Davina McCall says that her experience of drink and drug addiction has helped her cope with the breakdown of her 17-year marriage.
The ‘Long Lost Family’ presenter announced she was splitting with her husband Matthew Robertson last November.
In a candid interview with Red magazine, the 50-year-old star says that her past struggles with addiction and the death of her sister Caroline in 2012, means she can cope with anything.
She tells the magazine: “’[You] need to experience difficulty to learn how to be resilient. If you haven’t been through anything difficult, the minute you do, it will hit you like a freight train and you won’t know what to do because you’ve never been given the tools to deal with it.
“When I think of all the stuff that happened with my mum in my childhood, and the drugs and the alcohol, and my sister dying, and knowing I got through all that… all of those things make you think ‘throw anything at me – I’ll be okay’.
“It might be hard, but I do feel I could deal with anything.”
Davina, who battled alcoholism and heroin addiction in her early twenties, also spoke of how she had to “grieve” giving up booze and drugs.
“I dance a lot better without booze than I did with booze,” she says. “If you don’t have to give up booze, then for God’s sake, don’t give up booze.
“I had to grieve not drinking. That was so sad. But I knew that alcohol was the gateway to drugs for me, and it would still be the gateway. It’s just not worth it.”
Despite her impending divorce, the mum-of-three says she’s in a “good place”.
“I’ve realised that I don’t need much. When I was in my 30s, I was like, ‘I want the house, I want the dog, I want the car.’ But I don’t need it. I don’t really want it.”
Last week, Davina set the record straight following claims she is set to pay £2.5 million to her ex-husband for a “quickie” divorce.
Shutting down the report on Twitter, she wrote: “Just for the record I have not and never will discuss my divorce .. money /kids/terms NONE of it with the press so whatever is out there is not from me ( and is rubbish) This is to protect our kids.”
The full interview with Davina appears in the June issue of Red, on sale 2 May. www.redonline.co.uk
