Kelly Osbourne first entered America’s living rooms 23 years ago, on the groundbreaking MTV reality series The Osbournes. The funny, foulmouthed family were among the first celebrities to pull back the curtain on their daily lives — both the dramatic and mundane. For four seasons that also aired in Canada, the U.K. and Australia, it seemed as if the whole family were completely open books. But for a teenaged Osbourne, the constant spotlight proved an often unhealthy space, as she struggled with anxiety, body-image issues and obsessive-compulsive disorder, leading to her substance misuse.
“I used to carry around the shame of being an addict everywhere with me, and it was a heavy burden to bear,” Osbourne, now 40, told Us Weekly in her October 2024 cover story. “You feel like such a loser when you’re in it. I never did drugs because I wanted to party. I did drugs because I wanted to numb myself. I hated who I was. I felt so uncomfortable and not worthy of anything that happened to me.”
Osbourne’s struggle with substance use began at age 13, when she was prescribed an opioid medication after undergoing surgery for tonsillitis. Vicodin initially quieted her crippling self-doubt, she revealed on a 2021 episode of Red Table Talk. “I went from having every voice in my head being like, ‘You’re fat, you’re ugly, you’re not good enough, no one likes you, you don’t deserve this, people only like you because of who your parents are,’” she recalled. “And then all of a sudden, every single voice was silenced and it felt like life gave me a hug.”
But that embrace quickly became a stranglehold. Her first stint in a rehabilitation clinic came in 2004. Osbourne said she sought help for drug and alcohol dependency in rehab facilities seven times, and she told Us that not relying on drugs and alcohol only fueled more emotional pain.
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“There was a time in my life where everyone around me was dying, everybody was ODing,” she says. “I got survivor’s guilt because I was like, well, ‘Why have they spared me?’” At 33, Osbourne realized she needed to address her co-occurring disorders once and for all: “I said, ‘I need to figure this out because it will be me next if I don’t. There are only three places you end up when you’re an addict: jails, institutions or death. I was really f—ing lucky that I only ended up in the institutions.”
Today, Osbourne says she’s learned to be comfortable in her own skin, and she credits therapy with improving her mental health. “I had a psychological diagnosis that I didn’t know I was walking around with,” she explained. “I didn’t realize how much my OCD was taking over my life. I didn’t realize how much depression played into it, and anxiety.”
Motherhood has also helped Osbourne accept herself. “I didn’t realize just how powerful the feeling of love was [going to be],” she told Us of her son, Sidney, whom she welcomed with her partner, Slipknot DJ Sid Wilson, in late 2022. “You realize in that one second, ‘You’ve given me purpose like nothing else has ever given me before.’”
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Happy and healthy, Osbourne now understands that, while she’s been able to put the past behind, the added perspective is something she’ll gladly carry with her in the future. “I have such a strong sense of self now,” she said. “Learning to love my weird self was a f-ing journey that took me to gates of hell and back again. But I’m grateful for my mistakes — because I’ve learned so much.”
To learn more about identifying and treating co-occurring disorders and how to help yourself and loved ones, read all our coverage in Us Weekly and the harris project’s The Missing Issue, on newsstands and online now.
To purchase The Missing Issue for $8.99 go to https://magazineshop.us/harrisproject.
If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health and/or substance use, you are not alone. Seek immediate intervention — call 911 for medical attention; 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline; or 1-800-662-HELP for the SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) National Helpline. Carrying naloxone (Narcan) can help reverse an opioid overdose.
