MICHELLE Heaton’s Irish husband has told how medics warned she was “going to die” because of her booze addiction.
The Liberty X singer shocked fans when she revealed she had been to rehab in the UK’s Priory Clinic in April after her drinking spiralled out of control.
Hubby Hugh Hanley admits he has “never seen a stronger woman” after his wife celebrated six months of sobriety on Thursday — but said learning of her secret cocaine addiction“really caught him off guard”.
Michelle, 42, said: “I always had an issue but lockdown made it speed up and more accessible to do because you weren’t driving anywhere.
“So he’s banging his head on a wall like ‘Shelle stop, why can’t you just stop?’ I couldn’t even say I can’t, I said, ‘I’ve got this, I’m fine. I can stop tomorrow.’
“Because I really believed it. In reality I was not going to last much longer and that’s what we couldn’t get our heads around until I went into the Priory.”
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Businessman Hugh said it was clear the boozing stemmed from not facing issues in the past.
Michelle — who shot to fame on Popstars in 2000 — previously had an addiction to diet pills that left her with a heart condition.
And she went into a downward spiral after a double mastectomy in 2012 and a hysterectomy in 2014 after discovering she was a carrier of the mutated BRCA cancer gene.
It meant she had an 85 per cent chance of breast cancer before she was 40 and up to 40 per cent chance of ovarian cancer.
Michelle, mum to nine-year-old daughter Faith and son AJ, seven, was sent into the menopause and suffered depression and migraines.
She also had a family crisis when son AJ caught meningitis, which affected some of his sight.
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Hugh said: “I don’t think anyone could have gone through what she’s gone through and she just took it like a champion. In that six, seven years, you’re busy being a mum to two kids, her career was flying, she was always working.
“And then in no time did she take any time to realise she’s gone through two-life altering operations, plus two kids and also the potential of a pacemaker on her heart.
“And it was only then when the career started quietening down and the kids didn’t need her as much, she started realising she hadn’t dealt with all this other stuff that’d gone on and that’s when the alcohol started picking up.”
HIDING BOOZE AROUND HOUSE
On Virgin Media’s Living with Lucy, Hugh revealed: “We were told in September 2020 that she was going to die by the doctors because of the addiction. And for a few months, did nothing about it.
“It was the liver and the pancreas were just packing in completely.”
Michelle used to carry two water bottles, one with sparkling water in case anyone asked what she was drinking, and one filled with vodka.
And Hugh — who wed Michelle in 2010 — said alcohol was also hidden everywhere around their home.
He told Lucy Kennedy: “Bottles of water in the fridge, you’d take it out and sniff it, it’d be vodka. Coffee cups. And then they were hidden.
“You’d stumble across some but they were hidden everywhere. But she would have it in a bottle of water everywhere she went. Within any addict it’s their journey and that’s the thing as much as me and her best friends loved her and wanted her to get help, until she was willing to walk into the Priory, she had to own that journey.”
But the biggest shock for Hugh, 42, came when she entered the Priory and they told him that she was also dealing with a cocaine addiction.
He said: “Because she knew I was so anti-it, she effectively hid it and just did it when I was in bed, so I knew nothing about it.
“So that was probably the hardest thing to swallow, the whole process was the sheer lack of respect because she knew I hated that whole world and it wasn’t for me. But the fact that she had done that really hurt me the most out of everything.
“But the you have to step back and go it is what it is, she’s on this journey, she’s doing something about it, and hopefully we can move forward and put it past us.”
But Hugh admits he understands why some families would break down after an addiction.
EYE ROLLING INCIDENT
He said: “There was days where I was like, ‘What am I doing?’ You’re constantly just getting verbally given out to, everything you do is wrong.
“You question your own sanity with an addict. You constantly don’t know are you right, are you wrong? But honestly I always believed she was in there and this isn’t who she is. I didn’t want the kids to grow up without Michelle in their lives.”
He recalled: “About two days before she went in (to the Priory), she had a fit in bed. I’m talking white stuff coming out of her mouth, she was shaking, she was completely out of it, her eyes were rolling back in her head and this is at 2am.
“And you’re trying to say, ‘Keep quiet, don’t wake the kids, I need to call an ambulance, are you OK?’ Her eyes are rolling, you call an ambulance and then like that she comes back, ‘I just had an attack, I’m OK.’
“The kids saw none of that and that was touch wood for us, that was the saving grace. The kids saw none of that bad side of that or the sick mummy because we were able to shield them away.”
Hugh added: “Am I hurt by it? 100 per cent. I think Michelle is more hurt and upset by her behaviour than I am. We’ve had a few bad years, we’ll have many great years.”
And Michelle is focused on staying healthy.
She said: “I do the steps, I’ve got a sponsor, I work. I do everything they tell me to do because I don’t want to go back. It’s really hard.”
- Living with Lucy airs tomorrow at 9pm on Virgin Media One.