricked herself into thinking she was in control — until it was very obvious she wasn't.
"It wasn't until I found myself last weekend covered in ranch dressing by my friend's pool sunburnt looking like a piece of sh** that I was like: 'Maybe I don't have this under control,'" she said.
Osbourne also talked about Bragg's reaction to seeing her slip. They met when she was sober and he didn't tell her directly to stop drinking, but a look her gave her — while he was working out and she was on the couch drunk — had a deep impact.
"He didn't say anything," she recalled of the moment. "He just gave me a look. It was while he was working out. I just sat on the couch watching him work out — drunk — and he was doing a burpee. He turned his head to the side and just looked at me and was just like..."
Shepard offered: "He thinks I'm a piece of sh**."
Osbourne continued, "I go: OK, I'm done. Woke up the next day and I was like: done. I called up my sponsor, everyone. I made the video, posted it. Signed myself up for a month of therapy just to put myself back on track again."
She said the whole experience made her realize she's still "numbing" the pain of a personal trauma she hasn't been able to identify yet. She said she's trying new forms of therapy, including EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) and somatic therapy.
During the conversation, Shepard recalled attending addiction meetings at the Osbournes' home in the mid-aughts, when he was getting sober (about 17 years ago) and Kelly's brother Jack was newly sober. They shared an MTV connection with Shepard finding fame on Punk'd (2003-2012) and she was on The Osbournes (2002-day 2005).
Osbourne has said that she started drinking at the age of 13 — and it progressed heavily from there. On the podcast, she talked about hosting MTV Spring Break 2002, at 17, and partying in Cancun.
During the interview, Osbourne also talked how she'll never watch the Framing Britney Spears doc because the mistreatment by the media hit too close to home. Rising to fame at that same time, she recalled doing interviews in which reporters told her how she could improve her looks, leading to a long struggle with body image. She recently lost 90 pounds after undergoing gastric sleeve surgery.
"I can't watch it," she said. "It's so upsetting to me."
She continued, "The whole thing to do with Britney is upsetting. I can't be one of those people that, like, makes fun of her [Instagram] videos. This is somebody who is trying to find a piece of happiness in a world of f**king hell that she's living in that she has no control over," referring to Spears's conservatorship.
Osbourne said it wasn't that long ago that she "had dinner" with Spears. "She is such a sweet girl," she added. "You sit there and you look at somebody and they're just trying to be by themselves."
Shepard went public with his relapse last summer, revealing that he started taking opiates after nearly 17 years of sobriety.
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