COSMOPOLITAN · 111READdrug addiction, she hadn’t thrown
anything away for months.
Next on my tour of London’s
wealthiest properties is Knightsbridge,
inside an apartment a stone’s throw
away from Harrods. It belongs to Kat*,
a 21-year-old self-professed ‘It’ girl with
a serious alcohol problem. It all began
at boarding school, when she would
hide in her dorm and drink up to six
bottles of white wine a day. She became
known for her love of partying, and
this persona has carried on: her friends
love that when they’re out, Kat orders
bottle after bottle of champagne on
her Gold Amex. But they don’t spot
her doing shots by herself at the bar, or
know that before she met them that
night, she walked to her local shop, in
jogging bottoms and a baseball cap,
and bought a bottle of vodka that she
began to swig from on her way back to
her flat to get ready. I’m with her now
to carry out a psychological assessment
- I want to find out what hole she is
trying to fill with drink and drugs. This
is the part of our treatment that makes
us unique: other at-home services just
deal with the ‘cold turkey’ part, whereas
we focus on mental health, the fee
tailored to whatever bespoke therapy
we offer. In Kat’s case, it emerged,
through a series of questions over a
two-hour session, that she was sexually
abused when she was younger and
drinking to try and avoid this trauma.
COMING CLEAN
In the past, I used to deal mainly with
older women, the aristocratic types,
and men, usually within the banking
industry. But recently I’ve been seeing
more and more young female addicts.
They come to us for help with
something different – perhaps anxiety
or depression – and then we discover
that they are trapped in a cycle of
self-medication, drinking until they
black out in the evenings or ordering
legal highs online in an attempt to
treat their depression alone.
I’m currently trying to work out a
care package for 20-year-old Amber*, i