Former Bachelor contestant Britt Nilsson, who appeared on Chris Soules’ season, recently took to YouTube to discuss addiction. The reality star has mentioned her addiction in past videos and explains that she wants to share her experiences with her fans as addiction is a “big part of [her] life.” Not only does she talk about her drug and alcohol addiction, but she also makes a heartbreaking confession—she struggled with bulimia during her time on The Bachelor.
Nilsson begins by explaining how her addictive nature and addiction to alcohol affected relationships with those close to her. “My makeup is basically that I just want it all, all the time. That’s what makes me a really joyful person…I really like experiencing life, I really, truly enjoy life so much but I also don’t know when to stop.” Luckily, Britt revealed that she will be a year sober at the end of this month.
While she does admit that she was sober during the filming of the show, she says that she was facing another dark and long-standing struggle at the time: bulimia. Britt believes the problem started while she was in college, and she experienced many dark years after that. Being on The Bachelor, surrounded by food, she relapsed. “For me, having tons of food everywhere it just became too much. I had pain and anxiety, I felt insecure, I didn’t feel pretty enough, I didn’t know what was going on, I missed my family,” says Nilsson of her time on The Bachelor. “I was totally terrified that it was going to be caught on a mic and that millions of people were going to know that I just couldn’t control myself. It was really, really hard for me, and it just kept going and going.”
As viewers of the reality franchise know, contestants are mic-ed all the time, which made her relapse even more difficult to handle. “I would take my mic off and try to hide it under towels so they wouldn’t hear me throw up, because then that was going to be on the show and that was going to be a plot line,” she explains. “How horrible would that be, to be the girl who has an eating disorder, who can’t stop eating and throwing up? I mean, I had broken blood vessels. I would throw up until I was bleeding out of my nose. I just couldn’t stop, and that’s kind of been a theme in my life.”
Not only has Nilsson spent many years battling food and alcohol addiction, but she also says she had a drug problem. “I also was addicted to drugs in college—I used to be addicted to cocaine,” she explains. “I used to smoke weed every single day in college. I would be high giving presentations. I basically didn’t know how to live without drugs.”
Britt’s fiancé, Jeremy Byrne, was the first person she ever told about her bulimia, and since then, he has helped her manage her addiction with tremendous support. “It actually was a huge release. He just stuck by me with it, he would ask me about it, he would keep me accountable, and it actually got much, much better,” she says. “I started talking to people about it, I started going to groups about it. I learned a lot. It wasn’t completely eradicated, but it wasn’t this shameful, horrible secret.”
We wish all the best to Britt and commend her incredible strength for sharing her story.
Follow Amanda on Twitter.