Lily Allen candidly addressed her ongoing mental health struggles — and shut down rumors she was going to rehab following a relapse.
During the Thursday, January 9, episode of her “Miss Me?” podcast, Allen, 39, announced she was stepping back while “finding it really hard to be interested in anything” at the moment.
“I’m really not in a good place,” she explained. “I know I’ve been talking about it for months, but I’ve been spiraling and spiraling and spiraling and it’s got out of control.”
Allen recalled having a “panic attack” at an event recently, adding, “I went to see something at the theater the other night with my [friends] Carlo and Claire, and I had to leave at halftime. I just can’t concentrate on anything except the pain that I’m going through.”
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The singer, who is married to actor David Harbour, didn’t specify what was causing the personal decline. “It’s really, really hard,” she added before discussing her break from podcasting. “I’m going away next week. You’re not gonna hear me for a few weeks, listeners.”
Allen also used the opportunity to shut down “vicious rumors” she had relapsed and was going to rehab. She has often used her podcast as a platform to discuss mental health — revealing in December 2024 that she had been having difficulty eating for the last three years after suffering from bulimia in the past.
“I’ve been going through a tough time over the last few months and my eating has become a real issue,” she said on her show about how she didn’t tell her therapist about the issues. “It’s just because it hasn’t seemed at the top of the list of the important things that I need to talk about. I’m really not in a great place mentally at the moment.”
The emotional update came after Allen previously opened up about her journey to being five years sober.
“I think that addiction runs deep in my family, so self-medicating was going to be on the cards. For me, it didn’t really feel like an ‘if,’ it was a ‘when,’” Allen, who is the daughter of comedian Keith Allen, told The Times in November 2024. “The journey of sobriety isn’t singular, and it isn’t linear. So if sharing my own experiences and struggles helps even just one person process what they’re going through, then it’s all worth it.”
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Allen, who shares daughters Ethel, 13, and Marnie, 12, with ex Sam Cooper, elaborated on how her sobriety affects her marriage to Harbour, 49.
“We don’t really talk about it,” Allen explained. “I don’t think I’d ever had sex with anybody not drunk before I got together with him. So that was different for sure.”
She continued: “It’s a totally different thing. It’s unavoidable, conscious and real. He had a lot of experience with it, so it’s been helpful to do it with someone that’s long-in-the-tooth in that game.”
