My booze hell KATIE PIPER’S TRAUMATIC FIGHT AFTER ACID HORROR
I drank to feel numb, to feel nothing and stifle loneliness
ACID attack victim Katie Piper has told how she “almost destroyed” herself with booze as she battled to cope with her trauma. The TV host admitted guzzling wine and spirits to “feel numb” and help her to sleep. She revealed her binges sometimes lasted till 7am as she tried to combat intense anxiety and loneliness during recovery. Katie’s confession came on her UK tour, What’s In My Head, which visited London’s Duchess Theatre – just 20 minutes away from the 2008 attack scene. She told of her gratitude to husband Richard Sutton for standing by her all through her alcohol addiction, for which she has had specialist counselling. Katie, now 34, suffered appalling injuries in the attack arranged by exboyfriend Danny Lynch and carried out by his accomplice Stefan Sylvestre. Both men are serving life sentences. The brave mum said: “I almost destroyed myself about six or seven years into my recovery. I can talk about the attack and graphic photos quite easily – but this part is difficult because I’ve never talked about it before.” Katie told how she started to “selfmedicate with alcohol” at her flat in London, explaining: “I was drinking to fall asleep in the evenings.
Sober
“My anxiety was acute. I’d drink wine, move on to a dodgy spirit, then champagne – then you hear a noise and it’s your neighbours going to work at 7am. “I drank to stifle loneliness. To feel numb. To feel absolutely nothing until unconsciousness. I was drinking to be someone else. Anybody but Katie Piper.” She told of meeting builder Richard after being set up by a mutual pal in 2013 – but said it was at the “height of my drinking”, which nearly “destroyed” their chances of a relationship. “But Richard stood by me and supported me,” she continued. “I broke the cycle of using alcohol as a plaster, an anaesthetic and a solution through counselling. “People have seen photos of my husband at events but no one has really heard about what he did behind all that.” The pair wed in 2015 and now have two daughters. Katie said that after her bad times she was sober for a while but added: “Now I have a drink on special occasions.” She said: “I still have dark days but now I use different coping mechanisms.”