Cara Delevingne abused drugs and alcohol for years, and her addictions often spilled out in public. I remember covering her back when she was first making a name for herself as a model and she was openly carrying cocaine around. She was often the drunkest person at industry parties and she was usually the most strung-out on a red carpet. Last year, it felt like everything was coming to a head for her, like she was starting to hit rock bottom. In the past six months, a different Cara has emerged though – she sought treatment, she’s working a 12-step program and she’s been clean and sober for months. Now she covers the April issue of Vogue to talk about her sobriety journey and more. Some highlights from the cover story.
The turning point was being photographed returning from Burning Man last year: “I hadn’t slept. I was not okay. It’s heartbreaking because I thought I was having fun, but at some point it was like, Okay, I don’t look well. You know, sometimes you need a reality check, so in a way those pictures were something to be grateful for.”
Her chaotic but aristo family: “In a way, a lot of people have looked at my childhood or my family and thought, She’s spoiled, there’s nepotism, she grew up extremely privileged, which I did, don’t get me wrong. But life wasn’t all that easy for other reasons.”
Everything fell apart in the pandemic: “In the beginning, I was living with people in this COVID bubble in LA. We thought it was going to be a weeklong thing, and so it was fun.” She started her quarantine with Ashley Benson, her then girlfriend of almost two years. By April their relationship had ended. “And then I was alone, really alone…it was a low point.”
She struggled to get out of bed. “I just had a complete existential crisis. All my sense of belonging, all my validation—my identity, everything—was so wrapped up in work. And when that was gone, I felt like I had no purpose. I just wasn’t worth anything without work, and that was scary. Instead of taking the time to really learn something new or do something new, I got very wrapped up in misery, wallowing, and partying. It was a really sad time.”
Self-destruction around her 30th birthday: “I always kind of knew that things were going to have to be different in my 30s, because the way that I was living was not sustainable…. There was this need for change, but I was fighting it so much. I was welcoming in this new time but I was also grieving. It was like a funeral for my previous life, a goodbye to an era. And so I decided I was going to party as hard as I could because this was the end.”
After Burning Man, her friends rallied around her: “I have so many friends. They ride for me and I love my friends so much, but it felt like a lot of the time, they were shallow relationships only because I wasn’t able to be honest about the things I was going through. I didn’t want to burden anyone. It was also like, What if people leave? If you ask any of my friends, they would say they’d never seen me cry.”
She started making positive changes last September: “From September, I just needed support. I needed to start reaching out. And my old friends I’ve known since I was 13, they all came over and we started crying. They looked at me and said, ‘You deserve a chance to have joy.’ ”
Working a 12-step program. “Before I was always into the quick fix of healing, going to a weeklong retreat or to a course for trauma, say, and that helped for a minute, but it didn’t ever really get to the nitty-gritty, the deeper stuff. This time I realized that 12-step treatment was the best thing, and it was about not being ashamed of that. The community made a huge difference. The opposite of addiction is connection, and I really found that in 12-step.”
She also shares her dreams of freezing her eggs and becoming a mom at some point, and she wants to continue working as a model and actress. She has a lot of friends within the industry, and it was clear (last year) that they were trying to get her some help – I remember those photos of Margot Robbie crying as she left Cara’s house, and I think a lot of people were trying to get through to her last year. I’m glad she’s working a program and she’s finding relief and joy in the structure of it. Because I think that’s key for her – the chaotic hedonism of her life meant that she never had to change until she did, and she needs to build new systems. I’m glad she’s being so open about this, it will help a lot of people.
Cover & IG courtesy of Vogue.
She’s one of those celebrities that I have a soft spot for-and I do worry about her long term. I am pretty sure her mom was addicted to heroin when she was a little girl. Wishing her continued sobriety and good health.
Good for Cara. It was really off putting seeing her on the red carpet and at the AMA’s I believe it was with Megan Thee Stallion. She was acting inappropriately and looked and sounded like a mess. I had no idea about her life and her drug use because I never really paid attention to her. My era of models was the Naomi, Christy, Cindy, Linda, Claudia…etc. so growing up I would buy all the magazines with them and ready anything and everything about them. These young models don’t have that draw for me At. All.
Anyway. I hope she stays sober and lives a healthy and happy life.
I’m so happy to read this. She does deserve joy.
For anyone struggling with addiction, or feel they are in a bad way with alcohol and drugs, know that change is possible. I never thought I’d give up alcohol.
590 days sober. 🙂
Laura-congratulations on 590 days!!!
Congratulations!!!
Sobriety is such a beautiful and loving way to treat yourself.
I can’t believe I’m at 1102 days today, according to my app. I used to think wine was one of my life’s greatest pleasures, but it can’t compare to the peace, calm, and joy of waking up sober each day.
I’m so happy for Cara. It sounds like she’s actually putting work into this.
Being a friend of Bill X 30 years. Its a loving, healing community wherever you go.
Congratulations!!
It is one of the greatest pleasures of life, if you’re not addicted to it… which sometimes it’s very difficult. I stayed 21 years completely wine-free, until I was 35… and now it’s maximum 2 glasses every 3-4 weeks, as even those 2 glasses might give me a headache without an expresso afterwards.
I have never followed Cara, but I actually really enjoy her performance in “Carnival Row.” She’s a pretty good actress. I’m glad she’s getting help. Hope she’s OK.
I saw her in that dreadful scifi movie I forget the title of… so I watched Carnival Row just for Orlando Bloom and go figure, I like her more than everyone else in it.
I think it’s also commendable that Vogue has dedicated a cover story to sobriety. It’s so important.
I have mixed feelings about the 12 steps, but they saved my Dad’s life and saved my mom’s mom too. My grandma quit drinking at 70, my Dad was 52. My Dad has been sober for over 10 years now, but the first half of that was all AA all the time. All he talked about. Because of AA my Dad now knows how old I am and what I majored in in college. I am very grateful to that community.
I do to. I don’t use it but I do consume a lot of sobriety media on my own. I actually feel like daily meetings would be triggering. I like going weeks without thinking of booze at all. But I’m also thankful that 12 steps are there for people who need it.
I also have complicated feelings, as someone who went to AA and did all 12 steps after I stopped drinking but who doesn’t really go to meetings anymore.
I do think it offers something that other supports that I had access to at least does not – a group of people who are at various stages of recovery, including people who I could see as models for who I might be without alcohol. At the non-AA group therapy, everyone there was roughly as messy as I was, including the therapist.
But at the same time, it’s very clearly a movement that was founded by cis straight white upper-middle class Protestant men in the early part of the 20th century. People who don’t fit that description can benefit from AA as well, but I think a lot of us end up brushing up against its edges, or seeing how not everyone in a room has the same ability to speak and be listened to. So yeah, it’s complicated.
The pandemic speed up my eventual crash (proverbial not literal thank goodness) with alcohol abuse. I’m thankful for that, though, as painful as it was to face some really hard, ugly truths about myself, on the other side of working a 12-step program, I’ve found a lot of peace. And if anything, I’m a more present spouse, parent, friend, worker, and all around human. I think the one hour a week I spend at a meeting is well worth the amount of positive change it has brought to my life. I’m not hurting people constantly and when I do, I have a framework to reflect, make changes, and show true remorse through changing my actions — not just my words. That in and of itself is probably the best thing I got out of AA.
I’ll be two years sober in May. If anyone needs help or is curious, try a zoom. There’s a late night one I listened in on for weeks before I got the courage to go to a meeting in person. GUTS (Grant Us The Serenity). Google it.
Vogue covering sobriety has got to help some people. I’ve got addicts in my family who have gotten and stayed clean using the 12 step program. Good for Cara for talking about it openly. I’ve been to several open events for NA or AA with family like BBQs and always happy to be there, such generous and kind people.
What brought tears to my eyes was “It was heart breaking when I saw photos…I thought I was having fun” ….
That sums up so much. I wish her well.
It sounds like she was at a transition point in her life & then the pandemic took away the work structure that she was depending on for stability.
I had a mental health crisis in 2016 & spent a couple of years working hard to recover. It was awful, but once the pandemic happened, I was weirdly grateful that I had gone through it then & developed robust skills to manage stresses (& my responses to them). My psychiatrist said she heard similar things from patients who had pre-pandemic struggles.
I wish Cara the best. It sounds like she’s found a program that works for her.
Good for her. She’s still so young and should have much more to live. Hopefully she’ll continue to surround herself with the right people.
Like someone else said above, Covid kicked my alcoholism into overdrive. Because of this, I was diagnosed with liver and kidney failure and 1 year and 7 months ago, I went on the national transplant list when I was 7 months sober. It’s a year since I received my transplants now and it feels like I never drank. Mentally that is. I mean, I still sometimes think of the old days but not as fondly. Alcohol put me on dialysis for 7 months and I was one of the lucky ones who received a second chance. Some are not so lucky. I wish Cara the best. It’s never too late to wake up and see how much you are hurting youself.
My employer/friend is in liver failure and it’s heart breaking to watch a robust big as life person go to being a husk of his former self. He has good days and bad days, and need to have fluid removed from his abdomen, More bad days now than good. only been sober 4 months when his body broke down. Doubt he’ll ever live long enough to get on the transplant list as he needs a full liver.
Glad you made it, Lisa!