Trinny Woodall has revealed how her 'four closest friends' died within two years of her getting clean from drugs as she admitted it has stopped her ever relapsing.
The Trinny London founder, 62, who has now been sober for over 30 years, beat her drug addiction when she entered rehab, after becoming reliant on cocaine in her teens to 'help her feel confident'.
After multiple failed rehab stints in her early 20s, she then entered a programme at 26 years old, that helped her build a foundation for recovery.
Speaking to Lorraine Kelly on Saga's Experience is Everything podcast, Trinny reflected on how she has seen 'what would happen if she picked it up again', after losing several friends to addiction.
She said: 'In the first two years of my being clean, my four closest friends died from the results of addiction. And I think it made it very clear for me what would happen if I picked up again. So, I think that stayed with me for those first years.
'The first few years when you stop something, you have to fill that hole with something. And I think addicts usually stop younger and alcoholics stop a little bit older.
Trinny Woodall has revealed how her 'four closest friends' died within two years of her getting clean from drugs as she admitted it has stopped her ever relapsing
'That's a very generalistic term, but I think because drinking is such a sociable thing, the way for people to understand themselves or for somebody else to suggest to them that maybe it's now not helping their life takes longer.'
Trinny also spoke about how her drug habit first began, revealing that she started using to 'take away her shyness' when she was socialising.
She explained: 'It was a crutch, it filled a hole. I didn't really drink. It was drugs. I took cocaine and it made me feel confident. I was quite shy when I was younger and it took away that shyness. I think that's what it ultimately did.
'And then it starts to lead your life. You don't lead it in your life. And then it was not recreational. It sort of controlled how I turned up for the day, how I turned up as a person. And then I think the thing about drugs versus alcohol, because I've had friends who've stopped drinking, is that it's very immediate, people die younger.
'With alcoholism, it can take somebody a long time to get really ill. They could get cirrhosis of the liver. They could have an alcoholic fit.'
'When I was in rehab, there was a woman there who came in as an alcoholic and she said how much she drunk. She said, "I have like four glasses of wine a night", but she hadn't.
'And so they gave her a pill and she had an alcoholic fit in a group with us because she had such an effect with the withdrawal because she had underplayed how much she drank, whereas addicts always say, "I took all these drugs" and they probably took half it. It's always a funny joke in rehab.
Last year, Trinny reflected on her time in rehab for drug addiction, after she began drinking and taking drugs at 16 after moving from boarding school to a day school in London, and struggled with a lack of self-confidence and chronic acne.
The fashion and beauty expert, 61, began drinking and taking drugs at 16 after moving from boarding school to a day school in London, and struggled with a lack of self-confidence and chronic acne (pictured in 1990)
Appearing on the cover of Women’s Health UK at the time, she opened up on the difficult time, explaining her feelings of gratitude to have survived.
She admitted: 'I felt relieved to be alive. I had six friends die in my first year of recovery. There wasn’t an "I’m on the back foot" moment – it was simply "I have another chance".'
Trinny, best known for her series with Susannah Constantine - What Not To Wear, added that she didn't care about judgement for her past, insisting that it was through these hardships that she'd become the woman she is today.
The TV star said: 'It’s difficult looking back. I don’t know if I was judged, but do I care? No. If I hadn’t gone through it, I might not be where I am today. We only learn when we’re challenged. When life is going well, we don’t learn much.'
The entrepreneur previously explained how the tragic deaths of her friends became one of her biggest motivations to stay sober at the beginning of her recovery.
She told The Times: 'Four of my closest friends died of overdoses within a year and a half of my stopping drugs. Many things would make me not go back to drugs, but that was a very strong thing for me early on.
Trinny detailed how each of her friends passed suddenly after they had made a pact to go to rehab together, during an appearance on Steven Bartlett's Diary Of A CEO podcast in 2023.
She recalled: 'I had three really good friends, and we were all using one night, and I said let's make a pact and go to rehab tomorrow. Two of them had been, and one of them had never been.
'The next morning I woke up and I still had that feeling, which is rare, so I called a therapist that I knew and I said I need to go but I have a window of opportunity that is so small, I need to go literally in the next two hours because I'm scared that I'll change my mind.
'So he got me in somewhere, and I stayed for five months, and I sold what I had to pay for it.'