Kelly Osbourne claims rehab was 'university on how to be a better drug addict'
Kelly Osbourne has remained transparent about her history with drug and alcohol abuse, which began when she was a teenager.
The daughter of rock legend Ozzy Osbourne revealed her first stint in rehab actually offered a better lesson on how to obtain drugs than help her achieve sobriety goals.
"First rehab I went to was like university on how to be a better drug addict," Osbourne claimed on an episode of "TMZ Investigates: Matthew Perry & The Secret Celebrity Drug Ring."
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"I'd learned so many tricks, so many things that I never even thought of from my fellow addicts that were in there."
She added, "I'd also seen people threaten to leave until they got given what they wanted, whether it be Ambien for sleep or Valium for nerves — they’d end up getting it."
Osbourne's journey with addiction began when she was 13 years old after she was prescribed opiod medication following a routine tonsil removal procedure.
Her addiction issues continued to grow through the years when her family was cast in the spotlight in one of the first reality television shows, "The Osbournes." Her first attempt at rehab was when she was 19 years old.
Osbourne, 39, attempted rehab seven times over the years. She remembered leaving meetings where she would see "body brokers" waiting outside of meetings for vulnerable addicts to hook them back into the cycle of addiction.
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"They'll sit outside of AA meetings looking for weak and vulnerable people that they encourage to relapse so they can then pick you up again," she said.
"I swear on everything that it is true, and it is heartbreaking."
The former "Fashion Police" host suffered a relapse in 2021 after four years of sobriety.
"This is a little hard for me to talk about, but I’ve always promised you that I will always be honest with you about where I’m at and what’s going on in my road to recovery," she wrote on Instagram at the time. "I relapsed. Not proud of it. But I am back on track."
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She previously discussed how Vicodin was her gateway drug for addiction during an appearance on "Red Table Talk."
"I went from having every voice in my head being like, 'You're fat, you're ugly, you're not good enough, no one likes you, you don't deserve this, people only like you because of who your parents are.' And then all of a sudden, every single voice was silenced, and it felt like life gave me a hug," she said.
Once the opioids were no longer effective, she moved on to heroin.
"I was like, 'Why am I so confident in all of this?' And then very quickly I went from Vicodin to Percocet, from Percocet to heroin eventually, because it was cheaper," she said.
Osbourne has since maintained her sobriety, and welcomed a son with Slipknot frontman Sid Wilson in May 2022.
"TMZ Investigates: Matthew Perry & the Secret Celebrity Drug Ring" premieres Monday, Sept. 16 at 9 p.m. ET on FOX and the next day on Hulu.