Tulisa Contostavlos has told how she suffered a secret anxiety attack in the I’m A Celebrity camp – and headed to the UK because she felt like she was “having a breakdown” if she stayed in Australia.
The 36-year-old singer and former X Factor judge speaks bravely and honestly in an emotional podcast interview this weekend.
And fans listening will get the full story of her life including the latest chapter spent in the jungle and what really happened during the aftermath, when she headed home with ITV’s full support. Tulisa had gone into I’m A Celebrity telling the Mirror she hoped it would be part of her “healing journey” and “like therapy”, But the show was harder than she realised and Tulisa admits she even considered quitting the show.
Tulisa said: “Some of the things you didn’t see, I had night terrors for the first four days. I was waking up out of my sleep, and I was having anxiety attacks. Those parts, not everyone knows, so it wasn’t completely smooth sailing for me at all, but I have a great poker face.
“I really can turn it on and especially when I’m faced with adversity. The last thing I wanted to do was go in there and be the hot mess. So if anything, I’m going to be the biggest soldier there is. So as soon as I’m set with a task and I’m going in and jumping out of a plane, I’m going to look like a warrior, because that is what I do. I might sit and cry under the sleeping bag, that’s also a part of who I am.”
Referring to the problems she faced, she added: “I mean, I did cry on the VT at one point, but I definitely had an anxiety attack off-camera, because I went to the smoking area to do it and even then, I didn’t want them to know that I was having an anxiety attack, so I was trying to bring down my heart rate, literally through my nose.
“I was like, ‘Okay, get the heart rate down. Get the heart rate down’. I wanted to leave that day. I was like, ‘I can’t do this but it’s not what I came here for. I came here to stick it out and do whatever I have to do’. And there were lots of amazing moments, really joyful moments, thanks to the people. The people made those moments.”
Tulisa lives in the countryside in Greater Manchester and tends to stay out of the spotlight now when she is not on tour with N Dubz. Speaking to podcaster Paul C Brunson she explained how she recently spent several years “dependent” on prescription sleeping tablets, only managing to stop taking them in January of this year.
The memories of getting herself off drugs like diazepam and a battle with anxiety was still fresh in her memory when she took part in the ITV reality series. Tulisa added: “I am a massive introvert. I was really getting a little bit overwhelmed in there, so I was probably the least around in camp.
“I would go and remove myself and go for walks or go and hide in the dunny. I spent 90% of my time alone. The agoraphobia and being alone for so long, I got super overwhelmed being around so many people. They could see that, and they were really understanding about that. They had jokes like, ‘She’s gone to the Airbnb. She’ll be back.’
“You know, they’re like, What are you doing? I’m like, ‘Bro, I’ve just been staring at a palm tree. I just needed a minute’.
“When I came out, I think actually the biggest thing that tipped me over the edge was introvert overload. I had pushed myself into doing this and I was ready to overcome all the fears and being in the spotlight, but being watched consistently, [for] so many hours a day, nowhere to hide, nowhere to run, feeling so exposed. Everyone can see me, and also this underlying fear – probably irrational – of being watched.”
She says the feeling of being watched reminded her of when she was secretly filmed and “under surveillance” by disgraced journalist Mazher Mahmood, aka the Fake Sheikh, whose claims about Tulisa being a drug dealer were thrown out of court in 2014 and dismissed as lies. Tulisa says when she came out of I’m A Celebrity and went into the hotel on the Gold Coast she was emotional and whilst other contestants were “happy campers” the experience weighed heavily on her.
She deleted references to the show from her social media and then left the country to go back to the UK instead of staying on for the final as contestants normally do.
Explaining for the first time what really happened next, Tulisa said: “I did what I signed up for, but I came out, I processed, I was feeling the way I was feeling. There’s 11 other really happy campers there that are really happy to be there, happy to have the holiday and do it all with energy, with smiles, and you have someone that’s sat crying in their hotel room. In this current age that we live in, it’s like, ‘You want me to be there out of principle? When I’m having a breakdown right now? I need to go home and process this. If other people are not having the same experience as me, they haven’t had the same experiences in the past and they’re all current people that are doing radios or they’re on television. This is very much the norm for them’. This, for me, was a psychological experiment, for myself.
“ITV were brilliant and supported me knowing what I needed to do for myself.” Tulisa then found comfort being at home and detoxing from social media. Whilst attention remained high around her she was sat at home watching her favourite films with her phone off.
She said: “I stared at the wall, I think, for the first 24 hours in the bed covers, just thinking, processing, phone off. And then I put the Lord of the Rings trilogy on because I’m a nerd and escapism is my thing when I’m feeling overwhelmed. I just sat in bed for four days, phone detox, social media detox, and the people that know me really well know what I’m like, and they were like, ‘It’s okay, just just leave her’ and they were having to speak to other people, because everyone’s like, ‘We can’t get hold of her. She’s gone off the radar. Is she okay?’ My friends that are closest to me, my inner circle, were like ‘She’s good, she’s recharging. She’s on the recharge’.”
Tulisa also uses the in-depth interview with Paul C Brunson to describe how she has faced up to a battle with prescription drugs in recent years during the covid lockdown. She wants to tell fans everything that has happened to her in life so there are “not any more misconceptions of my character”.
During lockdown she became depressed when her dog got cancer and began self medicating with sleeping pills to numb the pain. But she felt like “she was going to die” when she then tried to kick the habit.
She explained: “I was dependent without realising… I just went cold turkey for five days and I ended up in hospital because I didn’t know, but my body had become dependent on it. I felt like I was having a heart attack. I had pains in my chest…. I just literally felt like I was going to die.”
Tulisa used sleeping pills like zopiclone and diazepam in the covid lockdown to help with anxiety and feelings of depression but then found it very difficult to stop, eventually taking months to taper off her dependency on them.
She adds: “Once I overcame that in January, I didn’t realise how much I had been affected by it and I started to feel alive again. I started to feel me, as a human. I was like, ‘Oh my god, this is reality’. I couldn’t determine anymore what was real and what wasn’t in terms of my anxiety, my depression. I didn’t know what was what. Then it takes so long for your body to get back to normal again and for your nervous system to recover.”
Over the years Tulisa has been threatened with prison over untrue media allegations, had to deal with a leaked sex tape and been sexually assaulted when young, But Tulisa says the dependence on prescription drugs was “one of the toughest experiences actually in my life”.
In some ways she says coming through this period in her life gave her the confidence to then take part in I’m A Celebrity. But once in the Australian camp she did suffer with some feelings she had encountered when coming off the pills. Looking ahead to a positive future, Tulisa also says in her new podcast interview she will continue with her music and has also written a novel which she hopes could one day be turned into a film. She said: “I’m in that peaceful era of just, ‘Do I feel passionate about it? All right, I’ll do it. Do I not? I’m staying at home and I won’t do it’.”
* Tulisa is speaking on a two part special of the Paul C Brunson We Need To Talk podcast. The second part is released on Monday, the first part is out now.
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