Disgraced fashion designer John Galliano reveals horrors of addiction

DISGRACED fashion designer John Galliano says his addiction to pills and booze almost landed him in a mental asylum.

John Galliano

FASHION designer John Galliano has given his first-ever sober interview since being fired from Dior in 2011 after a video of him professing his love for Hitler went viral.

The 52-year-old bared his soul to Vanity Fair journalist Ingrid Sichy for a piece set to run in the magazine's July edition.

It is a dark tale of addiction and indulgence spawned from a childhood marred by beatings and bullying.

After two years of sobriety, during which he claims to have "read up on the Holocaust and Jewish history", Galliano says he is ready to make a comeback.

Here are some of the highlights of the interview:

Of his drunken Hitler tirade: "It’s the worst thing I have said in my life, but I didn’t mean it. . . . I have been trying to find out why that anger was directed at this race. I now realise I was so f***ing angry and so discontent (sic) with myself that I just said the most spiteful thing I could.”

His addiction to pills and Vodka got so bad that: “I was going to end up in a mental asylum or six feet under.”

He initially used drinking as a "crutch outside Dior". Later, taken with pills, alcohol became a way to come down from the adrenalin rush of a big show.

"I would use it to crash after the collections," he said. "I’d take a couple of days to get over it, like everyone. But with more collections, the crash happened more often, and then I was a slave to it. Then the pills kicked in because I couldn’t sleep. Then the other pills kicked in because I couldn’t stop shaking. I would also have these huge bottles of liquor that people got for me. Towards the end, it was whatever I could get my hands on. Vodka, or vodka-and-tonic. Wine, in the belief it would help me sleep. Wrong." He started hearing voices in his head but "never once" thought he had a substance abuse problem.

He surrounded himself with enablers and became increasingly incapable of looking after himself:

“I lived in a bubble. I would be backstage and there would be a queue of five people to help me. One person would have a cigarette for me. The next person would have the lighter. I did not know how to use the A.T.M."

Then he started having blackouts: "Not having washed, I’d be covered in sores and humiliated,” he says. “I had the tremors. I wouldn’t sleep for five days. I would go to bookstores and get some self-help books, but I was in denial. I’d throw myself back into the gym. I’d be careful about what I ate. And, of course, the whole cycle would start again.”

See the infamous "I love Hitler" video courtesy of The Sun.