Naomi Campbell admits she tried to 'cover up' grief with drugs as she opens up about her addiction battle
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: Naomi Campbell candidly spoke about her addiction battles in the new docuseries 'The Super Models.'
The English model, 53, disclosed in the Apple TV+ series that she started taking drugs to help her get through emotional pain from her early years alongside the grief she felt due to the sudden death of her friend Gianni Versace.
“When I started using that, one of the things I tried to cover up, was grief. Addiction is such a — it’s just a b******t thing, it really is,” Campbell said, according to People.
“You think, ‘Oh, it’s gonna heal that wound.’ It doesn’t,” she continued, adding “It can cause such huge fear and anxiety. So I got really angry.”
Naomi Campbell was deeply affected by the death of her friend Gianni Versace
Campbell, who was the first Black woman to appear on the covers of Time and Vogue France, said that she had learned about “chosen families” with all credit to Versace and late designer Azzedine Alaia, in particular.
As a result, she was deeply devastated after Versace’s murder outside his South Beach mansion in July 1997.
“He was very sensitive to feeling me, like, he pushed me. He would push me to step outside and go further when I didn’t think I had it within myself to do it. So, when he died, my grief became very bad,” Campbell recalled.
Naomi Campbell had to deal with her childhood trauma too
The supermodel not only had to cope with the loss of her friend but also with lingering feelings of abandonment since childhood.
Campbell, as a child, never learned about her father and hardly saw her mother, which she revealed to Barbara Walters in a 2000 interview.
Campbell described her handling of grief as a “very strange thing” as it “doesn’t always show,” and admitted that she initially goes “into a shock” when it happens and then will “break” later on.
“I kept the sadness inside, I just dealt with it,” she said.
Naomi Campbell collapsed during a 1999 photoshoot
However, that prompted her to take a difficult path and she battled addiction for five years prior to her infamous collapse during a photoshoot in 1999.
“When you try to cover something up, your feelings — you spoke about abandonment. I tried to cover that with something. You can’t cover it,” she admitted, adding "I was killing myself. It was very hurtful.”
Campbell said that the situation led her to check into rehab which she called “one of the best and only things I could have done for myself at that time.”
She said it has helped her deal with her emotions from the past. “It’s taken me many years to work on and deal with,” she added.
“And it does still come up sometimes. But I just now have the tools how to deal with it now when it comes up," Campbell continued.
