Nicole Scherzinger Reveals "Paralyzing" Battle With Bulimia: "It Was Such a Dark Time for Me"

Get the scoop on the singer's shocking eating disorder revelation

By Brett Malec Jul 01, 2014 11:49 PMTags
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Nicole Scherzinger is opening up about her personal battle with bulimia, which she's kept secret until now.

"[Opening up about bulimia] was hard for me to speak about," the 36-year-old singer reveals in a candid new interview with British Cosmopolitan. "It still is hard, and thinking about it I try not to well up."

Scherzinger reveals her toughest times with the eating disorder happened in her 20s. "It is such a horrible paralyzing disease and it was such a dark time for me," she explains. "That's why I can empathize so much with people who have demons and voices in their heads, who aren't nice to themselves. It robs you of living your life. But you can recover and you can get rid of it forever. I did it and that's why it's so important for me to share my story. I felt so alone...but I made myself so alone. You hide it from the world, you isolate yourself. But you can beat it—do not give up because you're so special and you're meant for such great things."

"I didn't think anyone knew in my group or in my family because I hid it that well, I was so ashamed," she adds. "I knew it wasn't normal or healthy because I was hurting myself through this cycle of disordered eating. It was my drug, my addiction. It's an endless vicious cycle."

Things didn't get better for Scherzinger until one particular day when she blacked out and realized she needed help.

"I had started losing my voice, I couldn't sing at shows, and then I remember my manager finding me passed out on the floor in Malta or in the south of France," the former Pussycat Dolls star says. "I thought, ‘I'm going to lose everything I love if I don't love myself.' One day when you feel like you've reached the end, you just say, ‘I'm not doing this anymore.' It's sad to see how I wasted my life. I had such a great life on the outside, the Dolls were on top of the world but I was miserable on the inside. I'm never letting that happen again; you only get one life—I was 27 only once."

The full interview appears in the August issue of British Cosmopolitan, on sale July 3.