Pop legend Lulu has spoken about living with a ‘healthy fear of relapse’ as she continues to manager her sobriety after going to rehab in 2013
Scottish pop legend Lulu says she continues to live in “healthy fear of relapse” after getting sober in 2013 during a six-week stay in an American rehab. The Shout singer, whose career spans more than six decades, previously revealed she sought help for her alcohol 13 years ago after admitting she had a problem during her 65th birthday party.
The 76-year-old Eurovision winner has now opened up further about how she continues to manage her addiction, and said that a return to drinking would “be the end of her”. The Glastonbury performer kept her sobriety private until the release of her memoir – If You Only Knew – last year, and said later she felt “liberated” after telling her story.
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Chatting on Matt Willis’ On The Mend podcast this week, Lulu revealed the last time she had a drink was on November 3, 2013. “It took me that long,” she said, “I actually could control it. In the family, they were like ‘how come she doesn’t have this thing?’.
“I learnt when I went into the AA fellowship, and went into recovery, I learnt that it’s an illness. I was so relieved because I thought I was a bad person.”
She also said she had a “healthy fear of relapse”, but said she wasn’t consumed by the fear on a day-to-day basis. “I have an understanding it could happen, but I don’t think I’ve had many times when I’m with people who are drinking really good wine, which you develop a taste for – the good things in life – I don’t know that I’ve had many experiences where I thought, ‘I wish that was me’.”
While she has had occasional thoughts of drinking again, she said she was very aware that the consequences would be too high, telling Matt “it’s like cutting off your arm… I would just collapse.”
Lulu, who had her first Top 10 single in the UK with Shout in 1964, revealed last year that she told her family of her addiction – and then went to rehab in the US – after a conversation with her niece about a friend who was struggling with alcohol.
“She said, ‘I think he’s just holding on by his fingernails’,” she told the BBC. “And I said, ‘He’s not the only one’. It just came out of my mouth. I didn’t even think about it. But the table went silent.”
Less than 24 hours after that conversation, the Glasgow songstress was on a flight to America to check-in to a rehab facility, where she stayed for six weeks. She broke the news to her “shocked” son Jordan, born during her marriage to celebrity hairstylist John Frieda, during a phone call before take-off.
After leaving the centre, she attended one or two Alcoholics Anonymous meetings “every day for five years”.
Last year she also revealed she was drinking in secret every night while taking part in the 2011 series of Strictly Come Dancing, in which she was partnered with Brendan Cole, and described herself as a “highly functioning alcoholic”.
“I could fall onto my bed asleep having been drunk – but then the alarm would go, I’d get up, pull myself together, and I would go to work,” she added.
If you are struggling with alcohol abuse or addiction, advice and support can be found at alcoholchange.org.uk
Source: Mirror
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