Cara Delevingne Just Opened Up About Sobriety and Starting Over at 30

“I guess I’m just always ready for the ground to fall beneath my feet.”

Supermodel and It girl Cara Delevingne had it all — major campaigns with Chanel and Fendi (and just about everyone else), brows that ushered in an entire new era for beauty, and a burgeoning career in movies. However, she disappeared a few years ago, taking the eyebrows and star power with her. In a new interview with Vogue, Delevingne reveals that she was dealing with personal demons as her star rose and now, she's sober and ready for a fresh start. Only Murders in the Building was one step. Admitting she had addiction problems and wanting to tell her story? That proves she's ready for progress.

“If you have problems going into this industry, they will only get magnified and exacerbated,” she said. “There is nothing about it that makes it better.”

She went on to say that during her meteoric rise, she really thought she had it all. Instead, when she saw paparazzi photos of herself looking less than fresh, she said that it made her see something that scared her. It wasn't the lack of retouching (she's open and frank about all the smoke and mirrors involved in the fashion world in the interview, too), it was that she just didn't look well. And it prompted her to change her lifestyle.

“It’s heartbreaking because I thought I was having fun, but at some point it was like, 'OK, I don’t look well,'" she said. “You know, sometimes you need a reality check, so in a way those pictures were something to be grateful for.”

Related:You Could See Right Through Cara Delevingne’s Rosette-Covered Matching Set

Delevingne even touched on being a nepo baby, even though she was making headlines long before the term became what it is today. It was the access, she notes, that led her to her first incident of alcohol abuse at age 7 and abusing sleeping medication at age 10.

“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 says. “But life wasn’t all that easy for other reasons.”

She points out that a combination of dealing with a public breakup (she and her girlfriend of two years, Ashley Benson, separated in April 2020), dealing with being a publicly queer person, and the COVID lockdowns as why she continued to abuse drugs. She explained that recovery and sobriety are still major players in her life and she takes each day as it comes.

“This process obviously has its ups and downs, but I’ve started realizing so much. People want my story to be this after-school special where I just say, ‘Oh look, I was an addict, and now I’m sober and that’s it.’ And it’s not as simple as that. It doesn’t happen overnight," she said. "Of course, I want things to be instant — I think this generation especially, we want things to happen quickly — but I’ve had to dig deeper.”

Delevingne cited her friends (including Only Murders in the Building co-star Selena Gomez), family, and growing up as major factors in her desire to get better. She also noted that she used a 12-step program in her recovery.

“I always kind of knew that things were going to have to be different in my 30s, because the way that I was living was not sustainable," she said. And as for her future? Not only does she plan on starting fresh — and getting her tattoos removed in the process — she explained that she's ready to start a family. “I’ve wanted a kid since I was 16. I want babies so bad. Back then I would not have been ready, of course — I just wanted to replace the need to look after my mom with a kid of my own."

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