"It’s disgusting but it was my way of dealing with it."
Katie Price has admitted to self-medicating with drugs during one of the toughest years of her life, but insisted this was not the reason behind her recent rehab treatment.
The TV personality opened up about her turbulent life in an interview on ‘Loose Women’ on Friday, in which she set out to dispel various headlines written about her over the last 12 months.
Katie told hosts Andrea McLean, Nadia Sawalha, Stacey Solomon and Gloria Hunniford she had turned to drugs as a way of escaping the various traumatic things unfolding around her.
She said: “You can choose that path if you want or you don’t and I didn’t, I purely did it to self medicate….but I went to the doctors and said this isn’t me and I told them the truth.
“I wasn’t really drinking, just self medicating on drugs basically. It’s disgusting but it was my way of dealing with it. That’s when I was like: no, I know I need help, this is not me.
“At least I can hold my hands up and I’m so glad I did because if I didn’t speak out I would probably still be in that rut now.”
Attempting to set the record straight on her treatment in The Priory, Katie continued: “[The press] said I was in rehab for drink and drugs. Nothing to do with that at all, absolutely nothing. I wasn’t even near anyone who was doing drink and drugs in The Priory.
“I was in there for severe traumatic rehabilitation. It was to do with all that had happened to me at the beginning of the year.”
Speaking about the events of 2018, she went on: “I got told my mum was dying, my dog got run over and killed on my driveway, my horse got killed outside my house, I had a kidnap threat with Harvey, I caught the ex-husband cheating again, then obviously divorcing him, then I had the hijack where I was held at gunpoint in South Africa.
“If you imagine all of that... It was a nightmare, so I went to the doctors and said I’m not myself. I wouldn’t go horse riding, I just wanted to sleep all the time, I couldn’t turn to anyone, so I went into the Priory.
“I wasn’t a resident in there,” she explained. “I literally took the kids to school went in there for the day and picked the kids up after.”
Katie added that the treatment she received had been “amazing” and would recommend “anyone to go”.
She said: “They taught me about assertiveness, they teach you about people around you, if they have served their purpose, if there is negativity and they get to the roots to where the problems have started, they do all of the traumatic stuff.”
Katie also said she “did not blame” ex-husband Peter Andre for taking custody of their two children, Junior and Princess, during the height of her problems, but went on to insist they were now back to their normal arrangement of sharing them 50 per cent of the time each.