Celebrity Apprentice contestant Jodi Gordon has opened up about her struggle with alcohol and her 30-day stint in a rehab facility last month.
Gordon told Stellar that she struggled when she first entered rehab earlier this year but noticed herself gradually growing stronger.
“There were no smiles at the start of those 30 days. To find yourself in a place where you have multiple people making the decision for you that you have to admit yourself into a rehab, that’s not a place where you’re smiling.
“But doing that kind of work [on myself in rehab], I’ve never, ever gone to those emotional depths and dealt with such unprocessed trauma and pain [before]. It was incredibly scary and painful at times.
“I learnt so much through connection but also through the tools that you gain in how to start to deal with that pain, that trauma, how to break it down, coping mechanisms
Gordon told the publication that she feels like she’s been given a “second shot at life”.
“When you dive deep into the dark problems that you have, when you can come out the other end of that, I think there’s freedom and liberation in that. I feel like second chances are on the table,” she said.
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The former Home and Away actress opened up to the publication about what led her to admit herself to rehab.
“Alcohol is definitely my poison. I’ve chased this illusion that I can drink like a normal person for far too long. It got really bad when I was doing Neighbours. It was the commuting, the stress of travelling… In my industry, I think there’s a lot of keeping up with appearances.
“I think I got to a point where the depression really started to sink in. I spiralled into a place of really negative thoughts within myself. I call it [my] “depression place”. I write a lot of poetry around this place and I call it “a dark place lit so brightly with black”.
“And it’s a horrible place to be – it’s intoxicating and all-consuming. And I guess my coping mechanism for that place was to throw a blanket over it; pretend it didn’t exist [with] alcohol.
“But alcohol is a depressant. So when you try to treat depression with a depressant, it’s like adding fuel to the fire.
“[Alcohol] disguises itself in these fabulous ways to me… It looks fancy, it looks fun. It’s not. It’s a pattern of destruction – and I don’t use that word lightly – but it ends up on this downward spiral and I end up in the same place… When you take the alcohol away, you can actually look at what’s going on.”
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