The N-Dubz star faced the ‘year from hell’ in 2013 which led her to take desperate measures. Now she has opened up about that harrowing time in a brand new book
One of the darkest days in Tulisa Contostavlos’s life came in June 2013. It was a Friday night and she had just found out that she was being charged on suspicion of being involved with the supply of Class A drugs.
The N-Dubz star had fallen victim to a trap set by undercover reporter, Mazher Mahmood – aka the Fake Sheikh – relating to the supply of cocaine. The drugs trial eventually collapsed after the reporter was found to have lied in his evidence – but the impact of the ordeal devastated Tulisa.
It was, according to Tulisa, her “year from hell” and led her to attempt to take her own life not once, but twice. Her emotional new book, Judgement: Love, Trials, and Tribulations, opens with Tulisa sitting drunk on the floor of her bathroom after finding out that she’s going to be charged with being concerned in the supply of Class A drugs at 11pm on a Friday.
READ MORE: Heartbroken Tulisa Contostavlos pulls out of Pride event as famous dad diesREAD MORE: Tulisa Contostavlos flaunts jaw-dropping abs in Thailand after secret health battle
She’s holding a handful of pills. She doesn’t know what they are; she tries Googling but can’t get a signal. Either way, she hopes they will kill her. She swallows them two by two.
She writes: “I can’t do this anymore, I thought, not another six months of this. I just about got through the first six, but I’m not built for this. Why is this happening to me? What’s the point in being alive just to be miserable? How am I ever going to find happiness after this? Even if I’m found innocent, I’ll be empty inside by the time I get to the end of it, and my life will be ruined.”
It was her former best friend and PA Gareth Varey who found her passed out on the floor surrounded by empty packets of sleeping pills. An ambulance arrived and the star was told by the paramedics that they needed to take her to the hospital to check her over – but Tulisa refused. Instead the medics stayed until they thought it was safe to leave, instructing her family and friends to keep a constant watch on her.
READ MORE: Tulisa reveals prescription drug dependency nightmare – ‘I thought I was going to die’
Sadly, that June night wasn’t the only time Tulisa made tragic moves to end her own life. A second incident came soon after, between her trial – which eventually collapsed – and Mahmood’s trial for tampering with her evidence. This one, she says, was ‘more definitive’.
“I felt empty inside as if all the joy had been sucked out of me and would never return. So I took a cocktail of sleeping tablets in a bid to never wake up.”
Thankfully, she had sent a slew of strange messages to friends, and her best friend Cat instantly knew something was wrong and managed to get her to unlock the front door, just before she passed out.
READ MORE: Tulisa Contostavlos ‘forced to flee I’m A Celebrity’ as she lays bare secret health battle
“She later said when she found me that she thought I was already dead as I was seemingly blue from head to toe – she could see veins running up my neck and through my face – so she rang for an ambulance.
“Cat told me a few years later when I finally asked, and how the ambulance crew were desperately trying to keep me alive and how Cat thought I was going to die. I was in hospital for three days and when I finally came around the first thing I said was, ‘Why the fuck am I still here?!’ That moment I did remember.”
Elsewhere, Tulisa speaks openly about her turbulent childhood in a household marred by her mum’s schizoaffective illness and violence. Throughout the book – which catalogues the trauma of her drug charge and collapsed trial – she repeatedly locks herself in the bathroom, heartbreakingly explaining that it is the only place she feels safe. She reveals she slept on the bathroom floor for five days her sex tape with ex-boyfriend Justin Edwards was leaked in 2012.
READ MORE: Tulisa reveals harrowing moment she was sexually assaulted after being spiked
“When I was a child, the bathroom was the only room in my house with a lock. I had always locked myself in there in times of distress, whether it was because my parents were going at it like two bulls in a china shop again, or my mentally ill mother was going off the rails. It had always been my place of safety. And twenty years later, here I was: back lying on the bathroom floor. Deeprooted issues, I suppose. When the sex tape had come out, I had slept on the bathroom floor for five days.”
Tulisa also opens up about her battle with depression and her dependency on sleeping tablets and benzodiazepines, which she only managed to kick in 2024 after she ‘found her peace and faith’.
She talks candidly in the book about her sex life and romances, including her relationships with former footballer Danny Simpson, an ex named Adam, Jack O’Connell, and with an older man named Jacob, who she has had an “almost ten-year journey with that still in a way continues to this day”.
READ MORE: Tulisa’s N-Dubz bandmate Fazer sets the record straight on her well-being after I’m A Celeb
Describing him as ‘no angel’, and their romance as ‘rocky’, she says their ‘drama’ has stopped them from settling down together.
Addressing her three and-a-half-year celibacy stint after her split from Miles, she explains that far from being extreme, she always preferred to wait until a relationship was exclusive to have sex.
Cut to present day, and Tulisa says she is forcing herself to date again in the hopes of a fresh start. But it’s not a process she enjoys, admitting she is scared to settle down. In fact, she has since frozen her eggs to give herself more time to recover from her ‘deep scars’ and to find someone she wants to ‘heal and grow with’.
She now enjoys a quiet life in Cheshire, where she can be close to her ‘soul family’, and focus on her wellbeing, spiritualism and wellness. For the past year, she has been living in her dream home, which she spent six months doing up, in a quiet countrified area in the middle of nowhere.
Elsewhere, Tulisa reveals how she blew her chances of appearing on another series of the X Factor because she was so occupied with chasing the Fake Sheikh’s false movie deal, and speaks about her decision to go to ground after her appearance on I’m A Celebrity, admitting she felt entirely overwhelmed by the situation after time out of the spotlight.
She also recounts in harrowing detail the moment she was confronted by a strange man in a dark park alone, describing it as “every woman’s worst nightmare”.
