Lily Allen has admitted that she was ‘mean before she got sober’ in a new interview released after the breakdown of her marriage to David Harbour was revealed.
The singer, 39, has checked into a US trauma clinic following split after telling friends she was close to a nervous breakdown.
Lily called time on her relationship in December after discovering he was using the celebrity dating app Raya.
In an interview with Grazia alongside her podcast host Miquita Oliver released on Monday – but conducted before she entered the clinic – she spoke about her journey to sobriety after the wild partying ways of her youth.
She has long been candid about her drink and drug abuse, saying quitting alcohol and drugs was the best decision she had ever made, with Lily now over five years into her sobriety.
She told the publication: ‘I think I’m just a completely different person. When I was drinking and taking drugs, I could be quite mean.
Lily Allen has admitted that she was ‘mean before she got sober’ in a new interview released after the breakdown of her marriage to David Harbour was revealed
The singer, 39, has checked into a US trauma clinic following split after telling friends she was close to a nervous breakdown
‘I spent the best part of my twenties being publicly humiliated and vilified the whole time and sort of having to absorb all of that.
‘And I think when I drank and when I took drugs, it was like, “Now it’s your turn. I’m going to turn it around on everyone else”.’
Miquita then reassuringly added: ‘We were all a bit of a f***ing mess then!’
Lily has previously opened up about her relationship with drinking, admitting that self-medicating was always likely to ‘be on the cards’ as addiction ‘runs deep’ in her family.
Lily told how addiction for her was always a case of ‘when’ and not ‘if’ as she recalled her actor father Keith Allen’s troubles with drugs.
The Grazia interview release comes at a tough time for Lily amid the breakdown of her marriage.
The Mail on Sunday revealed that the singer’s mental health deteriorated significantly after she returned from holiday to her marital home in New York recently.
While she was at their Brooklyn townhouse, it was revealed Lily felt ‘triggered’ by the thought of him being elsewhere in the city with another woman.
In an interview with Grazia alongside her podcast host Miquita Oliver released on Monday she spoke about her journey to sobriety after the wild partying ways of her youth
She has long been candid about her drink and drug abuse, saying quitting alcohol and drugs was the best decision she had ever made, with Lily now over five years into her sobriety (seen in 2009)
A source said: ‘It was very painful for Lily to return home. David used to be her saviour and now he’s a trigger for her. Lily settled her kids back into the family home and took them to school for their new term, then flew herself straight to rehab. She went a day earlier than intended as she felt wobbly and desperate to escape.’
She will spend several weeks at the residential retreat in the US where she is expected to take part in intensive group counselling sessions and one-on-one therapy in which she will be urged to ‘unpack’ her emotions.
Read More
Lily Allen admits that self-medicating was always 'going to be on the cards' for her because addiction 'runs deep' in her family as she details her sobriety: 'It didn't feel like an 'if', it was a 'when''
Cocooned from the outside world – having surrendered her mobile phone – she will also be encouraged to eat healthily and take walks in the countryside.
The latest chapter in the star’s often troubled life has caused her close-knit friends dismay but, as one told me, they hope that she ‘is now on the road to recovery’.
What makes this painful episode particularly upsetting, they say, is that Lily had pegged her hopes of a better life on her husband – who plays heroic police chief Jim Hopper in Netflix’s Stranger Things – following past drink and drugs issues.
Another source said: ‘She wants to make sure she’s feeling physically well again so she can be there for her daughters as the best mother she can be.
‘Everyone thinks David is the steady one and Lily is the crazy head-case. But the reality is that Lily was calmer and more grounded than she’s ever been – until she discovered that her marriage was unexpectedly over. She is taking the responsible course of action with a trip to a retreat to get her head straight.’
Though they didn’t meet in person, the couple were in touch briefly recently to arrange for David to look after his stepdaughters Ethel, 11, and Marnie, 13, in their mother’s absence. He is close to the girls, who are said to dote on him and know little of what has happened.
They were expecting their stepfather to join them for their Christmas safari in Kenya. But, as this newspaper revealed, he was instead seen with another woman at a temple in Rishikesh in India, in the foothills of the Himalayas, having reactivated his dating profile on Raya around a month earlier.
When the actor landed back in the US last week, the mystery woman – thought to be in her twenties – was nowhere to be seen.
But after his wife left town, he was seen walking in the city with Scarlett Johansson. The pair have been close friends since they appeared together in the 2021 film Black Widow. He was also pictured puffing on a cigar.
A source said: ‘While David was strolling around New York smoking cigars and looking carefree, you can only imagine how Lily was feeling. Her heartbreak was made worse by being near to him in Brooklyn.’
The Mail on Sunday revealed that the singer’s mental health deteriorated significantly after she returned from holiday to her marital home in New York recently
Earlier this month, Lily turned amateur sleuth after suspecting her husband of cheating and found him on Raya
Earlier this month, Lily turned amateur sleuth after suspecting her husband of cheating.
She joined the Raya app herself and was left in ‘agony’ when she discovered her husband had already set up a profile, listed as having been active for at least a month.
Since then, she told listeners of her BBC podcast, ‘I’ve been spiralling and spiralling, and it’s got out of control.’
In the same episode, she said she had a panic attack over Christmas and admitted fleeing a London stage play she was watching during the interval because she was unable to ‘concentrate on anything except the pain I’m going through’.
The couple first got together after the release of Lily’s shocking 2018 tell-all memoir, which detailed her drug and alcohol use, her encounters with female sex workers during a music tour and the collapse of her marriage to builder Sam Cooper, the father of her two daughters.
After she discovered Sam had quickly moved on with a younger girlfriend – India Windsor-Clive, daughter of the Earl of Plymouth, to whom he is now married – she was said to be determined to find love again.
Turning her life around, she conquered her addictions and then met Harbour, a fellow member of Alcoholics Anonymous, via Raya. Following a whirlwind romance he moved into her West London flat during the 2020 lockdown.
She has since admitted that it was during this time she had sex sober for the first time.
By the time they got married in Las Vegas in September 2020, Lily seemed healthy and, say friends, as happy as she has ever been.
The low-key wedding, with just her two daughters as witnesses, was followed by a reception at an In-N-Out burger joint. Though the ceremony was officiated by an Elvis impersonator, Lily declared herself serious about marriage – and told friends she had every intention of staying married to David for the rest of her life.
After moving to New York she settled into blissful mundanity – a joyful novelty after years of globe-trotting as a ‘ladette’ pop star.
Relishing the relative anonymity of living in America, where she is much less famous than her 49-year-old husband, she became a stay-at-home mum. Weekends were spent cooking extravagant Sunday roasts for the family.
At the school gates, other mothers saw her simply as the real-life wife of TV’s Jim Hopper. Outwardly, at least, all seemed pretty much perfect.
In the past few months, however, listeners of Lily’s chart-topping podcast Miss Me? began to suspect that all was not quite as it seemed in their marriage.
While she has never specifically talked about the cracks in their relationship, she has dropped some subtle hints.
In July, Lily confessed that David made unusual ‘kinky sex’ requests in the bedroom, which she rejected.
Speaking with her co-host and best friend Miquita, she said: ‘I wonder if I kink-shame my husband. Because he quite often asks for things, and I’m like, ‘No, babe, it’s not happening.”
Her husband made a cameo appearance in another episode that month. Initially gushing about his wife, he later divulged that she could be too needy, which gave him the ‘ick’. A few months later, Lily repeatedly mentioned feeling gloomy, but did not elaborate.
In October she stopped wearing her wedding ring and a month later, things became clearer when she admitted last month: ‘I’m having a bit of a rough time of it at the moment. But I’m trying to soldier on.’
She had previously told how her daughters had found themselves in the firing line of her emotional state. ‘I exploded and screamed at the kids. I was like, ‘I can’t handle this at the moment; I’m going through so much, I need you two to behave yourselves’.’
David and Lily on their wedding day in 2020 which was followed by a reception at an In-N-Out burger joint
Another clue to the cause of her turmoil came when Lily announced: ‘I’m so bored of men.’
At the same time a source told The Mail on Sunday that Lily was ‘struggling’ with life.
Now she has gone so far as to confess, ‘when life is tough… having to hold things together is really, really hard. We’re going to get through it and be fine’.
A source said: ‘Lily hasn’t relapsed with drugs and alcohol through this ordeal, thankfully. But she is going to spend the few weeks having a lot of therapy, which she badly needs. After a wonderful holiday with her kids in Kenya, albeit without David, she came back to London to spend time with old friends and family.
‘After that she flew to New York and it was then that she felt, frankly, on the edge of a nervous breakdown. She feels insecure, believing David may have a girl with him in New York.
‘People tend to think of him as TV’s Mr Nice Guy, a great dad and a real-life version of the good cop from Stranger Things. But in reality the way their break-up came about was not honourable or kind and has left her totally shaken up.’
David has had a well-documented battle with alcoholism and bipolar disorder in the past and was, by his own admission, a ‘terrible human being’ before getting clean.
The source added: ‘Lily has always been there for David, holding his hand through professional or personal ups and downs. That’s what marriage means to her.’