Cara Delevingne: Sobriety, Sexuality & Self-Love
Alex Cooper interviews model-turned-musician Cara Delevingne on Call Her Daddy, covering her turbulent childhood with a mentally ill mother, her journey through fame and suppressed sexuality, substance abuse struggles, and her path to sobriety. The interview coincides with Cara's debut music album release and her first live show, marking what she describes as the most meaningful chapter of her life.
Summary
Alex Cooper sits down with Cara Delevingne for an in-depth conversation that spans her entire life, from a privileged but emotionally turbulent British upbringing to international supermodel fame, and now to her debut music career in sobriety.
Cara describes growing up in London's high society circles as confusing and hollow, noting that her father valued financial security and expected his daughters to marry well, while her mother struggled severely with mental illness and addiction. As the youngest child by several years, Cara was largely left to process her mother's repeated hospitalizations and rehab stints alone, often believing her mother had died because no one explained what was happening. This sense of helplessness led to controlling behaviors like refusing to eat at age seven and later engaging in dangerous physical risk-taking to externalize internal pain — she recounts breaking bones and feeling relief at having a visible, socially acceptable reason to say she was hurting.
At around 13-14, Cara began experimenting heavily with hallucinogens and ketamine in London's rave scene, finding the connection and escape she craved. By 15, excessive drug use combined with a shattering realization that she had fundamentally misunderstood the dynamic between her parents triggered a mental breakdown, suicidal ideation, and her eventual departure from boarding school. She was placed on antidepressants and eventually scouted as a model at a rave.
Cara's modeling career exploded unexpectedly after a chance meeting with Christopher Bailey at Burberry, who asked about her personality and interests rather than just her appearance. She describes the industry as deeply problematic — exploitative of young women, racist, and obsessed with unrealistic body standards — and felt fraudulent representing ideals she didn't believe in. Her irreverent, personality-driven approach to modeling was polarizing at first but ultimately helped shift the industry toward celebrating individuality.
Throughout her modeling years, Cara was privately grappling with her sexuality. She knew from a young age she was queer but suppressed it, partially because she saw no gay role models and because the industry actively discouraged it. She describes a specific call from Harvey Weinstein who told her she could never be an actress if she was with women, and warned her to keep any same-sex relationships hidden. She complied out of fear, continuing to play straight roles while experiencing what she calls 'constant gay panic' — including famously passing out backstage at Victoria's Secret when a fellow model undressed near her.
Substance use escalated alongside fame. Cara progressed from party drugs to using GBL/GBH (a date rape drug) daily, mixing it with cocaine to stay functional. She describes the peak of her addiction coinciding with peak external success — she was attending galas and working constantly while privately using alone, hiding the worst of it across different social circles and countries. The Burning Man paparazzi photos that shocked the public were taken right after she had a seizure coming off GBL. She had told herself she would get sober after her 30th birthday, not realizing the physical severity of withdrawal from the substance.
Sobriety came through a combination of factors: reconnecting with her now-girlfriend (a childhood schoolmate) who made her feel genuinely safe for the first time, a near-suicide moment interrupted by a song shuffling on her phone, and eventually rehab focused on trauma. She describes her approach to sobriety as non-linear and not strictly 12-step — she gives herself grace around occasional choices like microdosing mushrooms because the guilt-shame-relapse cycle of strict abstinence had failed her in the past. She emphasizes that the goal is clarity and self-love, not performing sobriety.
The album, written largely in the first week of sobriety sessions, is described as the culmination of everything she has been building toward. Music has always been her true passion — more than modeling or acting — but she refused to release anything until she felt she had found her authentic voice and self-belief. Her girlfriend, a talented guitarist, has been her primary emotional support and the subject of one of the album's love songs. Cara describes the album as emotionally heavy but also joyful, covering abusive relationships, dissociation, intrusive thoughts, and ultimately self-love. She previews a snippet of a playful love song written for her girlfriend.
Key Insights
- Cara argues that her childhood hunger strike at age 7 was an attempt to control the uncontrollable — she stopped eating because no one told her where her hospitalized mother was, and food refusal was the only agency she had.
- Cara claims she broke multiple bones as a child deliberately because physical injuries gave her socially acceptable permission to express pain, describing the relief of getting a cast as the first time she felt she 'deserved to say ow.'
- Cara describes her early drug use as primarily motivated by the desire for connection and relief from self-hatred, not recreation, and argues that what drugs gave her was a counterfeit version of what she actually needed.
- Cara argues that her strategy of openly acknowledging her drug problem while high was a manipulation — it performed self-awareness and disarmed intervention while allowing her to continue using, since people assumed her honesty meant she was managing it.
- Cara claims Harvey Weinstein called her directly to warn that being with women would end her acting career and that she should find a boyfriend or at minimum keep same-sex relationships hidden, forcing her to deny her sexuality to protect professional opportunities.
- Cara argues that financial independence was central to her ability to be openly queer — she believes she would have faced much more parental opposition to her sexuality if she had been economically dependent on her family.
- Cara describes the Burning Man paparazzi photos as having been taken immediately after she had a seizure caused by GBL withdrawal, reframing what the public interpreted as visible intoxication as a medical emergency during a botched attempt at self-detox.
- Cara argues that the strict 12-step abstinence model backfired for her because the guilt-shame cycle triggered by any lapse (including microdosing) reliably sent her back to harder drug use — she found more stability in a non-linear model where she retained autonomy over choices.
- Cara claims she withheld her music from close friends and her girlfriend for a long time specifically because she knew she would mold it to their preferences, and only shared it once she was confident enough in her own creative instincts to resist that pull.
- Cara argues that anger is the primary unresolved emotion from her childhood — not grief or fear — and traces it specifically to the helplessness of loving someone (her mother) who was sick and unreachable, with nowhere legitimate to direct the feeling.
- Cara describes discovering her sexuality through sexual experimentation with female friends within a 'safety' framing that allowed both parties to avoid labeling it as gay, arguing this gradual exposure was necessary because her mind and body were not yet synchronized on her orientation.
- Cara argues that modeling required her to perform a femininity that felt alien to her gender expression, and that this disconnect — combined with being closeted — meant she frequently numbed herself to get through high-profile engagements like the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show.
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