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Millie Mackintosh has opened up about her struggles with alcohol, admitting that it threatened her marriage.
The 35-year-old mother-of-two, who has been open about her anxiety, says that she started drinking problematically in her teens. But it was only when her husband, Made in Chelsea co-star Hugo Taylor, offered her an ultimatum, which was followed by a collapse a few days later, that she decided she needed to change.
The couple first met on the popular reality TV show, which follows members of London’s affluent neighbourhood as they navigate relationships and personal drama. Mackintosh was previously married to rapper Professor Green, before tying the knot with her “soul-mate” Taylor, in 2018. They have two daughters together.
“‘If you don’t stop drinking it’s going to end our marriage,’ Hugo said to me,” Mackintosh wrote in the Daily Mail’s You magazine.
“It was the morning after his best friend’s wedding, a lovely glamorous occasion that, well, I ruined for him. Much of the wedding is a blur.
“I know I became very emotional, crying, then getting angry, which was a new thing that started when I became a mum.”
However, matters escalated further as Mackintosh admitted she tried to attack her partner.
“I’m ashamed to say I picked a fight with Hugo and tried to hit him,” she said.
Although the ultimatum was “scary”, Mackintosh said a few days later she decided to quit for good after she “collapsed on to the floor”.
“I couldn’t get air in and everything started to go black,” she said of the aftermath of days of drinking. “I felt the cold fear that I would never see my two baby girls again. I really, truly believed I was dying.”
Mackintosh, who has written a book entitled Bad Drunk: How I found my freedom from alcohol – and you can too, said that motherhood “poured fuel on that fire”, when it came to struggles with alcohol.
“I used to have my first drink during the girls’ bathtime, and I’d be excited to get them down for the night so I could have another,” she continued.
“That was my reward. In some ways my drinking got worse when I became a mum because suddenly I could justify it; society told me I had earned it.
“I was already struggling and the intensity of motherhood poured fuel on that fire. I felt like drinking was marketed directly at me as a necessary thing to cope with motherhood.”
Since going sober in August 2022, Mackintosh said she is in a much better place.
“Being sober has given me a gift that I didn’t know I needed: freedom,” she said.
“Freedom to be myself, freedom to be the mother I want to be and that my daughters deserve, freedom to be an introvert, freedom to be healthy, and freedom not to mask any part of me with a manufactured air of confidence.”
If you have been affected by this article, you can contact the following organisations for support: actiononaddiction.org.uk, mind.org.uk, nhs.uk/livewell/mentalhealth, mentalhealth.org.uk.
