Danniella Westbrook was inspired to get off cocaine after her son Kai found her lying unconscious in a hotel room.
The former ‘EastEnders’ actress relapsed into drug abuse last year after contracting a form of septicaemia last year caused by dental work she had for TV show ‘Celebrity Botched Up Bodies’, and her cocaine use got even worse when her boyfriend George Arnold separated from her due to her Class A problem.
In the wake of the split, Daniella, 43, was living at a hotel and heavily using and one evening when 20-year-old Kai – her son with Robert Fernandez – came to see her and she didn’t respond to him he had to kick down the toilet door to find her passed out on the floor.
The moment she came round and saw the "fear" in Kai’s eyes made her determined to get clean again.
In an appearance on ‘Loose Women’ on Monday (16.01.17), she said: "When I get poorly or something happens for me, my depression is bad the first thing I do is pick up drugs. So I relapsed badly, and George – who doesn’t take drugs – was like, ‘I can’t live like this.’ I can see myself getting lower and then I completely withdraw from myself. I tried to hide it from George as much possible. George has never taken drugs, he’s like the ideal man, he just didn’t know what to do and he said, ‘I can’t watch you do it, I can’t watch you die in front of me.’ I just lost it. I had septicaemia, I was in hospital for seven weeks and I couldn’t work."
Recalling the harrowing moment with her son, she added: "Just recently, what people don’t know is I was so bad when I split up from George, rather than not using and trying to get him back I used more. "Kai turned up when I was staying in a hotel, Kai come over. I started using and Kai had to kick the toilet door down and he found me on the floor and I was out, gone. When I came too I could just see the fear in this kid and it broke me and I cleaned up. I’ve cleaned up and fixed up and set myself up in a hotel in Kensington because it’s full of meetings there, I go to four meetings a day – typically addict, I’m addicted to meetings."
Daniella – who was joined on the programme by Kai – also revealed her 15-year-old daughter Jodie, whose dad is her ex-husband Kevin Jenkins, has not spoken to her for the past four months and doesn’t want her in her life until she can prove she’s totally clean.
She said: "Jodie for the last four months has said, ‘I won’t speak to you until you’re clean.’ Jodie had never seen me ill until she hit 13, she didn’t know me as anything but sober and then I had this relapse and her whole world fell apart."
Since getting clean again, Daniella – whose nasal septum was eroded due to her heavy cocaine use – is back in touch with George and is hoping that they can reconcile.
She said: "I’m not back with him but George is my world. I speak to him every day and I’ve seen him the last couple of days and he’s my best friend in the world – him and the kids. I love him to bits and he’s helped me through everything, the best thing he could have done was walk at the time."
Danniella Westbrook’s saviour son inspires her to quit drugs
