Fierce (27 page)

During this time I was really pissed off with my family because they hadn’t come to visit me. But deep down I knew why. They were really, really mad with me. They were absolutely done with me. In the run-up to checking into rehab I had been unbearable in every possible way. I was arguing with everyone and I hated everything. Sometimes someone would just say ‘morning’ to me and I’d find an excuse to snap at them. I was a selfish person. I couldn’t blame them for not coming to see me.

After thirty days of being in the facility, I actually felt really positive when I left. I was confident that I could stay clean but I lasted a matter of weeks. I just couldn’t do it. One afternoon I called the same dealer I had met all those years earlier and he brought over a bottle of Vicodin. It was as simple as that.

The first time I popped one of those pills I felt so much better again. The anxiety I was feeling just disappeared. It was the easy option.

I should have been promoting my album. I should have been excited about performing but instead I was back on the pills and I was back to being fucking miserable again. I’d convinced myself that I’d needed pills to get through my life.

This time my parents didn’t mess around. They knew the pattern and when they realised what was happening, they checked me into the UCLA Medical Institution in Los Angeles. I was checked on to
the psychiatric ward. It is known for having a good alcohol and drug treatment programme. Years later, the singer Britney Spears would also be admitted onto the same ward.

Mum and Dad drove me there and they were both sobbing in the car. They were going through the motions to some extent, though. They didn’t know whether I was going to stick to it or not. I was sitting in the back seat and I was actually shaking with nerves. I was absolutely terrified. We pulled into the car park and my parents checked me in. I was effectively going into a mental institution.

The ward was divided up into individual rooms. It smelt sterile and it was really rundown. It needed a fresh coat of paint. On that first night I was put into a room on my own. I was so frightened; it was full of crazy people. All night patients were screaming – really screaming. As I curled up on my bed in a tight ball, I started to suffer the effects of withdrawing from the drugs. The whole time the air was filled with ear-piercing screams. They went right through me. I thought those patients would come into my room.

I didn’t leave my room for five days. For three days I simply couldn’t move, but after that I was still too terrified to go out. The only people I would see would be the nurses who brought my food in and gave me my medication. I had no other human contact.

Put it this way, I had a lot of time to think. It was just me and my thoughts. I didn’t do the group therapy or anything. Instead, I decided to write down how I felt. I wrote pages of stuff and I found it really therapeutic. Afterwards, I would ask the nurses to burn my words. I didn’t want anyone, NOT ANYONE, to read them.

In the second week I did the therapy and the sessions. They were so intense. I stayed on the mental ward for two weeks. I can safely say it’s one of the scariest things I have ever done. But it’s also one of the best things I’ve done too. I was twenty years old and I was in a mental institution. It changed my life for ever.

When I checked out of the hospital, I made a really big decision. I decided that I didn’t want to live in LA any more, I wanted to move to London.

Jack and I were watching the music channel VH1 at Doheny one day and a show called
Where Are They Now?
came on. That show had a crazy effect on me. It basically goes back and tracks down stars who were once massive, but find themselves working on a hot-dog stall when the fame bubble has burst.

I turned to Jack and said, ‘In a couple of years they’re going to be doing that show on me and you.’

The thought of being on that show made me feel like all my worst nightmares were going to come true. I didn’t want to be one of those LA kids – the celebrity daughter of whoever, living in their parents’ guest house, driving in the latest car they’d been given and filling their days shopping. I didn’t want to look back on my life and feel like I had cheated myself out of being successful because I had been too successful when I was a kid.

It wasn’t an easy decision, and I think Mum felt like I was abandoning her, but I moved to London because I had to get away from my family. Not in a bad way, because they weren’t doing anything horrible to me. I just needed to not be an Osbourne for a while. Mum is my manager and my mum and I needed time to figure out who I was without having a million people telling me the answer.

I also needed a break from all the family dramas. Our home was one of those houses where people would always be coming and going. There would be the usual dramas: Dad wasn’t talking to Mum or Jack had fallen out with Mum or whatever – I didn’t want to be a part of that bullshit any more. I called it getting away from the ‘LA dramatics’. For some reason I was always taking on my mum’s battles for her. Not that she ever asked me to. But she would come out with crazy stuff in interviews and I would leap in to support her. Plus LA wasn’t my place. In London I’d always felt comfortable and accepted. I just needed to fuck off for a while, so I did.

I packed my stuff and got on a plane. It was only as I took off from LAX that it struck me that I only knew a handful of people in London. But it felt like an adventure and I couldn’t wait for it to start.

W
HEN
I first moved to London I rented a flat in St John’s Wood, North London. I liked the area. It’s residential and very leafy and pretty.

After a few weeks, the house Mum and Dad owned and rented out in West London became available so they said I could move in. It’s a three-storey house with a cute garden in a gated area, so it instantly felt really secure. It’s not a massive house, but it was my home and I loved it. The neighbours were great and made me feel really welcome. I’d never known anything like it. They were the sort of people who would knock on the door and ask if I needed anything.

A few months later when I turned twenty-one, Mum and Dad gave me the house as a birthday present. I consider myself really fucking lucky for that. A lot of people look at me and think, ‘Her parents just give her everything.’ But apart from the house, they haven’t given
me money for anything since we started doing
The Osbournes
. They opened the door for us, sure. But we had to walk through it.

In those first few weeks I felt really scared about being in a new city. I’d never actually lived in London. My time in the UK had always been spent at Welders, which is about a forty-minute drive from central London.

Luckily my best friend from school, Sammy, was living nearby because she was training to be a nurse and Fleur was always about because her parents lived near London. Being able to hang out with them again was one of the best things about moving to England.

I was also discovering new likes and dislikes all the time. Like not having to worry about putting make-up on before leaving the house. That was a big like! The best part was moving away from a city where everyone judges you on your appearance to being able to express myself just how I wanted. You’re allowed to be quirky when you’re in London. It doesn’t matter if you’re not stick-thin or if you’re not carrying the latest designer handbag. I loved that. It didn’t matter that I didn’t fit into a certain box and, for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel insecure.

The biggest thing I learned was that I could do things without my family. Before I lived in London I didn’t think I could live without them. I also learned it was OK to make mistakes. I didn’t always know how the fucking central heating worked or how to sort out my bills but I learned – that was half the fun.