What's Normal Anyway? Celebrities' Own Stories of Mental Illness (7 page)

I did relapse though and I did go back to having surgeries. For some reason I had all these implants put in my face, which I felt really deformed me and were probably the worst surgery I had ever done. I was just so self-destructive and surgery was my alcohol or my heroin, so I went back to rehab for a second and third time. Because for me, it's like giving up smoking: it's not about failing, it's the more times you try, the more chance you've got of giving up for good. And it was quite hard at times because it was all quite regimental and my natural instinct was to rebel against that so I'd do really stupid things. I'd sneak in some paracetamols or turn up late from shopping trips to get on the coach, so I ended up not being allowed to go out because I'd been punished. Also, obviously at rehab they said: ‘You can't drink, you can't smoke', and I thought: ‘Well, I'm not here for alcohol problems or anything like that so why can't I go out and get drunk?' And that was the hardest thing because I realised that I hadn't completely changed my life.

But I was on this learning curve and I knew I was going to succeed and every time I succeeded a little bit more. And after the third time in rehab I eventually did change my life. I changed my diet: I became a vegan and I eat very healthily now, and I took away stimulants like coffee and alcohol. I don't go out drinking, I haven't touched alcohol for a couple of years now. And I don't excessively exercise but I exercise every day to make sure I keep myself happy. So yeah, I had to change my whole lifestyle to live my life in a different way and go down a different path from where I was. Because I knew if I started drinking, going clubbing, going back into that old life, with my old friends, then I would go back into having my plastic surgeries because that was my life. I had to walk away from my entire life and everything I knew.

I've become a businesswoman now. On my trips to LA, during my stays in rehab, I discovered this thing called argan oil and it completely changed my skin, my hair, my face, my body: it was re-moisturising, it was nourishing, it had nothing nasty in it, it was completely natural. So I visited the women's cooperative in Morocco and they were such lovely women so I made a deal with them, then and there, to become the sole distributer of their argan oil in this country and started this company up. And so I helped the women over there and obviously they helped me because I now have a successful business. It's definitely helped my recovery and I feel I've got a real purpose in life. I'm helping women and different charities and I feel the power of Mother Nature and how you can work with Mother Nature, not against it. When I changed my lifestyle I became sort of eco-friendly and conscious of my environment and everything is positive about my product. My brand is definitely a lifestyle thing: it's about being happy with yourself and making the most of what you've got. And Mother Nature actually is a very powerful tool and if you work with it it's amazing what you can achieve.

It has just left me so annoyed that I spent all my twenties locked in this whole surgery trip. I'm just so angry with my relationship to plastic surgery, it's unbelievable. I feel like as a child I was let down by my father, as a young woman I was let down by my boyfriends, and then I turned to surgery and I was let down by plastic surgeons. I've said that I feel like plastic surgeons are like acid attackers in white coats and I know people have said: ‘How can you compare yourself to somebody who's been attacked?' Well, I can actually because I was attacked myself when I was fourteen years old – I was bottled in the face – so I know what it's like to be attacked. And it's worse when it's the doctors who you feel are doing the attacking. I think it's the trust issue because you have to put your trust in the doctors, because if you can't trust a doctor then who can you trust? But there are surgeons who I think are literally just driven by money and who have made me worse off than when I started. I just wish that they had been more responsible towards me; they should have offered me counselling.

So I'd say to anyone who has suffered from the same issues as me – the eating disorders, the body dysmorphia – just get help. If you're in that whole trapped world then demand counselling. You think you can do it yourself but you can't. You know, I started trying to get help by reading self-help books but the problem is the pages are blank because you don't have the skills and the tools to be able to work it out and understand it. You need someone to be able to direct your thoughts in the right direction. In America it's normal – over there they're not shy, they're not embarrassed about asking for help – but we're very stiff upper lip, you know, soldier on. What's our saying: ‘Keep calm and carry on?' Don't. You don't need to. Go and ask for help. Go and get some counselling.

I would say I've been cured now for about a year and a half, two years. It's a fragile recovery though, I'm still on the journey of recovery, but I'm on the right path now I feel. I worked through why I had the surgery, why I had been depressed, and it was a tough pill to swallow, but actually I realised that I was good enough in myself and I was an intelligent person and it made me believe in myself. So I didn't need the tablets anymore, I didn't need the surgery anymore, because I believed in myself. And if I fall down and I do have surgery then, as any alcoholic or heroin addict will tell you, it's not the end of the world. I'm still on that journey. But I'm actually more happy with myself now than I've ever been. I'm just concentrating on positives in my life; I live my life in a bubble of positivity.

***

O
ne month later we spoke to Alicia again after seeing reports in the newspaper that she had had more plastic surgery . . .

***

At the end of the day, putting aside the body dysmorphia and my addiction, the fact is I think I've had some pretty horrendous surgery. The worst surgery for me was the awful implants that I had put in my face, which were actually really painful, and with the chin implants it felt like I could hardly move my face at all. Also, during another of my surgeries, a major nerve was cut on one side of my face so I couldn't move my mouth properly and it looked like I'd had a stroke all the time. And it just got to the point where it was very soul-destroying and hard to carry on living like that. Even though I'd adapted my life not to rely on my looks – now that I've got a skincare company my looks don't matter either way – I still couldn't look in the mirror without getting very upset and having a sinking feeling. I hated, I really hated, looking in the mirror.

Then a friend who I'd met in a plastic surgery waiting office whose whole life, like mine, had been destroyed by having plastic surgery, recommended a new surgeon who'd done corrective work on her which she was really pleased with. So I saw the results and I thought: ‘Yep, I'll take a chance and see him.' So I went, even though I didn't really have much intention of having anything done because I felt like I wasn't going to have any more surgery. But after I talked to him and another surgeon who he brought in – who is an expert in maxilloacial surgery – and they told me what they could do, I started to think about it. They said: ‘There's an operation which we haven't done before which we could try to do to correct the nerve damage, which is to attempt to suspend the lip, to staple it up.' It was basically a trial, a fifty–fifty chance to see if it would work. And they were very responsible, they gave me counselling and a psychiatric assessment, so they were really careful. They said: ‘We wouldn't be suggesting this unless we really thought we could help you.'

But I had to consider it carefully because it was a big operation, an eight-hour operation, and, obviously, it was going forward with more surgery. And that's why I had to make a really careful decision about this reconstructive surgery, because it's like an alcoholic walking into a pub and drinking water. And some would say: ‘You know what? Be happy with how you are', but unfortunately I couldn't be. So I thought: ‘I've got one more chance, I'm going to take another gamble.' And of course there was that question in my mind, where I kind of thought: ‘Am I doing it for the right reasons?' It's a question that I don't think anybody can answer really – what's acceptable and what's not – because it's a fine line, that line of whether it's plastic or recon. And because I'm addicted to plastic surgery that hope did come back and I couldn't help thinking: ‘Yeah, this is going to be really great, the result's going to be perfect.' And I had to keep grounding myself and stopping that mindset, realising that it wasn't about looking better, it was about damage control and getting back to where I was in the beginning. It wasn't going to make me look better
per se
, it was going to take me back to when my face moved more naturally.

So I spent my last bit of savings, that were meant to be for my company, to take a gamble and have this last surgery. And basically I had all the implants taken out: my chin implants, nose implants, the implant underneath my nose, my cheek implants. Oh, also, because when they take the implants out it leaves your skin saggy, they had to basically give me a facelift, which meant that they had to break my jaw in two places, bring my jaw forward, and take my ears off. And then I had my lips lifted and the muscles in my face tightened. Overall it has made a huge difference, I'm so much happier without having the implants and my face is moving a lot better.

And probably it is a step closer to me getting addicted to having plastic surgery again, because after the surgery I would wake up and see the results and think: ‘That looks good', and those thoughts keep coming back even now: ‘Oh, I'll get my boobs done.' But with the support I've got around me now I feel like I'm in a positive place and I'm not going to go down that road. Before, when I looked in the mirror I couldn't recognise myself at all, but now there's a glimmer of Sarah Howes back again, of the girl I was. And now that I recognise myself again I think there is a glimmer of: ‘What if?' Because obviously I never gave Sarah Howes a chance, I kind of walked away from her when I was thirteen, fourteen, and turned into Alicia Douvall. And I suppose there is sometimes that sense of: ‘What if I'd been brave enough to live my life as who I was supposed to be and what if I hadn't made the decisions that I have made?' I guess, yeah, sometimes I feel like going back to that to see what it could have been like.

‘Depression is a bit like feeling dead and alive at the same time . . . I can look at that wall and see there's a very nice painting there, I can turn on the telly and I can see there's a bunch of blokes playing football, but you're completely disengaged from it because inside you feel a kind of internal, not death, but deadness.'

A
lastair Campbell was born in 1957 in Yorkshire and was educated at Cambridge University, where he read modern languages. After graduating he went into journalism, starting on regional papers, before being hired by the
Mirror
in 1982 and then moving to
Today.
After suffering a nervous breakdown brought on by stress and excessive drinking, he went back to journalism, before becoming Tony Blair's press secretary in 1994. After the Labour Party won the general election in 1997 he became the Prime Minister's Chief Press Secretary and Official Spokesperson and later became Blair's Director of Communications and Strategy, before resigning in 2003. Since then he has published
The Blair Years
, extracts from his diaries from his time at Downing Street, which was a Number 1 bestseller, and has published four volumes of the unexpurgated diaries. He has also published three novels,
All in
the Mind
,
Maya
, and
My Name Is . . . .
Alastair regularly appears on television, does consultancy and motivational speaking, and campaigns widely on mental health. He has three children and lives with his partner Fiona in London, where the interview for this chapter took place.

***

So what is it you're doing again? Oh, that's right, a book on mental health. Okay, so let's get right to it. What had been going on in my life in the lead-up to my breakdown in 1986? New job, that was probably the key. Previously I was on the
Mirror
where, politically, I felt very at home. I was sort of a bit of a rising star on the
Mirror
. And then I got approached by Eddy Shah's new outfit
Today
, and I kind of instinctively knew it was the wrong thing to do, but the more other people told me that, the more I was going to push myself towards it. I was flattered into it really. I was news editor of the Sunday operation and I think that made me the youngest news editor on Fleet Street. So it felt kind of like a big step for me. Politically it was stupid, as I'd gone from a sort of Labour place to, you know, Shah, anti-unions. So that probably fractured a few relationships, personal friendships in politics and stuff. My partner Fiona had always thought it was a bit, you know: ‘What are you doing this for? You're fine where you are.' That kind of thing. But I went.