Kerry Katona got her daughters’ names tattooed on her wrists to stop herself from copying her mother’s self-harming.
The Atomic Kitten star has opened up about her battle with drug and alcohol addiction and how on her worst days she would take a cocaine overdose in the "hope" she wouldn’t "wake up".
The 38-year-old singer – who has Molly, 17, and Lily-Sue, 15, with first husband Brian McFadden, Heidi, 11, and Max, 10, with Mark Croft, and four-year-old Dylan-Jorge with third spouse George Kay – witnessed her own mum Sue Katona self-harm when she was a kid and when she first checked into rehab in 2008 she decided to get the inkings to stop her from copying that behaviour.
Appearing on ‘This Morning’, she recalled: "My mum was a manic depressive, I am sure she is watching, she’s done really well, she was always a self-harmer and has wrist slices on her arms and stuff, and I witnessed that a lot growing up. When I went to rehab feeling it was genetic, and my life was spiralling out of control, I thought well what if I try and do that as well.
"I had two daughters at that time. I got Molly and Lilly-Sue’s names tattooed on my wrist (as a reminder). I thought If I ever get as low as my mum has got, I didn’t know whether that would happen. I’d have to be really selfish to cut through my children’s names on my hand."
Kerry admits that she has never thought about cutting herself, but she contemplated ending her life through a drugs overdose when she was at her lowest.
Asked if it crossed her mind, she said: "No, not slitting my wrists, I was too scared of hurting myself, so I’d do it with drugs. I would have that much cocaine that I would pass out and have a fit hoping that I wouldn’t wake up again."
Kerry’s lowest point came in 2009 when she lost a £250,000 advertising contract with supermarket Iceland after video footage emerged of her snorting cocaine in her home.
Admitting she felt "ashamed" and "embarrassed" by her own behaviour, she recalled: "That was when I was married to my second husband.
The infamous interview that we did together, TV crews and photographers outside my house. I was constantly in the papers and it was nothing good. I felt ashamed and embarrassed.
"I was lost, I didn’t know who I was as a person. I didn’t know how to make it all right. The only thing I thought was the easiest way and best way for my children, and everyone else, was if I ended my life.
"I felt such an embarrassment and so shameful that my children would grow up and go on the internet and read all of these horrific stories about their mum that I thought, ‘I am better off out of it.’"
Kerry takes full responsibility for her past actions and says that her willingness to do that has been key to her getting to the "good place" where she is now.
She said: "Obviously other people contributed to me being in the state I was but, ultimately, it was my life and I have to own it, accept it and move on. That’s what I’ve done and I am really in a good place right now."
Kerry Katona thought cutting wrists would be ‘selfish’ towards kids
