Melanie Ceysson, 36, had married the MasterChef Australia star, 58, less than seven months earlier when she had to watch her “other half” be forcibly removed from their home by police, firefighters and a doctor in Provence in November.
As well as his TV career, which has also had him appear on Top Chef, Kitchen Chemistry and Heston’s Feasts, Blumenthal is the owner of restaurants that include three-Michelin-star The Fat Duck in Berkshire, England, and has penned numerous cookbooks.
Being sectioned was a devastating moment in his life, but as Blumenthal told the Daily Mail in a new interview, his recollection during that “manic phase” was hazy.
“I’ve forgotten a day … I’m still processing the facts,” he said.
Ceysson explained that in the lead-up to the medical intervention, her husband had a “dark energy” and was having “hallucinations about guns” and death.
“He was hardly eating. Not sleeping. Waking me up in the middle of the night,” she recalled.
“It was horrible, horrible — a proper tornado … I just wanted to run away, but this was my husband, the person I love, who was here in the middle of the storm. You exhaust yourself, watching everything you do, everything you say … He was non-stop and I was in merry hell thinking, ‘Has he lost his mind’?
Ceysson had to watch her husband be forcibly removed from their home by police, firefighters and a doctor. Photo / Getty Images
“I’d done everything to try to help him — explained how worried I was, threatened a divorce if he didn’t see a doctor. It made no difference. He was talking non-stop about embracing death. What else could I do? Wait for him to kill himself?”
Blumenthal admitted he had been “so close to death” and his wife’s drastic actions had “saved [his] life.”
“The doctor said if I’d been sectioned two or three days later …” he said.
“My body was dying. I’d lost so much weight — 28 kilos. I was exercising three or four hours a day, hardly eating, not sleeping. You’re either manic and over the moon or manic and under the moon. My endocrine system had collapsed.”
The endocrine system is responsible for producing hormones that dictate the function of tissues and organs within the body.
Ceysson told the Mail she watched the distressing moment her husband was taken away via their security cameras from her father’s house nearby. Once he’d left the house, she said she turned to her father and said: “It’s done. Now we can breathe.”
Meanwhile, Blumenthal explained he was “talking 10 to the dozen” as authorities arrived.
He went on to recall they pinned him down, and he spotted “a really big syringe”.
“I stopped fighting … Then I got injected,” Blumenthal said.
“When I woke up [in a psychiatric hospital] I was basically in a prison cell in a hospital. I thought, ‘Where the f*** am I’? There was a metal toilet, a mattress and a window.
“I was so confused as to what was happening. No one would speak to me. I had no telephone, no shoes and was feeling very, very drugged. I was hardly able to speak.
“You’re woken with a bang on the door. You’ve got to make your bed and queue for the shower. Breakfast was a bowl of coffee-powdered water and a hard bun.”
Blumenthal said some of his fellow residents got “very angry” at being held there.
“They would scream and bang the bed against the door. I remember the noise: the building vibrating with the screaming.”
The high-profile culinary figure went on to spend 20 days there, and said it ultimately gave him “time to think, time to digest” — although he’d “never choose to go somewhere like that ever again”.
“Being sectioned has been a blessing. I feel some kind of purpose has come out of this,” Blumenthal said.
