In 2007, a video of Abdul slurring her way through an interview hit YouTube. Her publicist claimed her behavior was due to exhaustion.
Two weeks ago in an interview with Nightline’s Cynthia McFadden, Paula Abdul denied being an addict, saying: “No, no, no, no, no. Will not take those drugs [she said referring to prescription pain medications] And you can check my medical records there is nothing like that. I was never on Oxycontin or Vicadin or anything like that. I was on nerve medicine and anti-inflammatories.”
But wait. What’s this? In an upcoming interview with Ladies’ Home Journal, Abdul confirms what everyone’s suspected for quite some time, that she was addicted to pain killers. An addiction she went to rehab for last fall. “I could have killed myself,” she’s quoted as saying.
Abdul, 46, said she turned to a combination of painkillers and Chinese medicine to get through the “grueling” dance routines that made her a reigning pop princess in the 1990s. She already had suffered serious back and neck injuries as a cheerleader, dancer and in two car accidents.
“I didn’t want anyone to count me out,” she told LHJ. “I tried to keep everything hush-hush.”
She had regular shots of lidocaine, she said, and by 2005 was diagnosed with reflex sympathetic dystrophy syndrome, which caused disabling pain, teeth chattering and shingles-like lesions.
She wore a patch that delivered pain medication 80 times more potent than morphine, she revealed. She also popped muscle relaxers, had trouble sleeping and would sometimes “get weird,” she said.
80 times more potent than morphine! Isn’t morphine what they use for patients with fatal stab wounds and stuff like that? Imagine something 80 times more powerful than that. Paula Abdul is a beast if she could actually get through the day with that thing on. Normal people would look like those stoner kids melting into the couch on those anti-marijuana commercials. Paula managed to get through six seasons of American Idol. Which is nothing short of amazing.
Celebrities should learn from this. If they’re on drugs or drunk, people will know. They and their publicists treat us like we’re a bunch of idiots. Oh, she was talking like a drunk hobo reeking of Vodka and piss because she was exhausted? Why, of course! I should have known.