CONTENT WARNING: This article discusses themes of substance abuse and addiction.
Jackie ‘O’ Henderson has shared a candid reflection on her two-year addiction to prescription drugs.
Shortly after sharing her journey on The Kyle and Jackie O Show, the radio host further opened up on the early stages of her addiction journey, telling A Current Affair that her issues with substance abuse began shortly after her split from ex-husband Lee Henderson.
“I mean, I just thought the answer was, ‘Oh, I’ll have a drink instead,’ and then that drink obviously because a drink with a pill and just went from there. It was a horrible existence of just not remembering, not wanting to think, feel, do,” she shared.
In her new memoir The Whole Truth, Henderson revealed that at the height of her addiction, she was taking up to 12 sleeping pills and 24 prescription painkillers a day, with alcohol.
“I don’t know how I woke up… I really don’t. I’d see all those empty packets and I would go, ‘You know, you could die, but you still keep doing it,'” she shared, adding that her close friend and co-host Kyle Sandilands “never knew or even suspected” her ongoing battle with addiction.
Henderson’s latest comments come just over two weeks after the 49-year-old first spoke publicly on her recovery journey, sharing that her radio hiatus in 2022 was not a result of long COVID symptoms, but of a 28-day stint in rehab in California.
‘I believe she saved my life’
“I was in a really, really dark place,” she tearfully told KIISFM listeners on Oct 24. “That’s what the addiction to your brain, it changes your way of thinking, it doesn’t want you to get help, it’s so powerful.”
“It takes a rock bottom moment to cut yourself off.”
That rock bottom moment was in 2022. After confiding in her best friend and business partner Gemma O’Neill, Henderson admitted herself to California’s famed Betty Ford Centre to undergo a 12-step programme to help treat her substance dependence and addiction.
“It came to a head and [O’Neill] was such a great friend. She said: ‘I’m sorry Jackie, but you’re not going to taper off this, it will never work. I’m checking you into rehab at the end of the week and we’re going.”
“I said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Gemma, like that is such overkill. I don’t have a problem that bad that I need to go to Betty Ford’.”
But O’Neill wouldn’t take no for an answer. It was a move Henderson, a mother-of-one, said ultimately saved her life.
“She said, ‘No, we’re going and we’re doing it’, and I thank God she did that. Thank God there was someone out there like her because I believe she saved my life”
Henderson’s nearing her second anniversary of getting clean. And while it is a an achievement for Australian media’s highest-paid female talent, her story is all too familiar.
The twice-divorced star said her dependence on prescription medication began more than 15 years ago when a doctor gave her a strong opioid painkiller for her endometriosis. Endometriosis is a painful condition that results in tissue growing outside the uterus.
“I got prescribed that and I found myself at the time taking it more than I needed and I recognised that this might be a bit of a problem, so I stopped at the time,” she recalled.
‘Someone was watching over me’
By 2018 she was back on it, but this time she used it to “go to some happy place” after her split from her husband and father of her daughter Kitty, 13, photographer Lee Henderson.
Then she turned to the sleep medication Stilnox and said she’d often take it with a glass of wine, which is a huge no-no.
“You can still be awake and have no idea what’s going on,” Henderson continued. “It’s like you’re kind of functioning but you have no memory.”
Things then escalated further during the pandemic.
“The dosage started to creep up more and more and it got extreme and I was averaging about 24 Panadeine Forte a day and then I was averaging about 10 to 12 Stilnox,” she shared.
“Someone was watching over me because I don’t know how I woke up most days with that kind of dosage.”
If you or someone you know has been affected by any of the issues raised in this article, help is always available. Please call the National Alcohol and Other Drug hotline 1800 250 015 or call Lifeline on 13 11 14.