The American, who found fame as Playboy founder Hugh Hefner's girlfriend, almost died after taking a cocktail of drugs and booze when she was just 14
I’m A Celebrity star Kendra Wilkinson almost died after taking a cocktail of drugs and alcohol when she was 14, writes Katie Hind in the Sunday People.
The teen, who was addicted to crystal meth, cocaine and LSD, began choking on her own blood as her friends partied around her.
Kendra, now 29, said: “My drug habit was turning into a nightmare pretty quickly, and one night soon after, I almost didn’t survive.
“Line after line, I just kept going. Usually I knew my limit and stopped myself when I hit it because even though I was a druggie, I was still fearful of anything bad happening.”
But Kendra believes it was out of control that night when her eyes began to roll back in her head.
She said: “I was shaking and choking on the blood that was dripping down my throat. I was in serious trouble, everyone thought I was dying.”
Other revellers refused to call an ambulance or take her to hospital because they did not want to get in trouble.
She adds: “I recovered on my own. I decided I had had enough.”
Kendra, who went on to find fame as one of Playboy tycoon Hugh Hefner’s girlfriends, had started taking drugs two years before her near-death experience.
She says they filled a void left by her dad Eric, a wealthy biotechnology businessman, who split with her mum Patti when she was seven and she was sent to live with her maternal grandmother.
She began with cannabis and cocaine before moving on to LSD. Then, she began to take deadly crystal meth.
In her autobiography Sliding Into Home, Kendra says that as a schoolgirl in San Diego, California, she wasn’t able to earn money for drugs so instead turned to family members.
She asked her mother for lunch money or cash to see a movie and then use it to buy drugs.
She also stole from her gran’s purse.
Kendra soon quit school. She met a new boyfriend, a Puerto Rican drug dealer named Mario, and would snort cocaine and have sex with him every day.
Kendra’s friends who weren’t so heavily into drugs became increasingly worried about her.
But she refused to quit because drugs kept her mind in a haze. When she was not doped up, she self-harmed to escape heartache. She cut her arms and watched blood pour out.
She says: “There seemed no end to the madness.”
Kendra tried to commit suicide by taking an overdose of pills.
Her mum and gran found her in the bathroom surrounded by empty pill bottles and rushed her to hospital. Despite counselling, she went back to cutting herself.
One day at school, the nurse saw her horrific slashes and she was taken to a psychiatric ward at Mesa Vista hospital in San Diego.
She spent two weeks in a room with white rubber walls after getting into a fight with another patient.
She even tried to overdose on toothpaste by eating an entire tube.
But after the blood-choking episode she quit drugs, grew up and at 19 joined Hefner’s harem. She was in TV reality show The Girls Next Door about Hefner’s lovers at his Playboy mansion in Los Angeles’ richest suburb, Bel Air.
But she says her time there was the loneliest she had ever been.
She describes her sexual liaisons with Hefner, now 88, as “like a job”.
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After leaving the mansion she met and married US football star Hank Baskett.
Today Kendra has a four-year-old son Hank Baskett IV and a six-month-old daughter Alijah.
But she split from Hank after he cheated on her with transgender model Ava Sabrina.
The pair had been trying to save their relationship but on arrival in Australia to enter the jungle, she announced she is single.
Kendra is still pals with Hefner, though. She says: “Hef is such a great friend and person in my life now, and our relationship seems so natural.”
- Sliding Into Home by Kendra Wilkinson is published by Gallery Books and available from Amazon.com
