Naomi Campbell Opens Up About Falling Into Alcohol and Drug Abuse Due to Grief and Trauma

Supermodel Naomi Campbell had a bad history of drug and alcohol abuse. She has always been open about this and has accepted it as part of her past, especially during her modeling days.

The 53-year-old fashion icon opened up about it in a candid new documentary entitled The Super Models. She shared that her drug addiction became her coping mechanism to help her deal with childhood trauma, abandonment, and the grief that she has experienced. This was augmented by the sudden demise of Naomi’s close friend, the world-renowned designer Gianni Versace, in 1997.

In the much-anticipated Apple+ docuseries, Naomi—who changed the modeling industry for Black women—shares her truth alongside other supermodels of her time, such as Linda Evangelista, Cindy Crawford, and Christy Turlington.

The project consists of four episodes that highlight the more strenuous and challenging moments of Naomi and the other models’ lives while at the peak of their careers. Naomi was once the face of some of the world’s biggest luxury brands: Chanel, Versace, Burberry, Prada, Marc Jacobs, Dolce & Gabbana, Yves Saint Laurent, Louis Vuitton, and Valentino, to name a few. She admitted that she was slowly losing her sense of self because of the amount of drugs she was taking.

The model, now a mother of two, explained, “Grief has been a very strange thing in my life because it doesn’t always [show]. I go into a shock and freak out when it actually happens, and then later is when I break. But I kept the sadness inside; I just dealt with it.”

The industry was shaken when Giovanni Mara “Gianni” Versace was shot dead right outside his home in Miami Beach in 1997. Naomi had a very close bond with the Italian designer, and she—like many in their circle—was utterly heartbroken when he passed away.

Speaking of her bond with Gianni, Naomi described it as “Azzedine Alaïa was my papa. With him, I learned about chosen families. The same for Gianni Versace. He was very sensitive to feeling me, like, he pushed me. How would it push me to step outside and go further when I didn’t think I had it within myself to do it? So, when he died, my grief became very bad.”

She continued that she was trying her hardest to cover up her grief when she started using substances. Naomi admitted that addiction is a bull**** thing: “It gave me the feeling and impression that it will help heal the wound of grief, but it won’t. Instead, it will just create such massive fear and anxiety.”

And then, in a life-changing turn of events, Naomi collapsed while doing a photoshoot in 1999. She had been addicted to cocaine for five years by then. This was a wake-up call for her, and the scary experience prompted her to check into rehab that year.

In the documentary, Naomi said that she wanted this part of her history to truly be out in the open. She was well aware of how her drug addiction led her to a grim future. She explained, “When you try to cover something up, your feelings… You spoke about abandonment. I tried to cover that with something. You can’t cover it. I was killing myself. It was very hurtful.”