Lily Allen opens up about coping up after split with Sam Cooper, says she considered "it was time to try heroin"
Singer-songwriter Lily Allen has confirmed her divorce with ex-husband Sam Cooper. She said on ‘Loose Women’ earlier this June, “I can use the D-word ... [I've been] divorced for three days now.” This announcement came after two years of separation. It was back in 2016 that she opened up about her split with Sam Cooper after five years of marriage, probably prompted by an entire year of speculation from the media and fans. Lily revealed she has a rather friendly relationship with her estranged husband now on ‘Loose Women’. Daily Mail quoted Sunday Mirror as saying that in the initial stages of their split, she slept around with several different men and even considered taking heroin to help herself feel better. While she decided not to go through with the decision to use an illegal drug to cure her unhappiness, she resorted to engaging in sexual intercourse with multiple partners. Sunday Mirror quotes her as saying, “I was so sick, I said to my therapist, ‘Maybe it is time to try heroin.’ I know heroin is really the end of the line. But I have toyed with the idea before. Instead, after I got divorced, I kept having sex with other guys to fill the void. I was totally out of control.” An official confirmation from the singer on this statement is awaited.
Now in her interviews, she seems to have come a long way from that stage in her life. Lily and Sam began dating in 2009 and tied the knot back in 2011. They share two daughters, Ethel, six, and Marnie, five, and they have come up with a rather convenient custody setup to raise the two.
She opened up about her custody situation on ‘Loose Women’ too. She said, “Me and my ex-husband share custody, a week on and a week off, which is useful for me work, when he's got them, I can do that.” Lily even mentioned that she has a very cordial relationship with the father of her children. When asked how the two actually cam to this conclusion, Lily revealed that is wasn't even something they had to discuss. She said: “It wasn't really something we discussed, we're both really friendly, our kids go to school equidistant between our houses, so it works.” It sure seems like the two have come to terms with everything, especially Lily who seemed to have been thoroughly distraught after their split.
After four whole years, Lily finally released her new album 'No Shame' on June 8 of this year. The album seemed to be an amalgamation of the hard experiences she has had in the past four years. It talks about a broken marriage and even her role as a mother. It is probably one of her most vulnerable works of art.
In conversation with Rolling Stone, Lily opened up about what her new album truly means to her and what she was trying to convey through her lyrics. She tells Rolling Stone that she began writing all the way back in 2015, even before her split took place. She talks about how her music reflects her progression of sentiments over the years. She explained, “’Family Man’ is where it started. I hadn’t broken up with my husband at that point and I was obviously quite hopeful about where our relationship might go and it didn’t go that way. Then, you know, I get more suicidal as the album goes on and then start to feel a bit better towards the end.” Lily also talks about the value of writing optimistic songs in her personal life.
She admitted to realizing that she was writing a lot of music that was extremely “depressing” and wanted to write something that was a little more uplifting like ‘Cake.’ She said it was quite a relief to produce something that didn’t take her to a dark place. While talking about ‘Cake’ she said, “it was a relief, not because of it being good for the album, but personally. It’s just like, “Oh, I haven’t written something that makes me want to slit my wrists. It must mean that the light at the end of the tunnel is making itself apparent or the horizon is getting closer or whatever.” But she also did mention that coming up with something optimistic was a challenge because she has been “really f*****g depressed for the past few years.”
Speaking to GQ, on 'No Shame' she talks about coming out into the light from the dark tunnel she was in. She shared about her giving into alcohol addiction and admits that it was not the finer parts of her life. A 2014 tour made her realize how bad her alcohol dependency had been trying to cope with her turbulent personal and professional life. She says: "It was that moment that I was like, 'This is... this is a problem.' Because I never really had been a drinker before. I always had been a drug taker, and the drinking was an accessory to doing drugs. I realized, 'Oh, f**k, I haven't taken any drugs for ages, but I'm drinking a lot.' I was drinking a bottle of Grey Goose a day. It was really bad."
Lily also talked about where she came up with the album title. She explains, “Well, there’s the obvious thing, which is that I’m talking about some things that people might assume that one would be ashamed of. … As a woman and as a mother, as a young mother, I felt guilty about being successful. And I think it’s as much about that as it is about not being ashamed of taking all the drugs and that stuff.”
She also revealed that she thinks the guilt she feels is a result of patriarchy and the way her story has been narrated. She said, “I think ever since I started doing well commercially, it’s always been like, ‘Oh, well, you’re only where you are because of your dad and it must be because of Mark Ronson and Greg Kurstin that you do well.’ It’s just everyone apart from me is responsible for the songs that I’ve written selling millions around the world.”