'I was not okay.' 7 things we learned from Cara Delevingne's Vogue interview.

1. Her mental health history.

Delevingne has long been open about her experiences with mental health. 

During the interview, the model shared that the issues began after she was prescribed sleeping pills to manage insomnia by the age of 10, and was diagnosed with dyspraxia, a disorder that affects movement and coordination.

"This was the beginning of mental health issues and inadvertent self-harm," she told the publication, adding that she tried various forms of therapy including "art therapy, music therapy, EMDR [and] CBT".

At 15, Delevingne suffered a breakdown and was put on antidepressants to help her cope with a sense of isolation.

"I was on medication and it just… it saved my life," she shared. 

"This wasn’t a chemical imbalance as much as it was a full trauma response... I hadn’t uncovered the f**king hole inside, the real whirlpool within."

Years later, in 2020, Delevingne reached a "low point" when the world went into lockdown. 

"In the beginning, I was living with people in this COVID bubble in LA. We thought it was going to be a week-long thing, and so it was fun," she explained. 

However, after starting quarantine with her then-girlfriend and fellow actor Ashley Benson, the pair split after almost two years together.

"And then I was alone, really alone," she shared. "I just had a complete existential crisis. All my sense of belonging, all my validation - my identity, everything - was so wrapped up in work. And when that was gone, I felt like I had no purpose. I just wasn’t worth anything without work, and that was scary."

2. She went to the Met Gala two weeks after her grandmother died. 

Delevingne was filming the 2022 TV series Planet Sex when she was told her grandmother had died. 

"When I heard she had died, there were a lot of things I had to process because I hadn’t seen her since Christmas the year before," she told Vogue. "I was really trying to pour everything I had into work, and every night I would come back from filming and sit alone and just cry."

When the model attended the Met Gala in New York two weeks later, she says she was "f**king exhausted".

At the time, she walked the red carpet covered in gold body paint with visibly inflamed skin from her psoriasis. "It was a sign of the major stress in my life," she noted, "that I couldn’t cope, that my body, this sensitive organ, couldn’t handle it".

That night, she attended afterparties and got "blackout".

"It was like, what am I doing? The day after, I had to travel to my granny’s funeral. It was horrible.”

Feature Image: Getty.

3. Being born into a wealthy family. 

Delevingne opened up about growing up in a wealthy family (her mum is British socialite Pandora Delevingne and her dad, property developer Charles Delevingne).

"In a way, a lot of people have looked at my childhood or my family and thought, 'she’s spoiled, there’s nepotism, she grew up extremely privileged', which I did, don’t get me wrong," she told the publication. 

"But life wasn’t all that easy for other reasons."

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The model went on to speak about her mother's history of drug addiction, which the 63-year-old has been open about, as well as her experience with bipolar disorder.

"For a long time, I didn’t really put myself in her shoes," Delevingne explained. "I just needed someone to be angry at and I was angry at her, but it wasn’t her fault… The way that addiction took my mother from me was brutal, and it was brutal for her too."

4. Her experience with alcohol abuse at a young age.

Delevingne was just seven years old when she began misusing alcohol at a family member's wedding. 

"I woke up in my granny’s house in my bedroom with a hangover, in a bridesmaid’s dress," she recalled. "I'd gone around nailing glasses of Champagne."

Everything eventually came "plummeting down" when Delevingne was a teenager and she started partying and drinking. 

"There was this need to escape and change my reality as I was hit with just huge questions: What am I doing here? Who am I trying to be?" she said of the time.

5. Her sobriety journey. 

Delevingne is now four months sober after checking herself into rehab last year.

"I just kind of pushed everyone away, which made me realise how much I was in a bad place. I always thought that the work needs to be done when the times are bad, but actually the work needs to be done when they’re good."

Delevingne also said she's taken part in a 12-step treatment program, which has "made a huge difference" in her life.

“Before I was always into the quick fix of healing, going to a week-long retreat or to a course for trauma, say, and that helped for a minute, but it didn’t ever really get to the nitty-gritty, the deeper stuff," she explained. 

The 30-year-old also wants to eventually quit smoking but said, "right now it’s too much".

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