How drink and drugs tore Trinny apart

Staying sober is an everyday challenge for Trinny Woodall. Photo / Martin Sykes

Makeover queen Trinny Woodall was the lucky one.

For years she took drugs and drank heavily.

Now, on the eve of a series of Auckland shopping mall shows with fashion partner Susannah Constantine, Woodall has revealed in detail for the first time the toll her twin addictions imposed on her life and her friends.

The past 12 months have undoubtedly been tough for the 45-year-old television presenter.

Her nine-year marriage to Johnny Elichaoff came to an end, and after eight years of ruling the airwaves with her great friend Constantine, they left ITV last year amid rumours of the axe.

"My last year of using and getting sober, that first year, was the toughest time in my life," she said.

"This hasn't been an easy year, like for anyone going through a separation. I would say in some ways it's been difficult with personal things and in other ways it's been cathartic."

Born Sarah-Jane Woodall, she was nicknamed Trinny by family friend Frank Launder, the director of the St Trinian films, after she was sent home from school, aged 5, for cutting off another little girl's plait.

At boarding school from the age of 6, Woodall's relationship with alcohol started after she moved to a day-school in London at 16. The newfound freedom for a painfully shy, acne-prone teenager, proved too much and drugs soon followed. She was in rehab by the age of 21.

"It was a tough rehab. I was thrown out after a month because I'd shown a sort of porn movie on April Fool's Day. It was a nightmare. It was that thing of wanting everyone to love you, so you try to be funny because you think no one will like you otherwise because you're not good enough. But they threw me out."

She started going to Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings back in London but her heart wasn't in it. Lonely, she turned back to her old friends and the familiarity of drink and drugs.

"Someone in the meeting came up to me and said, 'you haven't had enough. You need to go out and have a real rock bottom'. So I used [drugs] for another five years."

Her last drink and drugs binge - a two-day bender - was with her best friend, Katy, and two male friends. The four made a pact to get sober. Woodall had made countless such pacts before, but the next morning something had changed.

"It wasn't my worst [episode] but emotionally I was bankrupt. I felt I had nothing. All my ambition and drive had gone. All my connection with people had gone."

She called her counsellor, who arranged a place in treatment. "I drove down to the rehab centre in my hire car, shoving all these pills in my mouth, these tranquillisers, and I crashed the car on the way. But when I finally got there, I walked in and felt such a sense of relief."

Over the next two years she did "hit rock bottom", and spent months in rehab. She survived but her three friends ended up dead. Katy got sober, but died from HIV-related pneumonia; the other two friends died from accidental overdoses, one while working in Peshawar as a journalist.

"There were times when rehab and the halfway house were very, very tough, but I never felt like I wanted to leave. I kind of felt it was my last chance, that I'd done all the drinking and using that I ever wanted to do," says Woodall reflectively. She has just celebrated her 19th year of sobriety.

She won't go into details about her drug use, only that she "did everything", except injecting, so HIV was not a concern. Her reasons for taking drugs, she says, were bound up in her reasons for drinking: low self-worth.

"My grandfather was an alcoholic; my uncle was an alcoholic, so I can definitely see the physical addiction through the generations. It's probably a mixture of growing up and taking things from my upbringing that made me feel insecure, and the kind of person I was when I was born. Once you're in the throes of addiction I don't think it matters what the substance is."

A year in rehab was followed by a year living with her parents, going to daily AA and NA meetings while trying to rebuild a life without her former friends. She took a string of secretarial and PR jobs before she met Constantine at a party.

The gap left by addiction was filled with work: a fashion column; an unsuccessful book; a daytime TV shopping show and a failed internet fashion business before the pair were "discovered" while doing a makeover slot on a television show in 2001.

Woodall still attends meetings, wherever she is, because she needs to.

She has just helped relaunch a women-only rehabilitation centre in London called Hope House. It first opened its doors 20 years ago (her friend Katy was one of its first clients) but has just moved to much bigger premises because of a growing demand.

Run by the charity Action on Addiction, the centre provides second-stage, abstinence-based treatment for up to 23 women dealing with issues such as abuse, self-harm and low self-esteem.

Woodall is driven, ambitious and absorbed by work. Her life seems hectic but she dismisses suggestions she might be a workaholic.

"To me the word 'workaholic' is a negative word. I think I'm very focused and am quite a good multi-tasker. I'm quite driven in knowing what my responsibilities are to my family and knowing what I've got to do to do that. In some ways, I'm slightly like a single parent, so I need to be able to provide for my family. That's how it is."

- INDEPENDENT

AUCKLAND-BOUND

Trinny & Susannah are appearing at Westfield centres early next month.

* Monday 5 October
Queensgate, 3.30pm

* Wednesday 7 October
Pakuranga, 11am
St Lukes, 2pm
Shore City, as part of the VIP late night event, 6pm-9pm

* Thursday 8 October
WestCity, 11am
Manukau City, 2pm