She’s I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!‘s newest recruit but in 2016, Fiona O’Loughlin was given a seven per cent chance of survival and spent two-and-a half-weeks in a coma.
After cheating death and following a five-month stint in a Canberra rehab facility, the comedian hopes she’s finally beaten the alcohol addiction that had left her “desperately unhappy” for the past decade.
“My life feels like it was split into before and after [the coma],” the 54-year-old mother-of-five revealed, who was knocked back from appearing on I’m A Celeb two years ago because she wasn’t deemed mentally stable.
“This is a new life for me and everything feels really exciting.”
A huge round of applause for Fiona.
Fiona has made no secret of her battle with the bottle, or her failed suicide attempt in 2013, explaining that her binge drinking started to spiral around the time her career as an international comedian took off.
“I used to get very anxious and drink before shows,”the funnywoman shared, admitting she regularly downed two small bottles of vodka before she went on stage.
“For a long time booze felt like the solution, everything felt better, like, I can handle this. But over a long time… well, I was a runaway train and I was always going to hit something.”
Fiona’s five children are her biggest supporters.
The Melbourne- based star credits the support of her children, her ex-husband Chris and her sister Kate for getting her through her darkest moments.
And she jokes she’s ready for the deprivations of the jungle… thanks to her stint in rehab.
“That’s the one thing that has prepared me, because it was very intensive. We didn’t have TVs, telephones, internet. I lived in a room with three other women, we cooked for ourselves, we had chores… It’s like recalibrating your life, starting everything from scratch.”
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We can’t wait to see Fiona on the show.
