Mel B snorted six lines of cocaine a day while filming The X Factor
Appearing as a judge on The X Factor, Spice Girl Mel B hid a chronic drug habit that threatened to take over her life.
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Mel B has sensationally admitted snorting six lines of cocaine a day while working as a judge on the UK version of The X Factor.
The Spice Girl, 43, who took the drug to cope with abusive ex-hubby Stephen Belafonte, also reveals a 200-pill suicide bid, The Sun reports.
She said of her drug taking: “I was a sad, pathetic person. I was out of control.”
Mel snorted two lines of cocaine as soon as she woke to cope with filming The X Factor.
The Spice Girl admitted: “Then I would pray, ‘God, I’m sorry for taking cocaine, but please God help me get through this day’.
“It numbed my pain. It lifted me up enough to be ready to fire on all cylinders and forget about everything but the show.”
Mel reveals she took up to six lines of the drug a day during her abusive 10-year marriage to Mr Belafonte.
In autobiography Brutally Honest, serialised exclusively in The Sun on Sunday, she writes: “I was so low that two weeks into filming The X Factor I’d started using cocaine to get me through the run of the show.
“To get me through living with Stephen, which felt like neurotic claustrophobia.
“On so many levels I felt myself sinking. I had a routine. I was ashamed of what I was doing, but I felt I had to have it. It was like Cinderella … back to s**t and rats.
“I told myself God would understand and forgive me because he could see through all the glitter and the crap.
“He could see me. The mess. And cocaine could help that mess. Just for now. It numbed my pain.”
She believes the cocaine did not affect her performance on the ITV program where she appeared as a judge alongside Simon Cowell, Louis Walsh and Cheryl.
And she insists she never took the drug during shows.
But as soon as filming for the 2014 shows finished Mel began snorting the drug and reveals that it took “less than a minute to get my hands on a regular supply — such is the power of celebrity”.
She says: “Once I was at work I didn’t need anything and I didn’t take anything.
“I’d crack jokes with Simon and the other judges and have a laugh with the crew.
“But as soon as I left the building, it was like in Cinderella, where everything turns back to s**t and rats and pumpkins.
“The black emotions I was holding off crashed right down on top of me like fat, heavy bricks.
“The cocaine would come back out of my bag and up into my nose.
“One line, another line, and yes, another and another. My quick-fix answer was cocaine.”
Mel and Stephen married in 2007, shortly after she split from Hollywood star Eddie Murphy.
The warring couple finally divorced this August.
Mel admits: “I’m not proud of taking cocaine, but I can’t pretend it didn’t help me to have a line of that white powder when I got up in the morning.
“Sitting in my car a few minutes before I’d faced Stephen, I’d snorted a line. And he knew it.
“The truth was, I was kidding myself that I had found a magic formula for dealing with my life.
“The cocaine only made my depression worse, and I was permanently anxious and on edge.
“I was not in a good place mentally and emotionally, and at home I wasn’t in a good place physically.
“Stephen’s preference was to have the curtains tightly closed at all times to keep us from prying eyes.
“We were living in permanent darkness with no natural daylight, and I’m someone who loves, and needs, lots of light and air.
“I’d think the only way to deal with my situation was to have a glass of vodka or wine, or both, and then take more cocaine.”
But Mel reveals that the cocaine sent her spiralling out of control and led to more furious clashes with Stephen.
She says: “Most of the time, getting up and working, and then spending time with my daughters, was enough to keep me going.
“The cocaine only made my mental state worse because, as a lot of people know, cocaine makes you even more paranoid.
“I was probably taking five or six lines a day before and after work.
“Stephen knew what I was up to. ‘How many lines have you done today? Tell me. I know you have been snorting that s**t!’ he’d yell.
“I wouldn’t react to him. I’d shut the bedroom door and just sit there.
“If he dragged me out into the sitting room I would stumble and slur my words.
“‘What’s going on with you, Melanie?’ he would rant.
“He would go through my things and if he found a packet of powder in my bag, the rage would ramp up 20 notches: ‘Are you insane? This will get you fired! Think about your image’.
“I was a sad pathetic person. I was out of control.”
Mel claims Stephen cynically exploited her heartbreak over her split with comedian Eddie.
Her devoted mum Andrea was suspicious about Stephen from the start and branded him a “suavo”, which the book reveals is her term for “any guy who’s smooth, slippery and not to be trusted”.
The couple appeared in public to enjoy a millionaire lifestyle in Hollywood, and had a daughter Madison, seven, together.
Mel has two other daughters 19-year-old Phoenix, from her marriage to Spice Girls backing dancer Jimmy Gulzar, and Angel, 11, from her relationship with Eddie.
But behind closed doors Mel painfully details how Stephen seized control of her life, even making sex tapes to blackmail her into staying with him.
She explains: “He made me feel ugly. Like a waste of space. Like I was a terrible mother, a whore.
“Like I was lucky to be married to him because no one else would put up with trash like me.
“I felt helpless because I’d allowed this man into my life, and, little by little, insult by insult, indignity by indignity, deal by deal, sex tape by sex tape, I had allowed him to completely take over.
“He was the one that decided where I lived, whom I saw, what my money was spent on, who looked after our kids.
“It was up to him whether I was a piece of filth that day or a goddess or a whore.”
Stephen, who claimed his father was a drug dealer, subjected her to constant vile criticism using words like Ugly, Slut, Fat, Stupid, Bitch, Worthless, Drunk, Pathetic, Monkey and Derelict.
He forced her to cut off contact with her mum, dad and younger sister Danielle and told her not to speak to her old friends.
He would constantly monitor where she was, and even accused her of sleeping with Simon Cowell.
She writes: “When I was working on X Factor, Stephen would call my phone 50 times in two hours, asking where I was, what I was doing, telling me when I had to be back, accusing me of sleeping with Simon Cowell (obviously, I wasn’t).
“He checked all my emails and answered them, deleted them. Same with my phone messages, Twitter and Instagram pages.
“He controlled all my bank accounts, my work schedule.”
Stephen took control of her finances and left her with nothing while spending a fortune on expensive clothes, cars and watches for himself.
Mel says: “From being an independent single mum, I became a woman who didn’t have her own computer, didn’t drive herself, didn’t know her bank details, didn’t make decisions small or large, and had no friendly relationships with any heterosexual men or any of her old friends or her family.”
When Simon Cowell’s company tried to pay Mel her X Factor fee she didn’t even know her own account details and had to dig out an old one.
Mel recalls: “Eventually we got the codes to the bank account where my fees were to be deposited. It was Monday.
“By the time we cracked the codes, we discovered the money had been paid in on the Tuesday (when I was in hospital) and had been removed again from that account. The money I earnt had gone without trace.
“And I had no way of finding out where that money had gone.
“It is something I am still trying to do years later and I still do not have the answers.”
Mel also claims her drinking and partygoing made her the “Keith Richards of the Spice Girls”.
She says: “Stephen liked to spend the evenings drinking wine, vodka or whisky.
“We’d try to outdo each other in how much liquor we could hold.
“Once a former assistant came into the house in the morning to find half-drunk wine bottles on the kitchen counter.
“He then turned to see me walk downstairs in my dressing gown, sit at the counter, pour myself a wine and smoke a cigarette.”
Mel says she would then head to a two-hour “Barry’s Bootcamp” fitness session leading the assistant to think: “This woman is made of kryptonite.”
Mel laughs: “Check out my great-grandmother Celian. I am made of tough stuff.”
Mel refused to quit her marriage while her dad Martin was alive because she feared Stephen would leak sex tapes to humiliate her.
She finally vowed to leave Stephen four years ago, after trying to commit suicide.
But the book tells how advisers told her that if she tried to divorce him at that point she risked losing custody of her daughters.
So she went back to him, and admits she carried on using drink and drugs. She says: “I continued to drink too much.
“I continued, on and off, to use cocaine. To have threesomes with Stephen. And I continued to work.
“Good Mel at work. Alive, firing on all four cylinders, happy.
“Bad Mel at home. Dead inside. Buried under the oblivion of sex and alcohol. Amazing what you do to stop yourself from thinking.
“Amazing what you do when you believe, beneath the laughs and the smiles, that you are a worthless piece of crap.”
It was only last year, as her dad was dying, that she began divorce proceedings.
The pair’s $17.5 million divorce battle played out in public in a Los Angeles court.
Judges were told that Stephen had punched Mel in a jealous rage before choking her and slamming her into the floor.
Documents filed by Mel claimed Stephen had got the couple’s nanny Lorraine Giles pregnant. He denied the allegation.
Mel says: “I walked away with nothing but suitcases full of clothes, books and toys.
“I didn’t care. I was happy.
“My kids were happy. Finally, after ten years, I was free.”
This story originally appeared on The Sun and is republished here with permission.
Brutally Honest is released on November 27.
If you or someone you know is in need of crisis or suicide prevention support, please call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or visit www.lifeline.org.au/gethelp
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Originally published as Mel B snorted six lines of cocaine a day while filming The X Factor
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