Sheridan Smith talks of addiction and mental health in documentary

SHERIDAN SMITH has revealed how she had five seizures after she stopped taking anti-anxiety medication she had become addicted to.

The actress, 39, pictured, has filmed an ITV documentary on mental health struggles to help other women.

The West End star told how she was at the TV Baftas in 2016, where she was nominated for The C Word, before she “went off the deep end”.

She tells the programme: “Graham Norton was hosting and made a joke at my expense about me being a drunk... I was so humiliated. It’s a room full of your peers, people you want to work with or have worked with.

“That night, for me, was like the final straw before my brain totally went off the deep end.” Smith reveals: “What people didn’t realise is that I’d become addicted to anti-anxiety tablets.

“That night I took myself off to a hotel on my own. In my crazy mind, I thought, ‘I’ll do it (stop taking the tablets) myself ’.

“I went there and just stopped my tablets. Weirdly, a friend of mine had rung me and she came to the hotel.

“It’s a miracle she did. It’s like someone was looking out for me because what I didn’t realise is that if you stop these tablets abruptly, you seizure.

“I seizured five times and got rushed to A&E and she’s the one who got me breathing again.” Smith, who recently had her first child, tells the programme that she now feels “calm” and “contentment”.

The actress had an emergency caesarean when her son Billy arrived early this summer, while the country was in lockdown.

The documentary filmed the star during her pregnancy as she discusses her mental health struggles.

Cameras followed Smith as she attended her first scans, prenatal classes and sessions with a specialist therapist, as well as at home with fiance Jamie Horn.

Smith says she wants to help other women who worry about their mental health issues resurfacing in pregnancy.

“At the start of my pregnancy, I’d just got myself to a good place and I thought, ‘Please don’t let this be a turning point where things change for me’.”

■ Sheridan Smith: Becoming Mum airs on Tuesday September 1 at 9pm on ITV.