Lucy Hale went to a "dark, disgusting and scary" place while battling alcoholism.
Lucy Hale recently celebrated one year sober
The 33-year-old actress celebrated a year of sobriety last week in an Instagram post about self-love, and she's now gone into more detail about her "self-destructive" coping mechanism.
Speaking on the 'Diary of a CEO' podcast, she said: "You have to go to a dark place sometimes to get to that point...It’s dark, disgusting, and scary.
"I wish I could go back and tell my 16-year-old self, buckle up, girl. We're going to go through some s***.
"And then the coping mechanisms were, like, incredibly self-destructive."
The 'Pretty Little Liars' star admitted she had been "working on" getting sober for over a decade but even the death of a friend due to alcohol abuse couldn't give her the push she needed.
She said: "I've been working on getting sober since I was 20...I just, like, held on to that belief that that real Lucy came out when she was drinking.
"I tried to change for my mum, I tried to change for my career.
"One of my best friends died of alcoholism, and that still didn't make me want to get sober...None of that s*** works.
"Alcohol isn't the problem, the problem is this feeling inside of me."
Lucy also discussed battling an eating disorder, admitted she didn't feel "worthy" of any of the good things in her life so deprived herself of fulfilling "basic needs".
She said: "When we have those successes in life, we have an assumption that’ll fix a bunch of stuff.
"I struggled with an eating disorder, because society makes it really freaking hard to like the way you look.
"I hated myself so much that I couldn't even give it basic needs like food...I did not feel worthy of the success or the career or the people in my life."
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