Watch: Lulu shares ‘shame’ of alcoholism battle
What did you miss?
Lulu has opened up on her secret battle with alcoholism, admitting she was “full of shame” for developing a drinking problem that she kept hidden even from close family and friends.
The Scottish singer spoke to This Morning on Wednesday, 24 September, about sharing her alcoholism for the first time in her latest autobiography, If Only You Knew. She added “music saved me”, claiming her life story could otherwise have been very different.
Lulu told presenters Ben Shephard and Cat Deeley that even close friend Elton John had been shocked to discover she was an alcoholic, accidentally swearing on live TV as she recounted: “Elton said to me, ‘how the f*** did I miss that?'”
What, how and why?
Lulu has opened up on her private battle with alcohol. (Anadolu via Getty Images)
Explaining her decision to finally share her addiction story, Lulu said: “Today it’s the way young people talk, they share anything. When I started (my career), my mum was like, ‘don’t air your dirty laundry in public’. So I was secretive, but shame filled.
“Full of shame about being an alcoholic like my dad, full of shame about things in my childhood, things that I’d done.”
Lulu told This Morning that she had last had an alcoholic drink in November 2013 after admitting her problem to her sister and niece in an unguarded moment, and entering rehab.
She said: “I struggled, struggled, struggled secretly for years, nobody knew I was an alcoholic. It was bad. I was never a fall-down drunk, my son didn’t know I was an alcoholic. When I went to rehab I called him, he said, ‘woah, wait a minute Mum, are you sure?’
The singer said even close friend Elton John had been shocked to discover her addiction. (Getty Images)
“Even Elton said to me, ‘how the f*** did I miss that?'” Shephard apologised for Lulu’s language on daytime TV, saying: “Elton has an interesting choice of vocabulary, please be careful because it’s quite early, apologies.”
Lulu continued: “I was very secretive because I was so ashamed of it. I would go out and have a drink, but it was then that I would go home and have another drink. You know you’re an alcoholic if you can’t stop.
“I have a lot of friends who can have a drink and say, I’ve had enough. But I couldn’t do that. I was a highly functioning alcoholic, that’s why nobody knew. I’d fall asleep sozzled, but I’d set the alarm, wake up, brush myself off and go to work.”
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Lulu explained that while talking to her niece about someone else they knew struggling with alcohol, she had surprised herself by admitting to her own problem. But she said that her sister, also there for the conversation, had said that she already knew.
“I said, ‘I have to go to rehab’ and (my sister) said, ‘I think so’ and I was there the next day.”
The star added that her sister being a psychotherapist was a huge help, and reflected on the problems her parents had faced when she was growing up in Glasgow: “It really makes me sad when I think that my parents didn’t have the help that I have today.”
The singer has not drunk alcohol since 2013. (SOPA Images via ZUMA Wire/PA Images)
She continued: “I’ve had the most unbelievable life. Young people think if you’re famous you’re sorted. If you’re wealthy, if you’re famous. It doesn’t mean to say that your life is perfect. We all have trials and tribulations and glitches in our personalities that need to be looked at. All I can say is, I’ve had so much help, I am so lucky.
“Music saved my life. It opened the world to me. If I didn’t have music in my life, I don’t think this would be the story that I would be telling today.”
Lulu opens up on mental health in autobiography
Lulu represented the UK at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1969 singing Boom Bang-a-Bang. (Radio Times Archive via Getty Images)
Autobiography If Only You Knew sees Lulu open up on many very personal parts of her life, and in June she told BBC One’s The One Show that she had been to therapy to work through some of what she had written about.
She said: “I had to go into therapy because it was so… it was difficult to unravel the things that I have been told not to say, the things I was ashamed of.”
She went on: “And really once you speak about things you are ashamed of or that you have done and, you know, I have mental health issues, I have come through a lot, my family and everybody I know, so it’s things that I didn’t want to talk about, I reveal in the book.
“Which is kind of like being let out of jail in a way.”
This Morning airs on ITV1 at 10am on weekdays.