Pretty Little Liars star Lucy Hale became emotional as she candidly discussed her battle with alcohol addiction and an eating disorder.
Actress Lucy, 33, stopped drinking a year ago after more than a decade of trying to quit and spoke for the first time about becoming sober.
Aria Montgomery actress Lucy sat down with Steven Bartlett on his podcast, The Diary Of A CEO, and revealed she had been "working" on getting sober since the age of 20.
Speaking in the podcast, during which she broke down in tears a number of times, Lucy said: "I have never talked publicly about being sober – I have a little over a year sobriety.
"I've been working in getting sober since I was 20, I’m 33 – it takes time.
"It took time and it took patience with myself."
Lucy described herself as a "textbook binge drinker" and explained how she thought alcohol would show her "truest self" but things took a downward turn.
"What alcohol did for me was it was like this feeling of, 'oh my god, this is what I've been searching for my whole life. I'm my truest self,'" she said.
The actress added: "Real Lucy did come out, but with it was that rage and pain that I had been holding on to for so long."
Speaking about her drinking addiction, she added: "rom my very first experience drinking age 14 up until a year ago, I’ve had a problem. I’ve never had a period of my life where I was a normal moderate drinker. It was always, 'lets go'."
Elsewhere in the podcast, Lucy discussed her battle with an eating disorder, which she battled with throughout "most" of her teenage years.
She said: "I've been open about this before: I struggled with an eating disorder most of my teenage years up until my mid 20s."
Lucy said she "felt out of control" after moving with her mum to California in a bid to take up acting.
She said: "I would step on the scales 30 times a day. I was eating so little that it was shocking. It all rooted back too 'I don’t feel enough'. It slowly grew and grew until I could not enjoy life, I could not have a conversation, I could not focus on anything. It’s a miracle that I even started working… because it was a constant loop.
"But I love myself enough now to nourish my body and it’s so sad to think that I hated myself so much that I couldn’t even give it basic needs like food. That is so tragic.
"Now I can look back and see photos and think, ‘Oh, my God, I wasn’t seeing reality’. You just create this narrative in your head which is scary and dark and it ultimately wasn’t about the way I looked, it was about so much more, which is I had no self-worth – incredibly low self-worth.
"I always knew it wasn’t normal behaviour, I knew my hair shouldn’t be falling out and I knew I shouldn’t be able to see every bone in my body but you get addicted to this feeling of controlling your own body."
Lucy then credited a former Italian boyfriend who "loved and appreciated food" which helped her learn to enjoy eating.
But, the star sadly struggled with eating again after signing up for Pretty Little Liars.
"This industry is a different point now where so many people are accepted," she explained. "Different types of people, different bodies, everything and it's such a beautiful place, I think, [where] the industry is heading, especially for a woman.
"But when I was starting out it wasn't really that way and then I booked a show that's called Pretty Little Liars. So I'm like, 'Okay, well we got to be pretty, we got to be little'.
"You're also 20 years old where everyone wants to look a certain way like that age you all want to look the same you want to you know, it just all flared up again. And it was all I thought about again, because I thought I had overcome it and then it became a thing of control."
She continued: "It wasn't about wanting to pretty or little it was about, 'This is scary. My life has completely shifted overnight. Millions of people are seeing my face. Instagram had just started, it was just sort of beginning [and] my first post ever on Instagram was me and a season one.
"And it was like my life was now under a magnifying glass and I felt out of control."
*Frank offers confidential advice about drugs and addiction (email frank@talktofrank.com, message 82111 or call 0300 123 6600) or the NHS has information about getting help.
**For help and support on eating disorders contact Beat Eating Disorders on 0808 801 0677.
