American Idol judge Paula Abdul, who has been keeping her addiction problems secret for 12-years, has finally admitted that she was hooked on painkillers.
"I could have killed myself," the New York Daily News quoted the 46-year-old as telling Ladies Home Journal, while revealing about how she battled her addiction.
The pop singer finally kicked the habit last November, and she called the withdrawals she suffered during her detox at the La Costa Resort and Spa in Carlsbad, Calif., last fall "the worst thing".
"I was freezing cold, then sweating hot, then chattering and in so much pain," she said.
"It was excruciating. But at my very core, I did not like existing the way I had been," she added.
Abdul said that she turned to a combination of painkillers and Chinese medicine to get through the "gruelling" dance routines that made her a reigning pop princess in the 1990s.
"I didn't want anyone to count me out. I tried to keep everything hush-hush," she said.
She said that she took regular shots of lidocaine, and was diagnosed with reflex sympathetic dystrophy syndrome by 2005, which caused disabling pain, teeth chattering and shingles-like lesions.
She revealed that she wore a patch that delivered pain medication 80 times more potent than morphine, and also popped muscle relaxers, had trouble sleeping and would sometimes "get weird".
"I want to start fresh," she added.
