Jackie O talks about love, addiction and therapy on Mental As Anyone podcast

Star radio host Jackie O has spoken candidly on her search for love, weeks after revealing she’d been to therapy and rehab for an addiction to pills.

Jackie O Henderson is done with the search for love.

The breakfast radio host and TV star said she no longer has a void in her life to fill after going through therapy to deal with her demons around self love.

“It really is so true what they say, that when you find that happiness within and you feel that with your own self love, you no longer need it externally,” Henderson said in the latest episode of the Mental As Anyone podcast.

Jackie O with friend Billy Mitchell in Europe.

“Obviously everyone loves connection, and we’re meant to connect and partner with people so of course I want that, but I don’t need it like I did before and so I’m not actively dating, and I don’t go out with my girlfriends anymore and scan the room so things like that have all gone away.”

Henderson, 49, is twice married and is mum to 13-year-old daughter, Kitty.

Jackie O at the Marie Claire Women Of The Year Awards. Picture: Hanna Lassen/Getty Images

Jackie O Henderson with best friend Gemma O’Neill. Picture: Instagram

In her new book, the whole truth, she details her mental health struggles and subsequent spiral into addiction to pain killers, sleeping tablets and alcohol following the break down of her second marriage.

“I don’t have anything missing anymore,” she declared on the podcast.

“I think someone will genuinely walk in my path one day, and I’m okay if that’s five years from now, or if it’s five months from now, I’m really calm about it. When that’s meant to be, that will happen. And, no, I don’t feel the need to search for it any longer.”

Henderson spent time at the famous Betty Ford clinic in the United States as she sought help for her addiction, at the peak of which she took 24 codeine tablets daily, up to 14 Stilnox sleeping pills, and alcohol.

Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O host KIIS FM’s breakfast show.

When in rehab, Henderson read and studied as much as she could and would one day like to do more work in the psychology space.

She is about to start work with Odyssey House rehabilitation service.

“I do really value their program, it is three months that you are there and you’re starting to kind of work within a community and building up skills to go out into the workforce,” she said of Odyssey House.

“It is for people who are financially struggling, I want to work with them on site, what that looks like. I’m yet to find out.”

Michael Porter, Billy Mitchell and Jackie O.

She added: “I would love to do counselling and study that, I’ve got such an interest in psychology, mental health and rehabilitation that I can see myself going down that path and studying it. It is such early days in terms of, sharing this and being able to now openly explore that avenue. It’s too early to know exactly what that looks like.”

Long term, Henderson would like to explore opening her own clinic.

“My pie in the sky is one day opening my own rehab centre. But obviously I’ve already kind of done preliminary exploration on that, and there’s just a lot of red tape, as you can imagine, and so that’s something that would be very long term down the track, but absolutely want to work in that field in some way.”

* A new episode of Mental As Anyone drops each Tuesday morning.

Originally published as Jackie O talks about love, addiction and therapy on Mental As Anyone podcast