Kelly Osbourne opens up about relapse: 'All of a sudden, everything’s falling apart' (2024)

Kelly Osbourne is getting candid about her recent relapse after four years of sobriety.

The former “Osbournes” star, who revealed in April that she'd relapsed with alcohol, discussed her struggle with alcohol and drug addiction on the latest episode of "Red Table Talk."

Osbourne, the daughter of rock legend Ozzy Osbourne, said her latest setback began when she convinced herself she could have only one drink.

“I was alone, sitting by a pool and waiting for somebody to come have a meeting with me," she recalled. "And I saw this woman and her husband had a glass of champagne, and it looked really nice, and I was like, 'Oh, I can do that too.' And then the next day, I had two glasses. And then the day after that, it was bottles."

“Like, full bottles to yourself?” asked co-host Willow Smith.

"Yeah," Osbourne replied, adding, "Couldn't even hold back on it."

The self-described "closet drinker" recalled telling herself, at first, that she had the power to stop.

"For the first two days, I could handle just having one drink, but it was because I sat there and was like, 'You're only having one drink, and you're gonna prove to everyone that you're normal now and you can do this.' And all of a sudden, everything's falling apart," she said.

The 36-year-old star said she knew she'd lost control when she saw the "disappointed" way her boyfriend, cinematographer Erik Bragg, looked at her.

"I was at my boyfriend's house, and I was s---faced on his couch, eating pizza, and he looked over at me and I felt the way he looked at me," she said. "And I was like, 'Oh no, I never want him to look at me like that again. Ever.' Like that didn't make me feel good. What am I doing?"

She continued, "He was disappointed because he hadn't seen that side of me, so to suddenly be like well, 'This is the side I never wanted you to see. You've seen it. Let's hope you never meet her again.' It was embarrassing because for the first time ever, I actually care how he feels and I care how my behavior impacts him. I only want to be the best version of myself for my family and my boyfriend and my friends and I was not. I was the furthest thing away from that."

Osbourne said she grew up in an "alcoholic family" and called her musician father "the heaviest drinker I've ever seen in my life." She began drinking at a young age and liked that booze allowed her to feel "numb" about things that normally bothered her.

She said she was introduced to prescription painkillers after tonsil surgery when she was 13, and eventually moved on to heroin.

"I'd been, I kept getting sick and I had a really bad case of tonsillitis. They ended up having to give me some crazy surgery, and then after that, they gave me Vicodin, and that was all I needed.

"I went from having every voice in my head being like, ‘You're fat, you're ugly, you're not good enough, no one likes you, you don't deserve this, people only like you because of who your parents are,’ and then all of a sudden, every single voice was silenced, and it felt like life gave me a hug," she recalled.

Osbourne's relapse reminded her of the situations that triggered her to turn to alcohol.

"The worst thing I can do is be in a room alone with myself because that's when I'm like, 'OK, I'm bored. What can I do? What do I normally do when I'm bored?' I would drink," she explained.

The TV personality also explained why she decided to come clean about her relapse in a video on her Instagram story before even telling her family.

"I have to hold myself accountable for every single thing I do, and I think that's why it was so important to me that I just came right out and said it," she said.

"I knew that if I didn't, I could have flown under the radar for a long time like that and no one would have known. And I just would have spent the last four years building a life that I just destroyed in one drink."

Osbourne has since returned to outpatient addiction treatment. "I went back to outpatient because I needed new support, because unfortunately, 90% of my women's group relapsed during the pandemic," she revealed.

"It's isolation, it's change. I don't do well with change," she added. "I'm a creature of habit. I eat the same thing every single day. I have the same routine every single day and I think that's part of my alcoholism. I learned to survive by putting a schedule in place. I do good with boundaries."

Related: