Cara Delevingne checked into rehab after she saw the paparazzi photos that made fans concerned for her welfare.
Fans became worried about the British model-turned-actress in September 2022 when she looked dishevelled and distressed in photos taken at a Los Angeles airport after she returned from Burning Man festival.
In a cover interview for the April 2023 issue of Vogue, Cara revealed the photos made her feel ashamed and embarrassed and gave her an urgent wake-up call to get clean.
"I hadn't slept. I was not okay," she said of the worrying images. "It's heartbreaking because I thought I was having fun, but at some point it was like, Okay, I don't look well... You know, sometimes you need a reality check, so in a way, those pictures were something to be grateful for."
The 30-year-old quietly checked into rehab shortly after and was four months sober when she gave the Vogue interview in January.
"All I knew is if I was continuing to go down the road I was, I would either end up dead or, like, doing something really, really stupid," Cara admitted.
The Suicide Squad star revealed she had previously had "interventions of a sort, but I wasn't ready" to sober up and had tried quick fixes such as going to a retreat, but she realised this time around she needed to commit to a 12-step treatment programme.
"I always thought that the work needs to be done when the times are bad, but actually the work needs to be done when they're good. The work needs to be done consistently. It's never going to be fixed or fully healed but I'm okay with that, and that's the difference," she shared.
Cara, who confessed she first got drunk at the age of seven, credited her 12-step meetings, weekly therapy sessions, a stable diet and daily yoga and meditation practices for helping her remain clean.
"This process obviously has its ups and downs, but I've started realizing so much," she stated. "People want my story to be this after-school special where I just say, 'Oh look, I was an addict, and now I'm sober, and that's it.' And it's not as simple as that. It doesn't happen overnight."
