Radio broadcaster Jackie O reveals depths of her addiction on Mental As Anyone podcast
Radio broadcaster Jackie O has spoken about the depths of her addiction on a mental health podcast, and revealed just how bad things got.
Jackie O Henderson says she is lucky to be alive after abusing her body for so many years.
The top Aussie media personality sought treatment at the world famous Betty Ford clinic in the United States for addiction to alcohol and prescription medication.
At her lowest point, Henderson consumed 24 codeine tablets daily, up to 14 Stilnox sleeping pills, and alcohol.
“When you look at the actual medication I was taking, I don’t know how I survived that,” Henderson said in the latest episode of the Mental As Anyone podcast.
“I am (lucky to be alive). I mean, that’s a lot of sleeping pills just for a start. A lot of people think, how did she even function? My body just built up a tolerance to them, so I may as well have been taking one or two with the way they were affecting me. The 10 just wasn’t, I think it was honestly just bringing my body to an even keel in a way. That’s just an awful lot for the body to take.
The KIIS 106.5 breakfast host continued: “I really feel like someone was watching over me. They must have been, because, I was just abusing myself so much, abusing that body and how it held up. I have no idea.”
Doctors have stated the amount of sleeping pills alone were enough to kill Henderson, if not cause liver failure and other long-term health issues.
“It was a miracle really that I didn’t do an extreme amount of damage.”
Henderson accessed the pills through a dealer. When her supplier was caught, she was forced into facing her demons and sought help.
Abusing food has been an issue too, although Henderson has not taken harder drugs.
“Food, for sure, that’s why I put on quite a bit of weight during that time,” she said.
“And just the alcohol and pills, there was nothing else. I’ve never been into party drugs, or tried party drugs, actually, and that the only reason is because I had a panic attack from weed (marijuana) early on so otherwise I probably would have been a massive coke (cocaine) head, who knows, because I’ve got this addiction gene and it’s very addictive.”
Henderson, 49, details the addiction in her explosive tell-all autobiography, the whole truth.
Much of her trauma, she explained, stems from childhood. She has worked on various treatments, including Schema Therapy.
“A lot of defectiveness and lack of self love and respect and value,” she explained.
“She (therapist) said to me, ‘you have the defectiveness schema, which means you don’t think you’re good enough’. And I said, ‘that’s not true, I have a good job, I know I am good enough’. And she goes, ‘no, underneath it all’.
“It took me about a year to realise that that was the strongest thing I had was no self worth, no self love underneath it all. You might think self love equates to maybe self esteem. Self esteem is, I think, based on external factors a lot of the time, like your job, maybe what you look like, maybe how popular you are, like all these things determine my self esteem. But take away all of those external factors, who are you underneath it? How much do you value yourself? Who are you? I realised I just didn’t have that, and that’s been the hardest thing for me to even understand, how do you start to love yourself, what do you do?”
Henderson said she waited until she was “sturdy enough and “strong enough to know that my sobriety wasn’t still on shaky ground” until she went public with her personal battles.
“I was very mindful not to come out too soon with it because I think recovery is something that can worsen when you’ve got all eyes on you, that kind of pressure, judgment. You’re doing it for yourself. You’re not doing it for other people.”
She added: “My life is so much better being sober. I can’t imagine ever wanting to go back there.”
* A new episode of Mental As Anyone drops each Tuesday morning.
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