Tulisa Contostavlos opens up about secret anxiety attack on I'm A Celebrity

Tulisa Contostavlos says she suffered a secret anxiety attack in the I’m A Celebrity camp and left for the UK after telling ITV she felt like she was “having a breakdown” by staying in Australia.

The 36-year-old singer and former X Factor judge speaks bravely and honestly in an emotional podcast interview this weekend. Fans listening will get the full story of her life, including the latest chapter from the jungle and what really happened during the aftermath.

Tulisa had gone into I’m A Celebrity hoping it would be part of her “healing journey” and would function “like therapy” after a tough time. But the show was harder than she realised and she even considered quitting.

The Strong Again star says: “I had night terrors for the first four days. I was waking up out of my sleep, and I was having anxiety attacks. Those parts not everyone knows, so it wasn’t completely smooth sailing for me at all.”

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She dug deep to carry on, she reveals, adding: “I have a great poker face. I really can turn it on and especially when I’m faced with adversity.

“The last thing I wanted to do was go in there and be the hot mess. So if anything, I’m going to be the biggest soldier there is... I’m going to look like a warrior, because that is what I do. I might sit and cry under the sleeping bag – that’s also a part of who I am.”

Despite her bravado, her emotions did get the better of her – a fact she tried to hide.

She says: “I did cry on the VT at one point, but I definitely had an anxiety attack off-camera because I went to the smoking area to do it, and even then I didn’t want them to know that I was having an anxiety attack so I was trying to bring down my heart rate, literally through my nose.”

Tulisa Contostavlos is evicted from camp 'I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!' TV show, Series 24, Australia

Such suffering brought internal conflict. “I wanted to leave that day,” she says. “I was like, ‘I can’t do this, but it’s not what I came here for. I came here to stick it out and do whatever I have to do’. And there were lots of amazing moments, really joyful moments, thanks to the people. The people made those moments.”

Tulisa, who lives in the countryside near Greater Manchester, tends to stay out of the spotlight these days when she is not on tour with N-Dubz, which she formed as a schoolgirl with her cousin Dappy and pal Fazer.

She spent several years “dependent” on prescription sleeping tablets, only managing to stop taking them in January – and getting herself off the drugs and her battle with anxiety were still fresh in her memory when she took part in the ITV reality series.

Tulisa tells podcaster and relationship expert Paul C Brunson: “I am a massive introvert. I was really getting a little bit overwhelmed in there, so I was probably the least around in camp. I would go and remove myself and go for walks or go and hide in the dunny. I spent 90% of my time alone.

“The agoraphobia and being alone for so long – I got super overwhelmed being around so many people. They could see that, and they were really understanding about that. They had jokes like, ‘She’s gone to the Airbnb. She’ll be back’.”

Coming out of the jungle was, ironically, the thing that tipped her over the edge, she reveals, referring to “introvert overload”.

She says: “I had pushed myself into doing this and I was ready to overcome all the fears and being in the spotlight, but being watched consistently so many hours a day, nowhere to hide, nowhere to run, [I was] feeling so exposed.”

This feeling of being watched triggered memories of when she was secretly filmed and put “under surveillance” by disgraced journalist Mazher Mahmood, aka the Fake Sheikh, whose claims about Tulisa being a drug dealer were thrown out of court in 2014 and dismissed as lies. So while other I’m A Celebrity contestants seemingly coped fine, the experience weighed heavily on Tulisa, especially when she came out and went into a hotel.

There was surprise when she deleted references to the show from her social media and returned to the UK instead of staying on in Australia for the final as the stars normally do.

Explaining for the first time, Tulisa says: “I did what I signed up for, but I came out, I processed, I was feeling the way I was feeling. There’s 11 other really happy campers there that are really happy to be there, happy to have the holiday and do it all with energy, with smiles, and you have someone that’s sat crying in their hotel room.

“In this current age that we live in, it’s like, ‘You want me to be there out of principle? When I’m having a breakdown right now? I need to go home and process this. If other people are not having the same experience as me, they haven’t had the same experiences in the past and they’re all current people that are doing radio or they’re on television. This is very much the norm for them’. This, for me, was a psychological experiment, for myself.

“ITV were brilliant and supported me knowing what I needed to do.”

Being at home, watching her favourite films with her phone off, brought comfort.

She says: “I stared at the wall, I think, for the first 24 hours in the bed covers, just thinking, processing, phone off.

“And then I put the Lord of the Rings trilogy on because I’m a nerd and escapism is my thing when I’m feeling overwhelmed. I just sat in bed for four days, phone detox, social media detox, and the people that know me really well were like, ‘It’s OK, just leave her... She’s on the recharge’.” Tulisa also opens up on the podcast about her battle with prescription drugs, saying she wants to tell fans everything so there are “not any more misconceptions of my character”.

During the Covid lockdown, she became depressed when her dog got cancer, and she was self-medicating with sleeping pills like zopiclone and diazepam. And when she tried to kick the habit she felt like she was going to die.

She admits: “I was dependent without realising... I went cold turkey for five days and I ended up in hospital because I didn’t know but my body had become dependent on it. I felt like I was having a heart attack. I had pains in my chest... I literally felt like I was going to die.”

It took her months to finally taper off her dependency, she says, adding: “Once I overcame that in January, I didn’t realise how much I had been affected by it and I started to feel alive again. I started to feel me, as a human.

“I was like, ‘Oh my god, this is reality’. I couldn’t determine any more what was real and what wasn’t in terms of my anxiety, my depression. I didn’t know what was what.”

Over the years Tulisa has been threatened with prison over untrue media allegations, had to deal with a leaked sex tape, and was sexually assaulted as a teen. But the star says the dependence on prescription drugs was “one of the toughest experiences actually in my life”.

In some ways she says coming through this period is what gave her the confidence to take part in I’m A Celebrity. But once in the camp she did suffer with some of the feelings she had encountered when coming off the pills.

Looking ahead to a positive future, Tulisa reveals she will continue with her music and has written a novel she hopes could become a film. She adds: “I’m in that peaceful era of just, ‘Do I feel passionate about it? All right, I’ll do it. Do I not? I’m staying at home and I won’t do it’.”

Tulisa spoke on a two-part special of the Paul C Brunson We Need To Talk podcast. The second part is released on Monday, the first is out now.

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