Australian Idol winner Kate DeAraugo’s ‘rock bottom’ point in drug addiction

Australian Idol winner Kate DeAraugo has revealed the surprising point she hit “rock bottom” in her struggle with ice addiction.

Former Australian Idol winner Kate DeAraugo has described her “rock bottom” moment while she was in the grips of ice addiction.

DeAraugo said her life took a downward spiral after she tried meth for the first time during a road trip and revealed that her former partner stabbed her in the leg with a machete while in an ice rage.

But surprisingly, this wasn’t her rock bottom moment.

Rather it was when she looked in the mirror one day, at the height of her addiction, and saw what she had become.

“I knew … if things didn’t change, I was going to die,” told the Herald Sun’s V Weekend of the sight she saw staring back at her.

She has been drug and alcohol free since 2018.

DeAraugo triumphed on Australian Idol in 2005 and went on to be a member of the Young Divas pop group alongside Paulini, Emily Williams and Ricky-Lee Coulter.

But her introduction to stardom was also her gateway into drug addiction. First cocaine, then nitrous oxide and eventually, in 2009, methamphetamine, also known as ice.

Her drug use was fuelled by the pressures of the music industry and insecurities over her weight.

Former Australian Idol winner Kate DeAraugo. Picture: David Caird

Talking on her new podcast, Why Do I Feel This Way, which launches next week, DeAraugo said initially ice energised her.

“I know this sounds terrible (but) it was wonderful, it almost made me feel like I was a better person for it.”

But eventually, it took over her life, with her singular obsession to find another hit.

Her eight years in the grip of ice would be a dark time for DeAraugo. In 2015, she was charged with drug driving; then in 2017 came a drugs and weapons conviction after ice, a knife and a tomahawk were found in her car.

“By then, I was so disassociated from what was happening in my life, and the people I was hanging out with,” DeAraugo, from Bendigo, said.

“I didn’t know what was in my car at any given time. I didn’t know and I didn’t care. I was driving, so they became my problem.”

At this point, she said, she had lost her career, money and friends.

“It was a slow-burning emotional death”.

DeAraugo and Emily Williams were the final two on Australian Idol 2005.

Machete

While living in Mooroopna, in northern Victoria, she fell in love with a fellow user.

“This person made me feel totally acceptable (even with) scabs on my face and all my junkieness.

“He made me feel desirable. It was like a new level of addiction,” she said.

But then, like the drug, he began hurting her too.

“I got stabbed in one of his angry ice events,” DeAraugo said on the podcast, which begins on Tuesday.

“I ended up with a machete in my leg, and in a hospital lying about it. I said I fell on a bit of tin on a job site. And they looked at me like, whatever.”

Kate DeAraugo faced multiple court cases linked to her drug use. Picture: John Grainger.

Rock bottom

But that wasn’t the moment she knew she’d reached rock bottom, DeAraugo said. It was less dramatic than that.

“I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror.

“I was bone thin, my face was messed up and I was alone. And I looked at myself and thought, ‘Who are you?’ Call it a moment of sanity or divine intervention, but I knew … if things didn’t change, I was going to die.”

DeAraugo said she called her mum Sue to take her away from the crack den she had been living in.

“I was putrid,” she said, as she began her recovery which included a stint of detox in hospital and time in a transition house and to this day includes therapy and support groups.

“I’m drug and alcohol free for nearly six years now. But it’s an internal peace for me,” she said.

“My disease wanted to kill me. I’ve had to put my life in the hands of other people, and trust what they say to keep me safe from myself.

Kate DeAraugo and her son Hudson. Supplied

“I hope by me being brave and vulnerable, it might encourage somebody to be brave and vulnerable too, and know, when I say to them: ‘There is a way out,’” she told V Weekend.

In December, DeAraugo welcomed her first child, a baby boy named Hudson, with her partner Shannon Riseley.

Originally published as Australian Idol winner Kate DeAraugo’s ‘rock bottom’ point in drug addiction