Cara Delevingne Opens Up About Addiction, Airport Photos, and Her Path to Sobriety

Cara Delevingne is providing an intimate look at one of the darkest chapters of her life.

The 33-year-old model, actress, and singer sat down for The Louis Theroux Podcast in an episode released Monday (June 29), where she discussed her battle with addiction, her journey to sobriety, and the widely-circulated paparazzi images from 2022 that alarmed fans worldwide.

The Airport Photos

Those pictures, Delevingne explained, captured her at an extremely vulnerable moment. "Disheveled, yeah. Mentally unwell for sure, not lack of sleep. I just had a seizure," she said during the conversation. "I was not sober for sure."

The incident stemmed from Burning Man, where Delevingne had been attending the festival. When discussing the event with Theroux, she acknowledged being heavily involved with substances. As she was departing, the situation escalated. "I was taking a lot of drugs and there was a certain amount of time we had to leave, and I was carrying out, I always overpack for Burning Man," she recounted. "I was just carrying loads of suitcases, and my body just couldn't take it, and I had a seizure, which, again, never seen myself have a seizure, but I've had a bunch."

Delevingne characterized the seizure as drug-related, noting it resulted from either substance withdrawal or overconsumption. The seizure itself wasn't captured by photographers, but what followed was. Back in Los Angeles before catching another flight, she was struggling. "Got home desperately trying to find more drugs because, I don't know, I hadn't slept," she said. "LA. Before I got on another flight, hadn't slept. Maybe found some drugs at the house, did them, went to the airport, got out without shoes, hair. I had had so much stuff in my head."

She painted a picture of her appearance at that moment: unkempt, exhausted, and visibly unwell. "I look absolutely wild and feral and not well," she reflected, noting she was "smoking a cigarette wearing a free Britney t-shirt or something."

Professional Fallout

The public reaction was swift and severe. "People saw it. It was everywhere. I lost jobs. That sucked. People were really worried. That sucked. I got so many messages. It was horrible," Delevingne shared. As a model, she explained, there are contractual obligations tied to maintaining brand standards. While she wasn't directly terminated, opportunities disappeared. "They didn't directly fire me because of it, but they didn't renew contracts," she said. "It's super quiet. Yeah. Everyone went very silent."

The Road to Recovery

Delevingne underwent medical withdrawal from GBL, which she described as "probably the hardest one to come off." However, facing sobriety without substances meant confronting the reality of her actions, which proved overwhelming at first. "I couldn't deal with getting sober and realizing, the more I was sober, the more I realized how badly I fucked up, and that was just too much," she said.

Her struggle continued until a critical turning point: an overdose. "I couldn't stay sober, and then I overdosed because I think there was opiates in the cocaine I think I had bought or something," she explained. Her girlfriend contacted emergency services, and first responders administered Narcan before transporting her to the hospital.

Waking up after that overdose, seeing the pain she had inflicted on loved ones, proved to be a watershed moment. "You know what you've just put people you love through, and you see the pain in their face. The shame. It makes me want to cry, and it's horrible," she said. "It's hard to forgive yourself for that. That was one of the most painful things that's happened to me, so doing that to someone else is really rough."

The Turning Point

Recognizing she needed genuine intervention, Delevingne made the decision to step away and commit to recovery. She credited sober individuals in her life for their support, including one person who made an unconventional but powerful promise. "I have one person say to me, if you stay sober for a year, and I check in on you in a year, and you've stayed sober, I'll buy you a kilo of cocaine, and see if you want to do it again," Delevingne recalled.

She never took them up on that offer. "I didn't, because that's how sure someone is when you've reached that point, that if you stay sober for a year, you'll never want to go back, and that's true. For me personally, not everyone is so lucky. That was the last time," she said.

Something fundamental shifted in her relationship with substances. "For some reason, something changed that time. It wasn't fun anymore. None of it was fun anymore, and I was so desperate that I was praying every day for it to end that cycle and I wanted to create something good with it," she reflected.

Music as New Beginning

Delevingne's sobriety unlocked a creative door she had long kept closed. "That's kind of the opening, I guess, to music because music was always there and I loved it so much, but I didn't love myself enough to believe that I could do it until I got sober, and until I really forgave myself for everything, and until I really loved all of it, love the dark, loved the light, loved everything in between," she said. "That's where an artist emerged."

Earlier this year, Delevingne signed with Warner Records and released tracks including "I Forgot" and "Out of My Head." She recently dropped the single "Need It," which she co-wrote alongside Fiona Apple, Tommy King, Victoria Ryann Zaro, Amelia Meath, and Brandon Joyner Burton.

During the podcast appearance, Delevingne also touched on her previous relationship with Amber Heard during Heard's separation from Johnny Depp.